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The hot Big Bang is often touted as the beginning of the Universe. But there's one piece of evidence we can't ignore that shows otherwise. The notion of the Big Bang goes back nearly 100 years, when the first evidence for the expanding Universe appeared. If the Universe is expanding and cooling today, that implies a past that was smaller, denser, and hotter. In our imaginations, we can extrapolate back to arbitrarily small sizes, high densities, and hot temperatures: all the way to a singularity, where all of the Universe’s matter and energy was condensed in a single point. For...

[*All currently known Piezoelectric materials are solids. When the solid is compressed or twisted, it releases an electric charge. If the solid is zapped with electricity, the solid changes shape*] - When the liquids were put in a cylinder and compressed with a piston, both generated electricity proportional to the force applied. Blanchard and Hossain placed their liquids in a lens-shaped container. By zapping it with electricity, Blanchard said they were able to change the focal length of the lens.

The new breakthrough has now achieved stimulated emission [laser] and detection for single photons, as well as small groups of photons from a single atom, leading to them becoming strongly correlated – in other words, "quantum light." And that's a huge step forward..."By demonstrating that we can identify and manipulate photon-bound states, we have taken a vital first step towards harnessing quantum light for practical use..."

VLT reveals alignments between supermassive black hole axes and large-scale structure New observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile have revealed alignments over the largest structures ever discovered in the Universe. A European research team has found that the rotation axes of the central supermassive black holes in a sample of quasars are parallel to each other over distances of billions of light-years. The team has also found that the rotation axes of these quasars tend to be aligned with the vast structures in the cosmic web in which they reside.See Full Size Photo Quasars are galaxies with...

Graphene Sheet Scientists have found that nanoripples in graphene make it a strong catalyst, even though it was expected to be chemically inert. Their research, published in PNAS, demonstrated that nanoscale corrugations on graphene’s surface accelerate hydrogen splitting as well as the best metallic-based catalysts, and this effect may be present in all 2D materials. *********************************************************************** A team of researchers led by Prof. Andre Geim from the National Graphene Institute (NGI) have discovered that nanoripples in graphene can make it a strong catalyst, contrary to general expectations that the carbon sheet is as chemically inert as the bulk graphite from...

JWST's new image of WR 124 and its nebula. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team) There's scintillating beauty to be found in cosmic death. In a new image from the JWST, the spectacular final throes of a star nearing the end of its life are revealed in all their intricate detail. Located in the constellation Sagittarius, the star WR 124 is what's known as a Wolf-Rayet, which are rarely seen in the Milky Way. That's because only certain stars turn into Wolf-Rayets, and even then their time in that phase is so short; in just a few hundred...

Time Reflections Visualization Illustration of the experimental platform used to realize time reflections. (Andrea Alu) Walk through a maze of mirrors, you'll soon come face to face with yourself. Your nose meets your nose, your fingertips touch at their phantom twins, stopped abruptly by a boundary of glass. Most of the time, a reflection needs no explanation. The collision of light with the mirror's surface is almost intuitive, its rays set on a new path through space with the same ease as a ball bouncing off a wall. For over sixty years, however, physicists have considered a subtly different kind...

Successful completion of high school calculus has long been an unofficial must-have for those seeking admission to the nation’s top colleges: The course has, for decades, served as a signal to admissions officers that a student’s coursework has been robust. But some in education say it’s time to reconsider this de facto requirement: Many schools — particularly those serving large numbers of Black, Hispanic or low-income students — don’t offer the course. And even when they do, it’s of dubious value, they say. “High school calculus is a complete waste of time and a form of torture,” said Alan Garfinkel,...

Scientists at the University of Rochester reported this week that they have taken a big leap toward creating a commercially viable superconductor that operates at room temperature and a low enough level of high pressure to be used in almost any technology that uses electric energy.

Thanks to Red Badger. Graphene is a strange material. Understanding its properties is both a fundamental question of science and a promising avenue for new technologies. A team of researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and the Weizmann Institute of Science has studied what happens when they layer four sheets of it on top of each other and how this can lead to new forms of exotic superconductivity. “Multilayered graphene has many promising qualities, ranging from widely tunable band structure and special optical properties to new forms of superconductivity—meaning being able to conduct electrical current without...

