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Category: particle physics – Page 94

The Most Powerful Cosmic Rays Detected Come from Several Points Near Our Solar System

The universe is a stage filled with extreme phenomena, where temperatures and energies reach unimaginable levels. In this context, there are objects such as supernova remnants, pulsars, and active galactic nuclei that generate charged particles and gamma rays with energies far exceeding those involved in nuclear processes like fusion within stars. These particles, as direct witnesses of extreme cosmic processes, offer key insights into the workings of the universe.

Gamma rays, for instance, have the ability to traverse space without being altered, providing direct information about their sources of origin. However, charged particles, known as cosmic rays, face a more complex journey. When interacting with the omnipresent magnetic fields of the cosmos, these particles are deflected and lose part of their energy, especially high-energy electrons and positrons, referred to as cosmic-ray electrons (CRe). With energies surpassing one teraelectronvolt (TeV)—a thousand times more than visible light— these particles gradually fade away, complicating the identification of their point of origin.

Detecting high-energy particles such as CRe is a monumental task. Space instruments, with their limited detection areas, fail to capture sufficient particles at these extreme energies. On the other hand, ground-based observatories face an additional challenge: distinguishing particle cascades triggered by cosmic-ray electrons from the far more frequent ones generated by protons and heavier cosmic-ray nuclei.

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That Time A Particle Accelerator Helped Discover The Lost Works Of Archimedes

It was 1,229 CE in the monastery of St Sabas, near Jerusalem, and a monk named Johannes Myronas was in need of some parchment. He had evidently been tasked with creating a copy of the Euchologion – an important book of prayer and worship directions for Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches.

The problem was, parchment was expensive and hard to come by. Recycling was the name of the game, and Johannes had just the thing: a 200-year-old manuscript filled with old math notes that nobody was all that interested in anymore. Compared with the Holy Word, there was no contest: he pulled it apart, scraped the old text off, and used the pages for the new book – a technique known as palimpsesting.

You probably know where this is going. In creating his Euchologion, Johannes had – presumably unwittingly – destroyed one of the most valuable relics of Archimedes’s work. Not just some notebook or single treatise, even: the manuscript now known as “Codex C” contained multiple works from the ancient polymath, some of which now exist nowhere else in the world.

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How Technological Advancements And Environmental Imperatives Are Changing The Auto Industry

The larger challenge for hydrogen is sourcing it from green suppliers. Electrolyzers are used to harvest green hydrogen by splitting water into its component atoms. For the hydrogen to be green it has to either come from natural-occurring sources which are rare or from producing it using renewable energy generated by hydro, solar, onshore, and offshore wind turbines. Building an electrolyzer infrastructure would be key to creating hydrogen-powered vehicles for long-distance travel with quick refuelling turnarounds. The trucking industry is likely the best candidate for the use of this fuel and technology.

Making ICE-Powered Vehicles More Efficient.

About 99% of global transportation today runs on ICE with 95% of the energy coming from liquid fuels made from petroleum. Experts at Yanmar Replacements Parts, a diesel engine aftermarket supplier, state that, “while hydrogen-powered and electric vehicles will be on the rise, ICEs will continue to remain the norm and will be for the foreseeable future.” That’s why companies are reluctant to abandon ICE to make the technology more compatible to lower carbon emissions. By choosing different materials during manufacturing, automotive companies believe that production emissions can be abated by 66%.

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Significant Advances in Quantum Entanglement Reported at the Large Hadron Collider

In a groundbreaking development, researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, have made a remarkable leap in understanding the fundamental forces of nature. For the first time, they have observed quantum entanglement between top quarks—the heaviest elementary particles—at unprecedented energy levels. This discovery not only pushes the boundaries of particle physics but also opens the door to new possibilities in the quest to understand the universe.

At the heart of this discovery is quantum entanglement, one of the most puzzling and fascinating phenomena in the realm of quantum mechanics. Entanglement occurs when two or more particles become linked in such a way that the state of one particle instantaneously influences the state of another, regardless of the distance between them. This defies our classical understanding of the world, where objects should only interact when they are physically close to one another.

