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Archive for the ‘physics’ category: Page 168

Apr 28, 2020

Scientists think we’ll finally solve nuclear fusion thanks to cutting-edge AI

Posted by in categories: nuclear energy, physics, robotics/AI

Scientists believe the world will see it’s first working thermonuclear fusion reactor by the year 2025. That’s a tall order in short form, especially when you consider that fusion has been “almost here” for nearly a century.

Fusion reactors – not to be confused with common fission reactors – are the holiest of Grails when it comes to physics achievements. According to most experts, a successful fusion reactor would function as a near-unlimited source of energy.

In other words, if there’s a working demonstration of an actual fusion reactor by 2025, we could see an end to the global energy crisis within a few decades.

Apr 27, 2020

New metasurface laser produces world’s first super-chiral light

Posted by in categories: energy, nanotechnology, physics

Researchers have demonstrated the world’s first metasurface laser that produces “super-chiral light”: light with ultra-high angular momentum. The light from this laser can be used as a type of “optical spanner” to or for encoding information in optical communications.

“Because can carry angular , it means that this can be transferred to matter. The more angular momentum light carries, the more it can transfer. So you can think of light as an ‘optical spanner’,” Professor Andrew Forbes from the School of Physics at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg, South Africa, who led the research. “Instead of using a physical spanner to twist things (like screwing nuts), you can now shine light on the nut and it will tighten itself.”

The new produces a new high purity “twisted light” not observed from lasers before, including the highest angular momentum reported from a laser. Simultaneously the researchers developed a nano-structured that has the largest phase gradient ever produced and allows for high power operation in a compact design. The implication is a world-first laser for producing exotic states of twisted structured light, on demand.

Apr 26, 2020

A unique (so far) gravitational wave signal

Posted by in categories: cosmology, physics

Originally published by the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, or AEI) in Hannover, Germany, on April 20, 2020.

The expectations of the gravitational-wave research community have been fulfilled: gravitational-wave discoveries are now part of their daily work as they have identified in the past observing run, O3, new gravitational-wave candidates about once a week. But now, the researchers have published a remarkable signal unlike any of those seen before: GW190412 is the first observation of a binary black hole merger where the two black holes have distinctly different masses of about 8 and 30 times that of our sun. This not only has allowed more precise measurements of the system’s astrophysical properties, but it has also enabled the LIGO and Virgo scientists to verify a yet-untested prediction of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

Apr 24, 2020

Creator of Wolfram Alpha Has a Bold Plan to Find a New Fundamental Theory of Physics

Posted by in categories: computing, information science, neuroscience, physics

Stephen Wolfram is a cult figure in programming and mathematics. He is the brains behind Wolfram Alpha, a website that tries to answer questions by using algorithms to sift through a massive database of information. He is also responsible for Mathematica, a computer system used by scientists the world over.

Last week, Wolfram launched a new venture: the Wolfram Physics Project, an ambitious attempt to develop a new physics of our Universe.

The new physics, he declares, is computational. The guiding idea is that everything can be boiled down to the application of simple rules to fundamental building blocks.

Apr 24, 2020

How NASA is ‘pushing physics boundaries’ with ’faster than lightspeed‘ spacecraft design

Posted by in categories: physics, space travel

:oooo.


NASA is “pushing the boundaries of physics” by investing in a propulsion system that could allow a spacecraft to travel faster than the speed of light.

Apr 23, 2020

Cosmic beasts collision sings a loud gravitational wave hum

Posted by in categories: cosmology, physics

The collision of two black holes produced a gravitational wave signal unlike any other heard before.

Apr 19, 2020

Gravitational waves reveal unprecedented collision of heavy and light black holes

Posted by in categories: cosmology, physics

Researchers with the world’s gravitational wave detectors said today they had picked up vibrations from a cosmic collision that harmonized with the opening notes of an Elvis Presley hit. The source was the most exotic merger of two black holes detected yet—a pair in which one weighed more than three times as much as the other. Because of the stark mass imbalance, the collision generated gravitational waves at multiple frequencies, in a harmony Elvis fans would recognize. The chord also confirms a prediction of Einstein’s theory of gravity, or general relativity.

Such mismatched mass events could help theorists figure out how pairs of black holes form in the first place. “Anything that seems to be at the edge of our predictions is most interesting,” says Chris Belczynski, a gravitational theorist at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, who was not involved in the observation. But the one event is “not quite in the regime where you can tell the different formation [routes] apart.”

Physicists first detected gravitational waves in 2015, when the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), a pair of detectors in Washington and Louisiana, spotted two black holes spiraling into each other, generating infinitesimal ripples in spacetime. Two years later, the Virgo detector near Pisa, Italy, joined the hunt, and by August 2017, the detectors had bagged a total of 10 black hole mergers.

Apr 18, 2020

Achieving the Impossible: Physicists Create a Fluid with NEGATIVE MASS

Posted by in category: physics

In an act that defies physics as we know, Washington State University physicists have just created a fluid with negative mass. Apply pressure to the liquid and instead of accelerating in the direction it was pushed (like every other physical object in the world), it accelerates backward. Michael Forbes, a WSU assistant professor of physics and astronomy, believes the phenomenon can be used to explore some of the more challenging concepts of the cosmos.

“Hypothetically, matter can have negative mass in the same sense that an electric charge can be either negative or positive,” the University’s website notes. “People rarely think in these terms, and our everyday world sees only the positive aspects of Isaac Newton’s Second Law of Motion, in which the force is equal to the mass of an object times its acceleration, or F=ma.”

This explains why mass will typically accelerate in the direction of the force that is pushing it.

Apr 17, 2020

Olive oil leads to discovery of new universal law of phase transitions

Posted by in category: physics

A simple drop of olive oil in a system of photons bouncing between two mirrors has revealed universal aspects of phase transitions in physics. Researchers at AMOLF used an oil-filled optical cavity in which light undergoes phase transitions similar to those in boiling water. The system they studied has memory because the oil causes photons to interact with themselves. By varying the distance between the two mirrors and measuring the transmission of light through the cavity, they discovered a universal law describing phase transitions in systems with memory. These results are published on April 15th in Physical Review Letters.

The Interacting Photons research group at AMOLF studies nonlinearity and noise in photonic systems. One of such systems is a , formed by two mirrors facing each other at a close distance. Within the cavity, light bounces back and forth as it is reflected by the mirrors. Putting something inside such an , changes the properties of the system. “We created a system with by placing a drop of inside the cavity,” says group leader Said Rodriguez. “The oil mediates effective photon-photon interactions, which we can see by measuring the transmission of laser light through this cavity.”

Apr 14, 2020

Finally We May Have a Path to the Fundamental Theory of Physics… and It’s Beautiful—Stephen Wolfram Writings

Posted by in category: physics

I think Wolfram has found the right path forward.