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The apparent development of a large void of some billion light-years in diameter in the Constellation Eridanus appears to be improbable given current cosmological models. A radical and controversial theory proposes that it is a "universe-in-mass black hole" rather than hypothetical dark matter responsible for the phenomenon described as the expanding-accelerating universe. This radical theory of cosmology suggests that stars at the edge of the Hubble length universe are being consumed by a universe-in-mass black hole. In August of 2007, astronomers at the University of Minnesota located a gigantic hole in the universe. This empty space, stretching nearly a billion...

Look past the details of a wonky discovery by a group of California scientists -- that a quantum state is now observable with the human eye -- and consider its implications: Time travel may be feasible. Doc Brown would be proud. The strange discovery by quantum physicists at the University of California Santa Barbara means that an object you can see in front of you may exist simultaneously in a parallel universe -- a multi-state condition that has scientists theorizing that traveling through time may be much more than just the plaything of science fiction writers.

An international team of scientists led by groups from the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) in Garching, Germany, and from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley has used ultrashort flashes of laser light to directly observe the movement of an atom’s outer electrons for the first time. Through a process called attosecond absorption spectroscopy, researchers were able to time the oscillations between simultaneously produced quantum states of valence electrons with great precision. These oscillations drive electron motion. “With a simple system of krypton atoms, we demonstrated, for the...

"Quantum entanglement" may sound like an awful sci-fi romance flick, but it's actually a phenomenon that physicists say may someday lead to the ability to teleport an object all the way across the galaxy instantly. It's not exactly the Star Trek version of teleportation, where an object disappears then reappears somewhere else. Rather, it "entangles" two different atoms so that one atom inherits the properties of another. "According to the quantum theory, everything vibrates," theoretical physicist Michio Kaku tells NPR's Guy Raz. Kaku is a frequent guest on the Science and Discovery channels. "When two electrons are placed close together,...

All of the matter in the universe—everything we see, feel and smell—has a certain predictable structure, thanks to the tiny electrons spinning around their atomic nuclei in a series of concentric shells or atomic levels. A fundamental tenet of this orderly structure is that no two electrons can occupy the same atomic level (quantum state) at the same time—a principle called the Pauli exclusion principle, which is based on Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and quantum theory. However, a team of Syracuse University physicists recently developed a new theoretical model to explain how the Pauli exclusion principle can be violated...

When scientists send their spacecraft across the universe, they save fuel by performing “slingshot fly-bys”. This is where, rather than firing up the thrusters, the craft changes its trajectory by harnessing the enormous gravitational pull of a planet. However, this trick has had an unexpected side-effect: it seems to produce a change in speed that no one, since it was first discovered in the early 1990's, can account for. Experts are intrigued by the fact that while the acceleration is tiny and has no significant effect on NASA missions, it holds great interest because no explanation based on conventional physics...

Graphene, the extraordinary form of carbon that consists of a single layer of carbon atoms, has produced another in a long list of experimental surprises. In the current issue of the journal Science, a multi-institutional team of researchers headed by Michael Crommie, a faculty senior scientist in the Materials Sciences Division at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a professor of physics at the University of California at Berkeley, reports the creation of pseudo-magnetic fields far stronger than the strongest magnetic fields ever sustained in a laboratory – just by putting the right kind of strain...

Study of quantum phase changes reveals surprising relationship between magnetism and electricityU.S., German and Austrian physicists studying the perplexing class of materials that includes high-temperature superconductors are reporting this week the unexpected discovery of a simple "scaling" behavior in the electronic excitations measured in a related material. The experiments, which were conducted on magnetic heavy-fermion metals, offer direct evidence of the large-scale electronic consequences of "quantum critical" effects. The experimental and theoretical results are reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science by physicists at Rice University in Houston; the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics...

WE COULD be living inside a black hole. This head-spinning idea is one cosmologist's conclusion based on a modification of Einstein's equations of general relativity that changes our picture of what happens at the core of a black hole. In an analysis of the motion of particles entering a black hole, published in March, Nikodem Poplawski of Indiana University in Bloomington showed that inside each black hole there could exist another universe (Physics Letters B, DOI: 10.1016/j.physletb.2010.03.029). "Maybe the huge black holes at the centre of the Milky Way and other galaxies are bridges to different universes," Poplawski says. If...

College Park, MD (July 27, 2010) -- Earth's climate is strongly influenced by the presence of particles of different shapes and origins -- in the form of dust, ice and pollutants -- that find their way into the lowest portion of the atmosphere, the troposphere. There, water adsorbed on the surface of these particles can freeze at higher temperatures than pure water droplets, triggering rain and snow. Researchers at Spain's Centre d'Investigació en Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (CIN2) have studied the underlying mechanisms of water condensation in the troposphere and found a way to make artificial materials to control water condensation...

(PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists at MIT have discovered a previously unknown phenomenon that can cause powerful waves of energy to shoot through minuscule wires known as carbon nanotubes. The discovery could lead to a new way of producing electricity, the researchers say.The phenomenon, described as thermopower waves, “opens up a new area of energy research, which is rare,” says Michael Strano, MIT’s Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, who was the senior author of a paper describing the new findings that appeared in Nature Materials on March 7. The lead author was Wonjoon Choi, a...

When American space pioneer, Dr Robert L Forward, proposed in 1984 a way of greatly improving satellite telecommunications using a new family of orbits, some claimed it was impossible. But now engineers at the University of Strathclyde's Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory have proved that Forward was right. The late Dr Forward - a renowned physicist who worked in the United States and from his second home in Scotland - believed it was possible to use 'displaced orbits' to deploy more satellites to the north or south of the Earth's equator, helping to meet the growing demand for communications. He proposed...

A fresh take on a classic experiment makes no progress in unifying quantum mechanics and relativity. If you ever want to get your head around the riddle that is quantum mechanics, look no further than the double-slit experiment. This shows, with perfect simplicity, how just watching a wave or a particle can change its behaviour. The idea is so unpalatable to physicists that they have spent decades trying to find new ways to test it. The latest such attempt, by physicists in Europe and Canada, used a three-slit version — but quantum mechanics won out again. In the standard double-slit...

They are among the true monsters of space - colossal stars whose size and brightness go well beyond what many scientists thought was even possible. Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote Planets take longer to form than these stars take to live and die” End Quote Prof Paul Crowther Sheffield University, UK One of the objects, known simply as R136a1, is the most massive ever found. The star is seen to have a mass about 265 times that of our own Sun; but the latest modelling work suggests at birth it could have been bigger, still. Perhaps as...

College Park, MD (July 20, 2010) -- Recently, academic debate has been swirling around the existence of unusual quantum mechanical effects in the most ubiquitous of phenomena, including photosynthesis, the process by which organisms convert light into chemical energy. In particular, physicists have suggested that entanglement (the quantum interconnection of two or more objects like photons, electrons, or atoms that are separated in physical space) could be occurring in the photosynthetic complexes of plants, particularly in the pigment molecules, or chromophores. The quantum effects may explain why the structures are so efficient at converting light into energy -- doing so...

Electric dipole moment would explain the creation of the universe in the form that we know it This release is available in German.IMAGE: Juelich researchers want to demonstrate the electric dipole moment of the electron in cooperation with colleagues in the USA and the Czech Republic. Many physical theories presume its existence --... Click here for more information. Electrons are negatively charged elementary particles. They form the shells around atoms and ions. This or something similar is what you will find in text books. Soon, however, this information may have to be supplemented. The reason is that many physicists believe...

A radical reformulation of quantum mechanics suggests that the universe has a set destiny and its pre-existing fate reaches back in time to influence the past. It could explain the origin of life, dark energy and solve other cosmic conundrums.The universe has a destiny—and this set fate could be reaching backwards in time and combining with influences from the past to shape the present. It’s a mind-bending claim, but some cosmologists now believe that a radical reformulation of quantum mechanics in which the future can affect the past could solve some of the universe’s biggest mysteries, including how life arose....

By It’s hard to imagine a more fundamental and ubiquitous aspect of life on the Earth than gravity, from the moment you first took a step and fell on your diapered bottom to the slow terminal sagging of flesh and dreams. But what if it’s all an illusion, a sort of cosmic frill, or a side effect of something else going on at deeper levels of reality? So says Erik Verlinde, 48, a respected string theorist and professor of physics at the University of Amsterdam, whose contention that gravity is indeed an illusion has caused a continuing ruckus among physicists,...

A violent cosmic explosion has unleashed the brightest blast of X-rays ever detected from distant space, a signal so bright it temporary blinded the NASA space telescope assigned to spot it. The powerful explosion, called a gamma-ray burst, was detected by NASA's Swift observatory, scientists announced Wednesday. Gamma-ray bursts are narrow beams of intense radiation shot out when stars explode in supernovas. In addition to gamma-ray light, they also produce X-rays and other forms of radiation, including visible light. This recent event, dubbed GRB 100621A, was particularly powerful.

Rumours are emerging from the rival to the Large Hadron Collider that the Higgs boson, or so-called "God particle", has been found. Tommaso Dorigo, a physicist at the University of Padua, has said in his blog that there has been talk coming out of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, that the Higgs has been discovered. The Tevatron, the huge particle accelerator at Fermi - the most powerful in the world after the LHC - is expected to be retired when the CERN accelerator becomes fully operational, but may have struck a final blow before it becomes obsolete....