Three ways to travel at (nearly) the speed of light

One hundred years ago today, on May 29, 1919, measurements of a solar eclipse offered verification for Einstein's theory of general relativity. Even before that, Einstein had developed the theory of special relativity, which revolutionized the way we understand light. To this day, it provides guidance on understanding how particles move through space—a key area of research to keep spacecraft and astronauts safe from radiation.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2XdsQ2i

The defect-free assembly of 2-D clusters with over 100 single-atom quantum systems

Researchers at Technische Universität Darmstadt have recently demonstrated the defect-free assembly of versatile target patterns of up to 111 single-atom quantum systems. Their findings, outlined in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, could drive assembled-atom architectures beyond the threshold of quantum advantage, paving the way for new breakthroughs in quantum science and technology.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Wiryqj

Organic laser diodes move from dream to reality

Researchers from Japan have demonstrated that a long-elusive kind of laser diode based on organic semiconductors is indeed possible, paving the way for the further expansion of lasers in applications such as biosensing, displays, healthcare and optical communications.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2W75Bpc

Experiments and calculations allow examination of boron's complicated dance

Work opens a path to precise calculations of the structure of other nuclei.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2wsD6rB

Thermal analog black hole agrees with Hawking radiation theory

A team of researchers at the Israel Institute of Technology has found that a thermal analog black hole they created agrees with the Hawking radiation theory. In their paper published in the journal Nature, the group describes building their analog black hole and using data from it to test its temperature. Silke Weinfurtner with the University of Nottingham has published a News and Views piece on the work done by the team in the same journal issue.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Xbgxni

Stabilizing the no-boundary proposal sheds light on the universe's quantum origins

One idea for how the universe began is that the universe may have appeared out of nothing due to some quantum effect, such as quantum tunneling. In the 1980s, Stephen Hawking and James Hartle further elaborated on this idea by suggesting that time did not exist before the beginning of the universe, leading them to conclude that the universe has no initial boundary conditions on either time or space. The idea is called the "no-boundary proposal" or the "Hawking-Hartle state."

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Msz5ya

More than a spring-clean for LHC magnets

In April, work began on one of the major projects scheduled for the second long shutdown (LS2) of the CERN accelerators: improving the electrical insulation of over 1200 magnets in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). To complete this mammoth task, more than 150 people are hard at work in the LHC tunnel... and they will be there for over a year.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Qy5LoF

Electric-field-controlled superconductor-ferromagnetic insulator transition

High-temperature (Tc) superconductivity typically develops from antiferromagnetic insulators, and superconductivity and ferromagnetism are always mutually exclusive. Recently, Xianhui Chen's group at the University of Science and Technology of China observed an electric-field controlled reversible transition from superconductor to ferromagnetic insulator in (Li,Fe)OHFeSe thin flake. This work offers a unique platform to study the relationship between superconductivity and ferromagnetism in Fe-based superconductors and may provide some clue about understanding the electron pairing mechanism beyond conventional electron-phonon superconductivity.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2JHxi6x

Researchers introduce novel heat transport theory in quest for efficient thermoelectrics

NCCR MARVEL researchers have developed a novel microscopic theory that is able to describe heat transport in very general ways, and applies equally well to ordered or disordered materials such as crystals or glasses and to anything in between. This is not only a significant first—no transport equation has been able so far to account simultaneously for these two regimes—it also shows, surprisingly, that heat can tunnel quantum-mechanically, rather than diffuse away like an atomic vibration. The new equation also allows the accurate prediction of the performance of thermoelectric materials for the first time. With ultralow, glass-like, thermal conductivity, such materials are highly sought in energy research. They can turn heat into electricity, or use electricity for cooling without the need for pumps and environmentally harmful gases.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Mgq4bI

Inhibitory neurons have two types of impact on brain oscillations

Studying the brain involves measuring the activity of billions of individual brain cells called neurons. Consequently, many brain measurement techniques produce data that is averaged to reflect the activity of large populations of these neurons. If all of the neurons are behaving differently, this will average out. But, when the behaviour of individual neurons is synchronized, it produces clearly visible oscillations.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2EybFRR

Sound waves bypass visual limitations to recognize human activity

Video cameras continue to gain widespread use to monitor human activities for surveillance, health care, home use and more, but there are privacy and environmental limitations in how well they work. Acoustical waves, such as sounds and other forms of vibrations, are an alternative medium that may bypass those limitations.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2QwcFuv

Researchers break quantum limit in the precision of force and position measurements