Imagine you have two particles, each spinning in a specific direction. Normally, if one particle changes its state, the other should remain unaffected. But with quantum entanglement, a change in the spin or state of one particle immediately alters the other, even if they are light-years apart. It’s as if the particles are communicating across vast distances without any delay.

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Vortex electric field discovery could impact quantum computing

A new vortex electric field with the potential to enhance future electronic, magnetic and optical devices has been observed by researchers from City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) and local partners.

The research, “Polar and quasicrystal vortex observed in twisted-bilayer molybdenum disulfide” published in Science, is highly valuable as it can upgrade the operation of many devices, including strengthening memory stability and computing speed.

With further research, the discovery of the vortex electric field can also impact the fields of quantum computing, spintronics, and nanotechnology.

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Groundbreaking Discoveries About the Higgs Boson Announced

The Higgs boson, often dubbed the “God particle,” has been a focal point of physics since its groundbreaking discovery in 2012. This elusive particle plays a crucial role in our understanding of how elementary particles acquire mass, a concept that has puzzled scientists for decades. But the excitement doesn’t stop there. Seven years after its discovery, new findings from researchers at the Max Planck Institute are taking our knowledge of the Higgs boson to an entirely new level. These advancements promise to unravel deeper mysteries of the universe and open doors to future scientific exploration.

To fully appreciate the recent developments in Higgs boson research, it’s important to revisit the concept of this fundamental particle. In the Standard Model of particle physics, the Higgs boson is the particle responsible for giving mass to other particles. But how exactly does this happen? The answer lies in the Higgs field—a sort of invisible “medium” that permeates the universe, even in a vacuum.

Imagine you’re trying to walk through a swimming pool. When the water is still, you move easily, but if the pool were filled with foam, your movements would slow down considerably. The Higgs field operates similarly, with particles gaining mass as they interact with it, much like how a swimmer would find it harder to move through foam. The more a particle interacts with this field, the more mass it acquires, which allows particles to form the building blocks of matter as we know it.

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Huge Experiment Gives First Glimpse of The Internal Structure of a Neutron

An experiment more than 10 years in the making has delivered its first glimpse of the hurricane of particles whirring inside subatomic particles called neutrons, laying the groundwork to solve a mystery deep in the heart of matter.

Data from the Central Neutron Detector at the US Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF) is already playing a role in describing the quantum map of the neutron’s engine.

“It’s a quite important result for the study of nucleons,” says Silvia Niccolai, a research director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research.

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Liquid water molecules are inherently asymmetric: New insight into the bonds between water molecules

Icebergs float on water because the underlying liquid water has a higher density than the iceberg. Liquid water itself has its highest density at 4°C—one of the so-called anomalies of water, i.e. properties of liquids that are rarely observed for other liquids.

The origins of these anomalies have long been the subject of scientific research. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research have now discovered another piece to the puzzle to explain the special behavior of water.

Many of the anomalous properties of water can be traced to the special interactions between the individual —the so-called hydrogen bonds. Each water molecule can donate two of these bonds—one from each hydrogen atom—and accept two of them from other, neighboring molecules.

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Observing gain-induced group delay between multiphoton pulses generated in a spontaneous down-conversion source

Spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC) and spontaneous four-wave mixing are powerful nonlinear optical processes that can produce multi-photon beams of light with unique quantum properties. These processes could be leveraged to create various quantum technologies, including computer processors and sensors that leverage quantum mechanical effects.

Researchers at the National Research Council of Canada and École Polytechnique de Montréal recently carried out a study observing the effects emerging in the SPDC process. Their paper, published in Physical Review Letters, reports the observation of a gain-induced group delay in multi-photon pulses generated in SPDC.

“The inspiration for this paper came from studying a process called SPDC,” Nicolás Quesada, senior author of the paper, told Phys.org. “This is a mouthful to say that certain materials are able to take a violet photon (the particle light is made of) and transform it into two red photons.

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