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Archive for the ‘particle physics’ category: Page 178

Jan 28, 2022

Physicist’s Radical Solution to Century Old Problem of Radiation Reaction — With Controversial Implications

Posted by in categories: mathematics, particle physics

A Lancaster physicist has proposed a radical solution to the question of how a charged particle, such as an electron, responded to its own electromagnetic field.

This question has challenged physicists for over 100 years but mathematical physicist Dr. Jonathan Gratus has suggested an alternative approach — published in the Journal of Physics A — with controversial implications.

It is well established that if a point charge accelerates it produces electromagnetic radiation. This radiation has both energy and momentum, which must come from somewhere. It is usually assumed that they come from the energy and momentum of the charged particle, damping the motion.

Jan 27, 2022

What lies beyond the Standard Model?

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics

Physicists must swing between crafting the mind-bending ideas about reality that make up theories and advancing technologies to the point where new experiments can test those theories. 2021 was a big year for advancing the experimental tools of physics.

First, the world’s largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, was shut down and underwent some substantial upgrades. Physicists just restarted the facility in October, and they plan to begin the next data collection run in May 2022. The upgrades have boosted the power of the collider so that it can produce collisions at 14 TeV, up from the previous limit of 13 TeV. This means the batches of tiny protons that travel in beams around the circular accelerator together carry the same amount of energy as an 800,000-pound (360,000-kilogram) passenger train traveling at 100 mph (160 kph). At these incredible energies, physicists may discover new particles that were too heavy to see at lower energies.

Some other technological advancements were made to help the search for dark matter. Many astrophysicists believe that dark matter particles, which don’t currently fit into the Standard Model, could answer some outstanding questions regarding the way gravity bends around stars – called gravitational lensing – as well as the speed at which stars rotate in spiral galaxies. Projects like the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search have yet to find dark matter particles, but the teams are developing larger and more sensitive detectors to be deployed in the near future.

Jan 27, 2022

Scientists Link Genes to Longer Human Lifespan

Posted by in categories: particle physics, quantum physics

A group of genes that play an essential role in building components of our cells can also impact human lifespan, finds a new study led by UCL researchers. The genes have previously been found to extend lifespan in small organisms, such as making fruit flies live 10% longer, but this is the first.


MIT physicists have discovered a new quantum bit, or “qubit,” in the form of vibrating pairs of atoms known as fermions. They found that when pairs of fermions are chilled and trapped in an optical lattice, the particles can exist simultaneously in two states—a weird quantum phenomenon known as superposition. In this case, the atoms held a superposition of two vibrational states, in which the pair wobbled against each other while also swinging in sync, at the same time.

Jan 26, 2022

‘X particle’ from the dawn of time detected inside the Large Hadron Collider

Posted by in category: particle physics

The particle was found by smashing billions of lead atoms into each other at extreme speeds.

Jan 26, 2022

How the Physics of Resonance Shapes Reality

Posted by in categories: mathematics, media & arts, particle physics

Almost anytime physicists announce that they’ve discovered a new particle, whether it’s the Higgs boson or the recently bagged double-charm tetraquark, what they’ve actually spotted is a small bump rising from an otherwise smooth curve on a plot. Such a bump is the unmistakable signature of “resonance,” one of the most ubiquitous phenomena in nature.

Resonance underlies aspects of the world as diverse as music, nuclear fusion in dying stars, and even the very existence of subatomic particles. Here’s how the same effect manifests in such varied settings, from everyday life down to the smallest scales.

In its simplest form, resonance occurs when an object experiences an oscillating force that’s close to one of its “natural” frequencies, at which it easily oscillates. That objects have natural frequencies “is one of the bedrock properties of both math and the universe,” said Matt Strassler, a particle physicist affiliated with Harvard University who is writing a book about the Higgs boson. A playground swing is one familiar example: “Knock something like that around, and it will always pick out its resonant frequency automatically,” Strassler said. Or flick a wineglass and the rim will vibrate a few hundred times per second, producing a characteristic tone as the vibrations transfer to the surrounding air.