Researchers of the Schliesser Lab at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, have pushed the precision of force and position measurements into a new regime. Their experiment is the first to surpass the so-called "Standard Quantum Limit," or SQL, which arises in the most common (and successful) optical techniques for ultra-precise position measurements. For more than 50 years, experimentalists have raced to beat the SQL using a variety of techniques, but to no avail. In their recent work, the researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have done the trick with a simple modification of the standard approach, which enables the necessary cancellation of quantum noise in the measurement. The result and underlying experiment have potential implications for gravitational wave astronomy techniques, as well as force microscopy with biological applications. The work is now published in the prestigious scientific magazine, Nature Physics.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2XdnV1s

Researchers crack an enduring physics enigma

For decades, physicists, engineers and mathematicians have failed to explain a remarkable phenomenon in fluid mechanics: the natural tendency of turbulence in fluids to move from disordered chaos to perfectly parallel patterns of oblique turbulent bands. This transition from a state of chaotic turbulence to a highly structured pattern was observed by many scientists, but never understood.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2YP7s3V

Researcher discusses reopening the case of cold fusion

Researchers at MIT have collaborated with a team of scientists from the University of British Columbia, the University of Maryland, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Google to conduct a multiyear investigation into cold fusion, a type of benign nuclear reaction hypothesized to occur in benchtop apparatus at room temperature.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2QqABiK

Subcritical experiment captures scientific measurements to advance stockpile safety

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) successfully executed its first subcritical experiment since 2003 on Feb. 13 at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) U1a facility. The experiment—dubbed "Ediza"—took place deep below the desert floor and was the culmination of a five-year campaign aimed at capturing high-fidelity plutonium data in support of nuclear stockpile safety.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2YXYHER

Scientists revisit the cold case of cold fusion

Scientists from the University of British Columbia (UBC), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Maryland, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Google are conducting a multi-year investigation into cold fusion, a type of benign nuclear reaction hypothesized to occur in benchtop apparatus at room temperature.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2W79BLn

Ultra-cold lithium atoms shed light on pair formation in superfluids, helping identify best theories

A FLEET/Swinburne study released this week resolves a long-standing debate about what happens at the microscopic level when matter transitions into a superconducting or superfluid state.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2WprDYr

Direct measurement of the cosmic-ray proton spectrum with the CALET on the ISS

Recent advances in the observation of high-energy radiations, including X-rays and gamma-rays, have unveiled many high-energy aspects of the universe. To achieve a complete understanding of these radiations, however, researchers need to find out more about the high-energy particles (i.e. cosmic rays) that produce them. In fact, non-thermal radiations characterized by the power-law spectrum are all backed by the acceleration and propagation of these rays.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2HXTkOR

New discovery about terahertz radiation behefits biomedicine

Scientists from ITMO University for the first time in the world managed to directly measure the nonlinear refractive index of matter in the terahertz range. The results of the experiments were compared with previous theoretical predictions to confirm the presence of nonlinear effects. The obtained data can be used to control light, as well as in fundamental and biomedical research. The results are published in Optics Express.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2wn6rE7

Colliding lasers double the energy of proton beams

Researchers from Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg present a new method which can double the energy of a proton beam produced by laser-based particle accelerators. The breakthrough could lead to more compact, cheaper equipment that could be useful for many applications, including proton therapy.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2HEYQXP

Nobel-winning physicist Murray Gell-Man dies at 89

Murray Gell-Mann, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who brought order to the universe by helping discover and classify subatomic particles, has died at the age of 89.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2HVLg1h

Origami-inspired materials could soften the blow for reusable spacecraft

Space vehicles like SpaceX's Falcon 9 are designed to be reusable. But this means that, like Olympic gymnasts hoping for a gold medal, they have to stick their landings.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2JCnFWu

A collaboration between art and science explores the turbulent physics of eddies

Many of us as kids have played Poohsticks—throwing a twig into flowing water from a bridge or riverbank and watching it race downstream, but then losing the competition because your stick gets caught in the endless spin of an eddy on the edge of a creek.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2HQir6d

Evidence found of continuous phase transition when rats move from sleep to awake

A team of researchers with affiliations to institutions in Brazil, Portugal and Spain has found evidence of a continuous phase transition occurring in the brains of rats when they move from sleep to wakefulness. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group describes their study of sleeping rats and what they found.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2M7ks3o

Lithium doesn't crack under pressure, it transforms

Using cutting-edge theoretical calculations performed at NERSC, researchers at Berkeley Lab's Molecular Foundry have predicted fascinating new properties of lithium—a light alkali metal that has intrigued scientists for two decades with its remarkable diversity of physical states at high pressures.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2W71GxO

