Physics

Professor John Terning and Dr. Christopher Verhaaren from the University of California, Davis, have a new candidate for dark matter — a dark monopole — and a possible way to detect it. No one knows what dark matter is, but this invisible form of matter makes up roughly a quarter …

A research team led by University of Rochester physicists has conceived an idea for a superconducting quantum refrigerator, which would cool atoms to nearly absolute zero temperatures. The superconducting quantum refrigerator is similar to a conventional refrigerator, in that it moves a material between hot and cold reservoirs. However, instead …

Schrödinger’s cat, a thought experiment envisioned by the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935, is a paradox that applies the concept of superposition in quantum physics to objects encountered in everyday life. The idea is that a cat is placed in a sealed box with a radioactive source and a …

  The renowned physicist Stephen Hawking passed away last year, but his groundbreaking work lives on. A team of scientists from Israel believe they’ve confirmed one of the late scientist’s most famous predictions. Using quantum superfluid, the researchers may have found evidence that so-called “Hawking radiation” is a real phenomenon …

Researchers in the United Kingdom have extracted americium from a plutonium stockpile and used the heat generated from this radioactive element to generate enough electric current to light up a small lightbulb. The breakthrough means potential use of americium in radioisotope power systems for missions which would use the heat …

A team of physicists at the University of Basel has experimentally mapped out the shape and orientation of electrons trapped in quantum dots. An electron is trapped in a quantum dot, which is formed in a 2D gas in a semiconductor wafer. However, the electron moves within the space and, …

Gravitational waves are ‘ripples’ in space-time caused by some of the most violent and energetic processes in the Universe. Albert Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves in 1916 in his general theory of relativity. New research shows those waves leave behind plenty of ‘memories’ that could help detect them …

On April 25 and 26, 2019, NSF’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the European-based Virgo detector registered two new gravitational waves, the ripples in space-time predicted by Albert Einstein. The first was from a neutron star crashing into another neutron star 500 million light-years away, and the second was …

According to new research published in the journal Physical Review Letters, charged particles traveling through empty space can emit Cherenkov radiation by interacting with quantum vacuum. Macleod et al analyzed the properties of vacuum Cherenkov radiation in strong laser pulses and the magnetic field around a pulsar. Image credit: Gerd …

  A laser one-tenth of the sun’s power on Earth officially debuted in March when researchers in Romania ran the first successful test at 10 petawatts (PW). The laser is one of three in an international project in Europe known as Extreme Light Infrastructure. To date, it is the most …