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Category: particle physics – Page 189

The Dark SRF experiment at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory has achieved unprecedented sensitivity in the search for hypothetical dark photons. By innovatively employing superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities, researchers can now explore different potential mass ranges for these elusive particles, pushing the boundaries of our understanding of dark matter.

Scientists working on the Dark SRF experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have demonstrated unprecedented sensitivity in an experimental setup used to search for theorized particles called dark photons.

Researchers trapped ordinary, massless photons in devices called superconducting radio frequency cavities to look for the transition of those photons into their hypothesized dark sector counterparts. The experiment has put the world’s best constraint on the dark photon.

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There’s an old joke among astronomy students about a question on the final exam for a cosmology class. It goes like this: “Describe the Universe and give three examples.” Well, a team of researchers in Germany, the U.S., and the UK took a giant leap toward giving at least one accurate example of the Universe.

To do it, they used a set of simulations called “MillenniumTNG”. It traces the buildup of galaxies and cosmic structure across time. It also provides new insight into the standard cosmological model of the Universe. It’s the latest in cosmological simulations, joining such ambitious efforts as the AbacusSummit project of a couple of years ago.

This simulation project takes into account as many aspects of cosmic evolution as possible. It uses simulations of regular (baryonic) matter (which is what we see in the Universe). It also includes dark matter, neutrinos, and the still-mysterious dark energy on the formation mechanisms of the Universe. That’s a tall order.

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Scientists specializing in chemical and environmental engineering at the University of California, Riverside have discovered two types of bacteria in the soil capable of breaking down a class of stubborn “forever chemicals,” giving hope for low-cost biological cleanup of industrial pollutants.

Assistant Professor Yujie Men and her team at the Bourns College of Engineering have found that these bacteria are able to eradicate a specific subgroup of per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, particularly those that contain one or more chlorine atoms within their chemical structure. Their findings were published in the scientific journal, Nature Water.

Unhealthful forever chemicals persist in the environment for decades or much longer because of their unusually strong carbon-to-fluorine bonds. Remarkably, the UCR team found that the bacteria cleave the pollutant’s chlorine-carbon bonds, which starts a chain of reactions that destroy the forever chemical structures, rendering them harmless.

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The discovery of the Higgs Boson in 2012 represented a major turning point for particle physics marking the completion of what is known as the standard model of particle physics. Yet, the standard model can’t answer every question in physics, thus, since this discovery at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) physicists have searched for physics beyond the standard model and to determine what shape future physics will take.

A paper in The European Physical Journal H by Robert Harlander and Jean-Philippe Martinez of the Institute for Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology, RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and Gregor Schiemann from the Faculty of Humanities and Cultural Studies, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany, considers the idea that particle physics may be on the verge of a new era of discovery and understanding in particle physics. The paper also considers the implications of the many possible scenarios for the future of high-energy physics.

“Over the last century, the concept of the particle has emerged as fundamental in the field of physics,” Martinez said. “It has undergone a significant evolution across time, which has opened up new ways for particle observation, and thus for the discovery of new particles. Currently, observing a particle requires its on-shell production.”

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Credit: Hyundai Motor Group.

During a press conference held yesterday in Seoul, South Korea, Hyundai Motor Group revealed plans for a new generation of high-tech cars incorporating nanoscale features, which it hopes to begin mass producing by 2025–2026.

Nanotechnology is defined as materials or devices that work on a scale smaller than one hundred nanometres (nm). A nanometre is one billionth of a metre or about 100,000 times narrower than a human hair. Individual atoms, for comparison, tend to range in size from 0.1 to 0.5 nm. Many interesting and unique physical effects become possible at this level of detail, making nanotechnology a highly promising technology of the future.

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Now that’s something mach can use.

MIT researchers have recently developed a portable desalination unit that can remove particles and salts to turn seawater into drinking water.

The suitcase-sized device, weighing less than ten kilograms, requires less power to operate than a cell phone charger and can also be driven by a small, portable solar panel.

Continue reading “MIT Scientists Turn Seawater to Drinking Water With the Push of a Button” | >

The digital devices that we rely on so heavily in our day-to-day and professional lives today—smartphones, tablets, laptops, fitness trackers, etc.—use traditional computational technology. Traditional computers rely on a series of mathematical equations that use electrical impulses to encode information in a binary system of 1s and 0s. This information is transmitted through quantitative measurements called “bits.”

Unlike traditional computing, quantum computing relies on the principles of quantum theory, which address principles of matter and energy on an atomic and subatomic scale. With quantum computing, equations are no longer limited to 1s and 0s, but instead can transmit information in which particles exist in both states, the 1 and the 0, at the same time.

Quantum computing measures electrons or photons. These subatomic particles are known as quantum bits, or ” qubits.” The more qubits are used in a computational exercise, the more exponentially powerful the scope of the computation can be. Quantum computing has the potential to solve equations in a matter of minutes that would take traditional computers tens of thousands of years to work out.

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Teams of physicists worldwide have been trying to detect dark matter, an elusive type of matter that does not emit, absorb, or reflect light. Due to its lack of interactions with electromagnetic forces, this matter is very difficult to observe directly, thus most researchers are instead searching for signals originating from its interactions with other particles in its surroundings.

The PandaX experiment is a research effort dedicated to the search of dark matter using data collected by the Particle and Astrophysical xenon detector, situated at the China Jinping Underground Laboratory (CJPL) in Sichuan, in China. In a recent paper published in Physical Review Letters, the researchers involved in this large-scale experiment published the results of their most recent search for light dark matter (i.e., weakly interacting massive particles with masses below 1 GeV).

“Currently, strong constraints exist for heavy mass derived from null results in direct detection experiments using xenon detectors,” Yue Meng, Qing Lin and Ning Zhou told Tech Xplore, on behalf of the PandaX collaboration. “However, traditional searches are not sensitive to light mass dark matter (less than GeV/c2) due to the detection energy threshold. Using an ionization-only signal (S2-only) to search for light mass dark matter can reduce the energy threshold from ~1 keV to 0.1 keV. Previous S2-only data analyses in xenon detectors were unable to model the background, which prevented effective and sensitive searches for light mass dark matter.”

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