A novel synchrotron technique for studying diffusion in solids

Understanding and controlling how the diffusion process works at the atomic scale is an important question in the synthesis of materials. For nanoparticles, the stability, size, structure, composition, and atomic ordering are all dependent on position inside the particle, and diffusion both affects all of these properties and is affected by them. A more thorough understanding of the mechanisms and effects of diffusion in nanocrystals will help to develop controlled synthesis methods to obtain the particular properties; however, conventional methods for studying diffusion in solids all have limitations.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2HPApG1

Researchers perform simple calculations by shining light patterns through a translucent cube

McMaster researchers have developed a simple and highly novel form of computing by shining patterned bands of light and shadow through different facets of a polymer cube and reading the combined results that emerge.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2HzLITM

Artificial atomic scale materials: Discovering how electrons fatten

A single and isolated electron has a clear electrical charge, magnetic moment and mass, and its free movement can be precisely predicted. Spanish scientists fabricated a nanoscale artificial material manipulating atoms one after the other and discovered that electrons can become heavier. Heavy electrons are promising particles which endow new functionalities to novel materials. This study is the result of an international collaboration lead by the Instituto de Nanociencia de Aragón and the Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Aragón (ICMA), in which scientists at CIC nanoGUNE participated, together with members of the Centro de Física de Materiales (CFM) in San Sebastian, and the Charles University and Czech Academy of Sciences, in the Czech Republic.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2VVMymC

New searches for supersymmetry presented by ATLAS experiment

The Standard Model is a remarkably successful but incomplete theory. Supersymmetry (SUSY) offers an elegant solution to the Standard Model's limitations, extending it to give each particle a heavy "superpartner" with different spin properties (an important quantum number distinguishing matter particles from force particles and the Higgs boson). For example, sleptons are the spin 0 superpartners of spin 1/2 electrons, muons and tau leptons, while charginos and neutralinos are the spin 1/2 counterparts of the spin 0 Higgs bosons (SUSY postulates a total of five Higgs bosons) and spin 1 gauge bosons.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2M3TjOM

Clocks, gravity, and the limits of relativity

The International Space Station will host the most precise clocks ever to leave Earth. Accurate to a second in 300 million years the clocks will push the measurement of time to test the limits of the theory of relativity and our understanding of gravity.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2K1zvJ9

STAR detector has a new inner core

For scientists tracking the transformation of protons and neutrons—the components of atomic nuclei that make up everything we see in the universe today—into a soup of fundamental building blocks known quark-gluon plasma, more is better. More particle tracks, that is. Thanks to a newly installed upgrade of the STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), nuclear physicists now have more particle tracks than ever to gain insight into the crucial matter-building transition that ran this process in reverse nearly 14 billion years ago.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2HwgcWS

The first observation of the nuclear Barnett effect

The electronic Barnett effect, first observed by Samuel Barnett in 1915, is the magnetization of an uncharged body as it is spun on its long axis. This is caused by a coupling between the angular momentum of the electronic spins and the rotation of the rod.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Wox89T

The geometry of an electron determined for the first time

Physicists at the University of Basel have shown for the first time how a single electron looks in an artificial atom. A newly developed method enables them to show the probability of an electron being present in a space. This allows improved control of electron spins, which could serve as the smallest information unit in a future quantum computer. The experiments were published in Physical Review Letters and the related theory in Physical Review B.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2VZaoOr

New collider concept would take quantum theories to an extreme

A new idea for smashing beams of elementary particles into one another could reveal how light and matter interact under extreme conditions that may exist on the surfaces of exotic astrophysical objects, in powerful cosmic light bursts and star explosions, in next-generation particle colliders and in hot, dense fusion plasma.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2QixN7d

Learning magnets could lead to energy-efficient data processing

The power consumption of data centers around the world is increasing. This creates a high demand for new technologies that could lead to energy-efficient computers. In a new study, physicists at Radboud University have demonstrated that this could also be achieved by using chips whose operation is inspired by that of the human brain. The study was published in the scientific journal Applied Physics Letters on 16 May.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2HwSZnn

Creating integrated circuits that can generate chaotic signals

Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology have found a simple, yet highly versatile way to generate "chaotic signals" with various features. The technique consists of interconnecting three ring oscillators, effectively making them compete against each other, while controlling their respective strengths and their linkages. The resulting device is rather small and efficient, thus suitable for emerging applications such as realizing wireless networks of sensors.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2WgT5YC

New method could shed light on workers' historical radiation exposure

Researchers in the UK have developed a new method for evaluating plutonium workers' historical internal radiation exposure in a study funded by the National Institute for Health Research.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Hw4MlZ

