Different measurements of the universe’s expansion yield different results. Are we getting something wrong, or do we need brand-new physics to figure it out?
Category: space – Page 732
A brand-new particle has possibly emerged and is altering the future destiny of our entire cosmos, a physicist says.
Researchers at the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (WPI) and Tohoku University in Japan have recently identified an anomaly in the electromagnetic duality of Maxwell Theory. This anomaly, outlined in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, could play an important role in the consistency of string theory.
The recent study is a collaboration between Yuji Tachikawa and Kazuya Yonekura, two string theorists, and Chang-Tse Hsieh, a condensed matter theorist. Although the study started off as an investigation into string theory, it also has implications for other areas of physics.
In current physics theory, classical electromagnetism is described by Maxwell’s equations, which were first introduced by physicist James Clerk Maxwell around 1865. Objects governed by these equations include electric and magnetic fields, electrically charged particles (e.g., electrons and protons), and magnetic monopoles (i.e. hypothetical particles carrying single magnetic poles).
‘Diamond rain’ on Saturn and Jupiter
Posted in climatology, space
Diamonds as big as jewels fall as “rain” on Saturn and Jupiter, seeded by giant lightning storms, according to new calculations by US scientists.
The three-body problem, one of the most notoriously complex calculations in physics, may have met its match in artificial intelligence: a new neural network promises to find solutions up to 100 million times faster than existing techniques.
First formulated by Sir Isaac Newton, the three-body problem involves calculating the movement of three gravitationally interacting bodies – such as the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun, for example – given their initial positions and velocities.
It might sound simple at first, but the ensuing chaotic movement has stumped mathematicians and physicists for hundreds of years, to the extent that all but the most dedicated humans have tried to avoid thinking about it as much as possible.
Our universe may be riddled with defects in space-time known as cosmic strings. Though we don’t have any evidence yet that they exist, they may still be out there, and I promise that you really don’t want to encounter one.
The Universe as Informavore
Posted in space
In the not-too-distant future, entirely new industries will be developed in space. But for these endeavors to be viable, we need to first get the necessary tools into orbit. That’s where one of the most crowded new sectors has developed. More than 100 privately-backed launch companies are in fierce competition to get payloads into space as fast, often and cheaply as possible.
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Scientists have found the answer to a decades-long mystery, in the middle of two colliding stars.
For the first ever time, a newly made heavy element called strontium was detected in space after two neutron stars crashed into each other.
The discovery definitively confirms that heavier elements in the universe can be made in the mergers of neutron stars, at last helping answer the puzzle of how chemical elements form.
Physicists can explore tailored physical systems to rapidly solve challenging computational tasks by developing spin simulators, combinatorial optimization and focusing light through scattering media. In a new report on Science Advances, C. Tradonsky and a group of researchers in the Departments of Physics in Israel and India addressed the phase retrieval problem by reconstructing an object from its scattered intensity distribution. The experimental process addressed an existing problem in disciplines ranging from X-ray imaging to astrophysics that lack techniques to reconstruct an object of interest, where scientists typically use indirect iterative algorithms that are inherently slow.
In the new optical approach, Tradonsky et al conversely used a digital degenerate cavity laser (DDCL) mode to rapidly and efficiently reconstruct the object of interest. The experimental results suggested that the gain competition between the many lasing modes acted as a highly parallel computer to rapidly dissolve the phase retrieval problem. The approach applies to two-dimensional (2-D) objects with known compact support and complex-valued objects, to generalize imaging through scattering media, while accomplishing other challenging computational tasks.
To calculate the intensity distribution of light scattered far from an unknown object relatively easily, researchers can compute the source of the absolute value of an object’s Fourier transform. The reconstruction of an object from its scattered intensity distribution is, however, ill-posed, since phase information can be lost and diverse phase distributions in the work can result in different reconstructions. Scientists must therefore obtain prior information about an object’s shape, positivity, spatial symmetry or sparsity for more precise object reconstructions. Such examples are found in astronomy, short-pulse characterization studies, X-ray diffraction, radar detection, speech recognition and when imaging across turbid media. During the reconstruction of objects with a finite extent (compact support), researchers offer a unique solution to the phase retrieval problem, as long as they model the same scattered intensity at a sufficiently higher resolution.