'We found this galaxy to be super-chemically abundant, something none of us expected.' A gravitationally lensed view of a ring-shaped slice of the galaxy SPT0418-47, as seen by the ALMA array in Chile. Recent observations by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reveal that the galaxy has a satellite that's rich in star formation. A gravitationally lensed view of a ring-shaped slice of the galaxy SPT0418-47, as seen by the ALMA array in Chile. Recent observations by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope reveal that the galaxy has a satellite that's rich in star formation. (Image credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Rizzo et al.)...

[snip] Eric Weinstein is a Managing Director at Thiel Capital, creator of geometric unity, a unified theory in physics, and the intellectual dark web, a loose coalition of intellectuals dedicated to free thought. Hal Puthoff is former CIA, NSA and AATIP (the government's official UFO investigation program). In the 70's, he oversaw Stargate: the government's psychic spy program at Stanford Research Institute. In this conversation, we discuss the physics of UFO's, private aerospace as the keepers of fundamental science and Hal's experience with parapsychology. Please enjoy 🛸👽*** AMERICAN ALCHEMY is an original series hosted by Jesse Michels that explores the...

March 1 (UPI) -- The amount of helium in underground geological formations could satisfy thousands of years of global demand, researchers said in an article published Wednesday in the journal Nature. Like other essential commodities, there are supply-side concerns for helium as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year. Sanctions and other restrictions mean supplies from Russia's Amur plant, expected to satisfy about 35% of global demand, are no longer available. Researchers from Oxford University, Durham University and the University of Toronto estimate helium is a $6 billion market. The element is used in everything from fiber optics...

If wormholes exist, they could magnify the light of distant objects by up to 100,000 times — and that could be the key to finding them, according to research published Jan. 19 in the journal Physical Review D.

Scientists say that images from the James Webb Space Telescope may change how they understand the origins of the universe after they discovered "the impossible." The findings were published in the journal "Nature" on Wednesday. Astronomers expected to find "tiny, young, baby galaxies" from the cosmic history documented in the images, but they found something else entirely. The study's lead author, Ivo Labbé, explained how shocked he was when he realized what the images meant. "Little did I know that among the pictures is a small red dot that will shake up our understanding of how the first galaxies formed...

Mirabilis, one of the pairs of dwarf galaxies detected. (NASA/CXC/University of Alabama/M. Micic et al./International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA) For the first time, astronomers have spotted evidence of a pair of dwarf galaxies featuring giant black holes on a collision course with each other. In fact, they haven't just found just one pair – they've found two. The first pair of merging dwarf galaxies is in the cluster Abell 133, about 760 million light-years away from Earth, and the other is in the Abell 1758S galaxy cluster, which is about 3.2 billion light-years away. It's hoped that these sightings and further investigations...

Astronomers have sighted a supermassive black hole traveling through space that appears to have been ejected from its host galaxy. Researchers observing the dwarf galaxy designated RCP 28, roughly 7.5 billion light years away from our solar system, noticed an aberrant streak of light via the Hubble telescope. The “streak” appears to be a collection of stars being dragged out of their home galaxy by the immense gravitational force of a black hole. The “runaway” black hole is the first of its kind to be observed, and appears to have been ejected from its original galaxy. “We found a thin...

Imagine you are 40-something and want to go on a date looking like you did 20 years ago. This is impossible in the classical physical world but not in the quantum world, which refers to the subatomic particles that are the foundation for all reality...The team published papers in Physical Review X, Quantum, Arxiv, Physical Review Letters and Optica on theoretical research and experiments proving it's possible to "accelerate, decelerate and reverse the flow of time within arbitrary, even uncontrolled quantum systems."

The discovery offers the first observational evidence that supermassive black holes can be ejected from their home galaxies to roam interstellar space...The researchers discovered the runaway black hole as a bright streak of light while they were using the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the dwarf galaxy RCP 28, located about 7.5 billion light-years from Earth.

Astronomers have spotted a runaway supermassive black hole, seemingly ejected from its home galaxy and racing through space with a chain of stars trailing in its wake. - snip - The researchers discovered the runaway black hole as a bright streak of light while they were using the Hubble Space Telescope to observe the dwarf galaxy RCP 28, located about 7.5 billion light-years from Earth. Follow-up observations showed that the streak measures more than 200,000 light-years long — roughly twice the width of the Milky Way — and is thought to be made of compressed gas that is actively forming...