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It turns out that the evolution of the most violent collisions between nuclei, as they are studied at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, depends on the initial conditions, namely the geometry and shape of the colliding nuclei, which are in their ground state. More surprisingly, this insight also allows us to determine properties of the colliding nuclei that cannot easily be studied by other methods.

The researchers have predicted how the shape changes and fluctuations of the colliding nuclei will influence the outcome of extreme high-energy conditions. This paves the way for further studies which will yield a better understanding of the dynamic behavior of nuclei. An article on the results has been published in Physical Review Letters.

The predictions are theoretical but based on an experiment at the world’s leading physics research center, CERN, Switzerland.

Scientists recently reported a monumental discovery in astrophysics: the detection of low-frequency gravitational waves. This breakthrough was made by NANOGrav (North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves), which released findings in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. These waves, predicted by Einstein, are generated when massive objects like supermassive black holes interact, creating cosmic ripples across spacetime. For the first time, researchers have managed to “hear” these background vibrations of the universe, likened to the faint, low hum in a cosmic orchestra. This detection not only broadens our understanding of gravitational waves but also opens up a new chapter in studying the universe’s largest objects and events.

With their slender tails, human sperm propel themselves through viscous fluids, seemingly in defiance of Newton’s third law of motion, according to a recent study that characterizes the motion of these sex cells and single-celled algae.

Kenta Ishimoto, a mathematical scientist at Kyoto University, and colleagues investigated these non-reciprocal interactions in sperm and other microscopic biological swimmers, to figure out how they slither through substances that should, in theory, resist their movement.

When Newton conceived his now-famed laws of motion in 1686, he sought to explain the relationship between a physical object and the forces acting upon it with a few neat principles that, it turns out, don’t necessarily apply to microscopic cells wriggling through sticky fluids.

As detailed in a new study published in the journal Astronomy & and Astrophysics, the tunnel exists as part of an enormous structure of hot gas with a radius of hundreds of light years that surrounds our solar system known as the Local Hot Bubble. What’s more, the findings suggest that it could connect with a nearby and even larger bubble.

Using extensive data collected by the eROSITA telescope, the first x-ray observatory fully outside of the Earth’s atmosphere, the researchers generated a 3D model of the entire LHB, confirming some features that astronomers had predicted, but also uncovering entirely new ones.

“What we didn’t know was the existence of an interstellar tunnel towards Centaurus, which carves a gap in the cooler interstellar medium,” said study coauthor Michael Freyberg, an astronomer at Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, in a statement. “This region stands out in stark relief thanks to the much-improved sensitivity of eROSITA and a vastly different surveying strategy compared to ROSAT,” the space telescope’s predecessor.

The conservation law is a fundamental tool that significantly aids our quest to understand the world, playing a crucial role across various scientific disciplines. Particularly in strong-field physics, these laws enhance our comprehension of atomic and molecular structures as well as the ultrafast dynamics of electrons.