Jan 26, 2022

The Weak Gravity Conjecture: A Review

Posted by in categories: mathematics, particle physics, quantum physics

‘’The Weak Gravity Conjecture holds that in a theory of quantum gravity, any gauge force must mediate interactions stronger than gravity for some particles. This statement has surprisingly deep and extensive connections to many different areas of physics and mathematics. Several variations on the basic conjecture have been proposed, including statements that are much stronger but are nonetheless satisfied by all known consistent quantum gravity theories. We review these relat… See more.


The Weak Gravity Conjecture holds that in a theory of quantum gravity, any.

Gauge force must mediate interactions stronger than gravity for some particles.

Continue reading “The Weak Gravity Conjecture: A Review” »

Jan 26, 2022

Vibrating atoms make robust qubits, physicists find

Posted by in categories: computing, particle physics, quantum physics

The team was able to maintain this state of superposition among hundreds of vibrating pairs of fermions. In so doing, they achieved a new “quantum register,” or system of qubits, that appears to be robust over relatively long periods of time. The discovery, published today in the journal Nature, demonstrates that such wobbly qubits could be a promising foundation for future quantum computers.

New qubits stay in “superposition” for up to 10 seconds, and could make a promising foundation for quantum computers.

Continue reading “Vibrating atoms make robust qubits, physicists find” »

Jan 26, 2022

Laniakea, our local supercluster, is being destroyed

Posted by in categories: cosmology, particle physics

On the largest cosmic scales, planet Earth appears to be anything but special. Like hundreds of billions of other planets in our galaxy, we orbit our parent star; like hundreds of billions of solar systems, we revolve around the galaxy; like the majority of galaxies in the Universe, we’re bound together in either a group or cluster of galaxies. And, like most galactic groups and clusters, we’re a small part of a larger structure containing over 100,000 galaxies: a supercluster. Ours is named Laniakea: the Hawaiian word for “immense heaven.”

Superclusters have been found and charted throughout our observable Universe, where they’re more than 10 times as rich as the largest known clusters of galaxies. Unfortunately, owing to the presence of dark energy in the Universe, these superclusters ⁠— including our own ⁠— are only apparent structures. In reality, they’re mere phantasms, in the process of dissolving before our very eyes.

The Universe as we know it began some 13.8 billion years ago with the Big Bang. It was filled with matter, antimatter, radiation, etc.; all the particles and fields that we know of today, and possibly even more. From the earliest instants of the hot Big Bang, however, it wasn’t simply a uniform sea of these energetic quanta. Instead, there were tiny imperfections ⁠— at about the 0.003% level ⁠— on all scales, where some regions had slightly more or slightly less matter and energy than average.

Jan 25, 2022

Physicist solves century old problem of radiation reaction

Posted by in categories: mathematics, particle physics

A Lancaster physicist has proposed a radical solution to the question of how a charged particle, such as an electron, responded to its own electromagnetic field.

This question has challenged for over 100 years but mathematical physicist Dr. Jonathan Gratus has suggested an alternative approach—published in the Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical with controversial implications.

It is well established that if a point charge accelerates it produces . This has both energy and momentum, which must come from somewhere. It is usually assumed that they come from the energy and momentum of the charged particle, damping the motion.

Jan 25, 2022

Studying the big bang with artificial intelligence

Posted by in categories: cosmology, information science, mathematics, particle physics, quantum physics, robotics/AI

It could hardly be more complicated: tiny particles whir around wildly with extremely high energy, countless interactions occur in the tangled mess of quantum particles, and this results in a state of matter known as “quark-gluon plasma”. Immediately after the Big Bang, the entire universe was in this state; today it is produced by high-energy atomic nucleus collisions, for example at CERN.

Such processes can only be studied using high-performance computers and highly complex computer simulations whose results are difficult to evaluate. Therefore, using artificial intelligence or machine learning for this purpose seems like an obvious idea. Ordinary machine-learning algorithms, however, are not suitable for this task. The mathematical properties of particle physics require a very special structure of neural networks. At TU Wien (Vienna), it has now been shown how neural networks can be successfully used for these challenging tasks in particle physics.