In a tentative eureka moment, physicists from Cambride may have detected dark energy for the first time. This could be the biggest physics discovery ever!
Category: physics – Page 189
Analysis of unique fingerprints in light emitted from material surrounding young stars has revealed “significant reservoirs” of large organic molecules necessary to form the basis of life, say researchers.
Dr. John Ilee, Research Fellow at the University of Leeds who led the study, says the findings suggest that the basic chemical conditions that resulted in life on Earth could exist more widely across the Galaxy.
The large organic molecules were identified in protoplanetary disks circling newly formed stars. A similar disk would have once surrounded the young Sun, forming the planets that now make up our Solar System. The presence of the molecules is significant because they are “stepping-stones” between simpler carbon-based molecules such as carbon monoxide, found in abundance in space, and more complex molecules that are required to create and sustain life.
The study, published in Physical Review Letters, used historic records between 1962–64 from a research station in Scotland. Scientists compared days with high and low radioactively-generated charge, finding that clouds were visibly thicker, and there was 24% more rain on average on the days with more radioactivity.
Professor Giles Harrison, lead author and Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Reading, said: By studying the radioactivity released from Cold War weapons tests, scientists at the time learnt about atmospheric circulation patterns. We have now reused this data to examine the effect on rainfall.
The politically charged atmosphere of the Cold War led to a nuclear arms race and worldwide anxiety. Decades later, that global cloud has yielded a silver lining, in giving us a unique way to study how electric charge affects rain.
Theoretical physics video nominated for international award.
A West Vancouver student may have the keys to interstellar travel. He just needs a few votes and a whole lot of mass.
Holden Liu, 16 is a finalist in the Breakthrough Junior Challenge, an international competition that aims to capture difficult scientific concepts or theories and present them in accessible videos.
Mysterious effects in a new generation of dark matter detectors could herald a revolutionary discovery.
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The huge “dog-boned” asteroid hurling through the solar system has now been imaged in unprecedented detail.
A team of astronomers has seemingly obtained the best pictures and data to date of the peculiar asteroid, Kleopatra. Using the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), observers from the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, and the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, France, captured images to help two teams of scientists answer some interesting questions.
“Kleopatra is truly a unique body in our Solar System,” says Franck Marchis, who led a study on the asteroid published in Astronomy & Astrophysics. “Science makes a lot of progress thanks to the study of weird outliers. I think Kleopatra is one of those and understanding this complex, multiple asteroid system can help us learn more about our Solar System.”
The asteroid, which orbits in the central region of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, was initially discovered on April 10 1880. However, it wasn’t until just 20 years ago that radar observations revealed it had two lobes which were connected by a thick “neck.” In 2,008 Marchis and his colleagues discovered that the asteroid was orbited by two moons, named AlexHelios and CleoSelene, after the Egyptian queen’s children.
Optical lattice clocks could help scientists detect gravitational waves, hunt for dark matter and much more.
Two physicists just snagged $3 million for helping develop a super-precise clock that could allow scientists to study and explore the universe like never before.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have outlined details of an optical antenna they claim could provide almost limitless bandwidth.
They suggest the key to the breakthrough is a method of being able to take full advantage of the orbital angular momentum (OAM) properties of a coherent light source, thus enabling multiplexing, or simultaneous transmission.
According to Boubacar Kante, the principal investigator of the Berkeley project “it is the first time that lasers producing twisted light have been directly multiplexed.” He is an associate professor in the university’s Electronic Engineering and Computer Sciences Department, and the initial results of the work have just been published in Nature Physics.
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HOUSTON – (Sept. 1 2021) – Rice physicists have confirmed the topological origins of magnons, magnetic features they discovered three years ago in a 2D material that could prove useful for encoding information in the spins of electrons.