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Category: physics – Page 3

Tiny vortices discovered on the sun’s surface

Researchers from the U.S. National Science Foundation National Solar Observatory (NSF NSO), the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany, and the High Altitude Observatory (HAO) in the U.S. have made a discovery in solar physics. New images of the sun’s surface taken with the world’s largest solar telescope, the NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope, built and operated by the NSO in Hawaii, along with sophisticated computer simulations, reveal tiny plasma vortices that had never before been visible.

“To detect the vortices, we needed to resolve structures on the solar surface about 20 kilometers (12 miles) in size. That is at the limit of what even the world’s largest solar telescope and state-of-the-art simulations can achieve,” said MPS scientist and co-author of the new publication Michiel van Noort, who, among other things, contributed to the observations and conducted the data reduction and image restoration. The researchers used a broadband imaging camera provided by MPS.

The vortices occur at the edges of so-called granules, which densely cover the sun’s visible surface. They measure between 500 and 2,000 kilometers (310 to 1,240 miles) in diameter. Taken together, they form the sun’s granulation: a pattern reminiscent of bubbles in a boiling liquid.

ZiaCore microreactor successfully achieves criticality

The emerging technology of advanced nuclear microreactors offers solutions to many modern energy challenges. The ZiaCore design, a low-enriched uranium dioxide-fueled microreactor developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory, now joins several developing concepts for fission-based nuclear power microreactors that have achieved initial criticality. The ZiaCore design reached this milestone through a proof-of-principle experiment—a high-temperature, zero-power criticality demonstration at the National Criticality Experiments Research Center (NCERC) in Nevada.

“The execution of our ZiaCore experiment will support an entire category of nuclear power microreactors,” said Christopher Stanek, director of the Nuclear Energy Program Office at Los Alamos. “The experiment will provide valuable data for low-enriched reactor technologies, including components developed at Los Alamos, at representative reactor temperatures.”

Over four weeks in April and May this year, the ZiaCore system was brought to zero-power criticality at high temperatures. An important benchmark in reactor design and testing, zero-power criticality provides invaluable validation of reactor physics—essentially proving that the reactor design is valid.

New radio burst method helps locate universe’s missing ordinary matter

Stars and galaxies make up much of the universe’s ordinary, observable matter. But for decades, scientists have wrestled with a cosmic conflict: There should be much more.

Physicists have good estimates of how much matter was present in the early universe. Shortly after the Big Bang, roughly 83% of all matter in the universe was composed of invisible dark matter, with ordinary matter making up the rest. And yet, these estimates exceed the amount of ordinary matter seen in stars and galaxies today. Where, then, did all the missing ordinary matter go?

Now MIT scientists, as part of the CHIME/FRB Collaboration, are using far-off radio signals to reveal missing matter in the vast space between galaxies. The team has developed a new method to search out missing matter by combining locations of galaxies with detections of fast radio bursts.

Catching and Guiding an Elastic Rainbow

Two experiments demonstrate a promising platform for trapping, sorting, and directing vibrational energy.

In a rainbow, sunlight separates into colors because each wavelength of light follows a different path. This familiar image has inspired an analogous idea in wave physics: A designed material can slow down different frequency components of a broadband signal at different positions, thereby sorting the signal in space. This concept, known as rainbow trapping, was introduced as a route to storing light in metamaterials [1] and has since motivated efforts to control sound, vibration, and other classical waves. But rainbow trapping has been difficult to realize for elastic waves—vibrations that temporarily deform a material as they move through it. Many rainbow designs have relied on vibrational modes confined to a sample’s edges or interfaces, limiting the available trapping area, or have lacked a way to access and route energy once it has been localized.

Now two teams have taken complementary steps toward overcoming these limitations. Yafeng Chen at Tongji University in China and colleagues have created and directly visualized an elastic rainbow in which different megahertz-frequency vibrations stop at different positions [2]. Meanwhile, Riyi Zheng at the South China University of Technology and colleagues have shown that a similar rainbow can be captured and redirected using topological edge states [3]. Together, these two studies transform elastic rainbow trapping into a platform for sorting, confining, and guiding vibrational energy.

Electron cooling tames highly charged ions in Penning trap for first time

Researchers at Technical University of Darmstadt and the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research have succeeded for the first time in decelerating highly charged ions from the GSI accelerator to low energies and subsequently storing them in a Penning trap. They were also successful in performing the first electron cooling of highly charged ions in such a trap. The results have been published in Physical Review X (PRX).

Highly charged ions are typically produced at high energies and travel at high velocities. However, many experiments in atomic, nuclear and fundamental physics require these ions to be strongly decelerated, captured and cooled. The HITRAP facility at GSI was specifically developed for this purpose and will provide unique opportunities for experiments with slow highly charged ions.

In the work now published, carried out in close collaboration with GSI’s Decelerator Division, researchers succeeded for the first time in decelerating and trapping fully ionized argon ions from the accelerator system through several stages.

Light controls nanoscale ‘bubble’ domains in a ferroelectric crystal

Researchers at Flinders University have discovered an unexpected way light can control tiny electronic structures inside advanced materials, a development that could help pave the way for more energy-efficient memory devices, sensors and future computing technologies.

The new study, involving experts from around the world, explores electronic properties and optical science to uncover new energy and material capabilities.

“We discovered that light can control nanoscale ‘bubble’ domains (about the size of just a few billionths of a meter across) inside a special ferroelectric crystal,” says Dr. Pankaj Sharma, senior lecturer in experimental condensed matter physics at Flinders University.

This Retro LCD Game Will Have You Playing as a Robot and Its Tumor

It’s a bizarre and crazy adventure where you’ll have to travel 8 hours into the past to stop the leader of the cult from erasing humanity’s memory. Each hour, you’ll have to ruin whatever the lady has scheduled, from walking in the park to her meal at a buffet.

You’ll create a fighting strategy between the robot and its tumor, switching them constantly. The levels will alternate between horizontal and vertical environments, with chaotic physics and deadly elements.

The game is being developed by Aeternum Game Studios and Studio Koba; they explained it’s inspired by the Satoshi Kon films and it has an unsettling aesthetic that blends the adorable with the grotesque.

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