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Category: physics

Exposing Nuclear Magic

Calculations show how the mysterious “magic numbers” that stabilize nuclear structures emerge naturally from nuclear forces—once these are described with appropriate spatial resolution.

Atomic nuclei have been studied for over a century, yet some of nuclear physics’ most basic questions remain unanswered: How many bound combinations of protons and neutrons, or isotopes, can exist? Where do the limits of nuclear existence lie? How are chemical elements synthetized in the Universe? Clues to solving these puzzles lie in the vast phenomenology of nuclear structure—the measured properties of tens of thousands of nuclear states, their decays, and their reactions. In this bedlam of information, patterns and irregularities in data provide crucial hints. One such irregularity was spotted as early as 1934 [1]: Nuclei containing specific numbers of protons and neutrons (2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82…) are unexpectedly stable. These “magic numbers” (Fig.

Machine learning accelerates plasma mirror design for high-power lasers

Plasma mirrors capable of withstanding the intensity of powerful lasers are being designed through an emerging machine learning framework. Researchers in Physics and Computer Science at the University of Strathclyde have pooled their knowledge of lasers and artificial intelligence to produce a technology that can dramatically reduce the time it takes to design advanced optical components for lasers—and could pave the way for new discoveries in science.

High-power lasers can be used to develop tools for health care, manufacturing and nuclear fusion. However, these are becoming large and expensive due to the size of their optical components, which is currently necessary to keep the laser beam intensity low enough not to damage them. As the peak power of lasers increases, the diameters of mirrors and other optical components will need to rise from approximately one meter to more than 10 meters. These would weigh several tons, making them difficult and expensive to manufacture.

Enjoy Some Hopium with These Half-Life 3 Leaks & Rumors

Many fans expected Valve to announce Half-Life 3 in 2025, and Gabe Follower believes the news was delayed, which was the reason the second edition of Half-Life 2: Raising the Bar was postponed: he thinks the book will be out once the game is revealed.

For now, we can get glimpses of HL3 features in the updates to Valve’s Source 2 engine. Based on mentions of HLX in the code, Gabe Follower says that the game will offer dynamic physics and gravitational anomalies, where gravity no longer pulls objects in one direction but can be tied to a point, making objects’ gravitational pulls affect each other.

Characters will now have more accurate hitboxes that adjust to their limbs instead of simple boxes.

Why are Tatooine planets rare? General relativity explains why binary star systems rarely host planets

Astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets around single stars, but few around binary stars—even though both types of stars are equally common. Physicists can now explain the dearth.

Of the more than 4,500 stars known to have planets, one puzzling statistic stands out. Even though nearly all stars are expected to have planets and most stars form in pairs, planets that orbit both stars in a pair are rare.

Of the more than 6,000 extrasolar planets, or exoplanets, confirmed to date—most of them found by NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope and the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS)—only 14 are observed to orbit binary stars. There should be hundreds. Where are all the planets with two suns, like Tatooine in Star Wars?

Beamline measurements of unstable ruthenium nuclei confirm advanced nuclear models

A novel apparatus at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has made extremely precise measurements of unstable ruthenium nuclei. The measurements are a significant milestone in nuclear physics because they closely match predictions made by sophisticated nuclear models.

“It’s very difficult for theoretical models to predict the properties of complex, unstable nuclei,” said Bernhard Maass, an assistant physicist at Argonne and the study’s lead author. “We have demonstrated that a class of advanced models can do this accurately. Our results help to validate the models.”

Validating the models can build trust in their predictions about astrophysical processes. These include the formation, evolution and explosions of stars where elements are created.

Exploration of exoplanets: A mathematical solution for investigating their atmospheres

Dr. Leonardos Gkouvelis, researcher at LMU’s University Observatory Munich and member of the ORIGINS Excellence Cluster, has solved a fundamental mathematical problem that had obstructed the interpretation of exoplanet atmospheres for decades. In a paper published in The Astrophysical Journal, Gkouvelis presents the first closed-form analytical theory of transmission spectroscopy that accounts for how atmospheric opacity varies with pressure—an effect that is crucial in the scientific exploration of real atmospheres but had until now been considered mathematically intractable.

For more than 30 years, analytical models were based on a “simplified” atmosphere, as the full mathematical treatment requires solving a complex geometric integral in the presence of altitude-dependent opacity—a problem that could only be tackled using expensive numerical simulations. However, this limitation concealed how the true vertical structure of an atmosphere alters the signals observed by telescopes.

The new model provides key insights into why many exoplanet atmospheres display “muted” spectral features, directly links laboratory molecular-physics data with astronomical observations, and significantly improves agreement with real data—both for Earth’s atmosphere and for high-precision observations of exoplanets.

Mapping ‘figure 8’ Fermi surfaces to pinpoint future chiral conductors

One of the biggest problems facing modern microelectronics is that computer chips can no longer be made arbitrarily smaller and more efficient. Materials used to date, such as copper, are reaching their limits because their resistivity increases dramatically when they become too small. Chiral materials could provide a solution here. These materials behave like left and right hands: they look almost identical and are mirror images of each other, but cannot be made to match.

“It is assumed that the resistivity in some chiral materials remains constant or even decreases as the chiral material becomes smaller. That is why we are working on using electronic chirality to develop materials for a new generation of microchips that are faster, more energy-efficient and more robust than today’s technologies,” says Professor Niels Schröter from the Institute of Physics at MLU. Until now, however, it has been difficult to produce thin layers of these materials without the left-and right-handed areas canceling each other out in their effects.

This is precisely where the new study, in which the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics in Halle was also involved, comes in. “For the first time, we have found materials that are not yet chiral themselves. However, they have the potential to be converted into electronically chiral materials with only a single-handedness through targeted distortion. These achiral materials can serve as so-called parent materials for engineering chiral conductors with reduced resistivity,” explains Schröter.

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