Earth is fortunate in having a magnetic field: it protects the planet and its life from harmful cosmic radiation. Other planets in our solar system—such as Mars—are constantly bombarded by charged particles that make life difficult.
Category: particle physics – Page 19
Compact setup successfully detects elusive antineutrinos from nuclear reactor
Neutrinos are extremely elusive elementary particles. Day and night, 60 billion of them stream from the sun through every square centimeter of Earth every second, which is transparent to them. After the first theoretical prediction of their existence, decades passed before they were actually detected. These experiments are usually extremely large to account for the very weak interaction of neutrinos with matter.
Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics (MPIK) in Heidelberg have now succeeded in detecting antineutrinos from the reactor of a nuclear power plant using the CONUS+ experiment, with a detector mass of just 3 kg. The work is published in Nature.
Originally based at the Brokdorf nuclear power plant, the CONUS experiment was relocated to the Leibstadt nuclear power plant (KKL) in Switzerland in the summer of 2023. Improvements to the 1 kg germanium semiconductor detectors, as well as the excellent measurement conditions at KKL, made it possible for the first time to measure what is known as Coherent Elastic Neutrino-Nucleus Scattering (CEvNS).
Building electronics that don’t die: Columbia’s breakthrough at CERN
Deep beneath the Swiss-French border, the Large Hadron Collider unleashes staggering amounts of energy and radiation—enough to fry most electronics. Enter a team of Columbia engineers, who built ultra-rugged, radiation-resistant chips that now play a pivotal role in capturing data from subatomic particle collisions. These custom-designed ADCs not only survive the hostile environment inside CERN but also help filter and digitize the most critical collision events, enabling physicists to study elusive phenomena like the Higgs boson.
“Rarest Baryon Decay Ever Observed So Far” Found In Experiment That Wasn’t Even Looking For It
It happens only once every 100 million decays of the Σ+ particle.
SOSV bets plasma will change everything from semiconductors to spacecraft
It sees so much potential that it plans on investing in more than 25 plasma-related startups over the next five years. It is also opening a new Hax lab space in partnership with the New Jersey Economic Development Authority and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.
Nuclear fusion is an obvious place to seed plasma startups. The potential power source works by compressing fuel until it turns into a dense plasma, so dense that atoms begin fusing, releasing energy in the process.
“There’s so much here. The best ideas have yet to come to unlock a lot of potential in the fusion space,” Duncan Turner, general partner at SOSV, told TechCrunch.
Chemistry at the beginning: How molecular reactions influenced the formation of the first stars
Immediately after the Big Bang, which occurred around 13.8 billion years ago, the universe was dominated by unimaginably high temperatures and densities. However, after just a few seconds, it had cooled down enough for the first elements to form, primarily hydrogen and helium. These were still completely ionized at this point, as it took almost 380,000 years for the temperature in the universe to drop enough for neutral atoms to form through recombination with free electrons. This paved the way for the first chemical reactions.
The oldest molecule in existence is the helium hydride ion (HeH⁺), formed from a neutral helium atom and an ionized hydrogen nucleus. This marks the beginning of a chain reaction that leads to the formation of molecular hydrogen (H₂), which is by far the most common molecule in the universe.
Recombination was followed by the “dark age” of cosmology: although the universe was now transparent due to the binding of free electrons, there were still no light-emitting objects, such as stars. Several hundred million years passed before the first stars formed.
Light Versus Light: The Secret Physics Battle That Could Rewrite the Rules
In a fascinating dive into the strange world of quantum physics, scientists have shown that light can interact with itself in bizarre ways—creating ghost-like virtual particles that pop in and out of existence.
This “light-on-light scattering” isn’t just a theoretical curiosity; it could hold the key to solving long-standing mysteries in particle physics.
Quantum light: why lasers don’t clash like lightsabers.
How materials science could revolutionise technology — with Jess Wade
Jess Wade explains the concept of chirality, and how it might revolutionise technological innovation.
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Watch the Q&A here (exclusively for our Science Supporters): https://youtu.be/VlkHT-0zx9U
This lecture was recorded at the Ri on 14 June 2025.
Imagine if we could keep our mobile phones on full brightness all day, without worrying about draining our battery? Or if we could create a fuel cell that used sunlight to convert water into hydrogen and oxygen? Or if we could build a low-power sensor that could map out brain function?
Whether it’s optoelectronics, spintronics or quantum, the technologies of tomorrow are underpinned by advances in materials science and engineering. For example, chirality, a symmetry property of mirror-image systems that cannot be superimposed, can be used to control the spin of electrons and photons. Join functional materials scientist Jess Wade as she explores how advances in chemistry, physics and materials offer new opportunities in technological innovation.
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Laser pulses and nanoscale changes yield stable skyrmion bags for advanced spintronics
A team of researchers at the Max Born Institute and collaborating institutions has developed a reliable method to create complex magnetic textures, known as skyrmion bags, in thin ferromagnetic films. Skyrmion bags are donut-like, topologically rich spin textures that go beyond the widely studied single skyrmions.