Quantum communication: making two from one

In the future, quantum physics could become the guarantor of secure information technology. To achieve this, individual particles of light—photons—are used for secure transmission of data. Findings by physicists from the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research could play a key role. The researchers accidentally came across a light source that generates a photon pair from the energy of an electron. One of these particles of light has the potential to serve as a carrier of the fragile quantum information, the other, as a messenger to provide prior notification of its twin.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2VHtQdm

A method to determine magnon coherence in solid-state devices

A team of researchers at Utrecht University, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and the University of Konstanz has recently proposed a new method to determine magnon coherence in solid-state devices. Their study, outlined in a paper published in Physical Review Letters , shows that cross-correlations of pure spin currents injected by a ferromagnet into two metal leads normalized by their dc value replicate the behavior of the second-order optical coherence function, referred to as g(2), when magnons are driven far from equilibrium.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2HuZnLT

Scientists use giant telescope on sea floor to study rays from space

Curtin University researchers are part of an international project that will use a huge underwater neutrino telescope at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea to help explain some of the most powerful and mysterious events in the universe.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2LZVenA

The mechanism of cellular migration mode switching

When faced with difficult terrain, off-road vehicles can switch from two- to four-wheel drive to keep moving forward. Similarly, cell migration can be driven either by protrusion-directed crawling, or by contractile pulling forces, but how the cell switches between these two methods remains a mystery. A collaborative study led by MBI doctoral student Tianchi Chen and Professor Benoit Ladoux of the Mechanobiology Institute (MBI) at the National University of Singapore, has uncovered that the direction in which actin filaments flow within the cell allows it to sense the physical curvature of its surroundings, and this directional flow is the key switch that determines which method of migration is selected. The work was published in the April 2019 issue of Nature Physics.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2WfxnnO

All base units of measurement now tied to defined constants rather than physical objects

Scales aren't changing and the weather won't be noticeably different, but on May 20 the definitions that underlie what your scale and thermometer report—along with standard definitions used in chemistry and electronics—are undergoing a major overhaul. That's the date that a more-than-centuries-long process of standardizing measurements reaches its conclusion.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2YyITrQ

Optical device decomposes a beam into a Cartesian grid of identical Gaussian spots

A research team has developed a light beam device that could lead to faster internet, clearer images of space and more detailed medical imaging.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2WetiQO

The way we define kilograms, meters and seconds changes today

We measure stuff all the time—how long, how heavy, how hot, and so on—because we need to for things such as trade, health and knowledge. But making sure our measurements compare apples with apples has been a challenge: how to know if my kilogram weight or meter length is the same as yours.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2QdJlc2

Adieu, Le Grand K: The kilogram to be redefined for the first time in 130 years

In a subterranean vault in a suburb of Paris lies a small, rarely seen metal cylinder known as Le Grand K.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/30wF5cj

Manipulating atoms one at a time with an electron beam

The ultimate degree of control for engineering would be the ability to create and manipulate materials at the most basic level, fabricating devices atom by atom with precise control.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2HpVqbj

Development of a displacement sensor to measure gravity of smallest source mass ever

One of the most unknown phenomena in modern physics is gravity. Its measurement and laws remain somewhat of an enigma. Researchers at Tohoku University have revealed important information about a new aspect of the nature of gravity by probing the smallest mass-scale.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2W7qvst

Record-shattering underwater sound

A team of researchers has produced a record-shattering underwater sound with an intensity that eclipses that of a rocket launch. The intensity was equivalent to directing the electrical power of an entire city onto a single square meter, resulting in sound pressures above 270 decibels. The team, which included researchers from the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, published their findings on April 10 in Physical Review Fluids.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2LQPsEK

Restaurant acoustics that schmeckt

Acoustics consultant Klaus Genuit says that new International Standards Organization guidelines for defining, measuring and evaluating soundscapes are a big step forward in guiding the creation of audibly fine restaurants.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2YxgtOP

Exploring the scientific potential of the ATLAS Experiment at the High-Luminosity LHC

The High-Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) is scheduled to begin colliding protons in 2026. This major improvement to CERN's flagship accelerator will increase the total number of collisions in the ATLAS experiment by a factor of 10. To cope with this increase, ATLAS is preparing a complex series of upgrades including the installation of new detectors using state-of-the-art technology, the replacement of aging electronics, and the upgrade of its trigger and data acquisition system.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Horz2M

Balancing the beam: Thermomechanical micromachine detects terahertz radiation

Radiation from many parts of the electromagnetic spectrum has been harnessed for extremely beneficial uses, in fields as diverse as medicine, imaging and photography, and astronomy. However, the terahertz (THz) region of the spectrum, situated between microwaves and infrared light, has been relatively underutilized owing to difficulties in generating such radiation artificially and in building devices to detect it.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/30o61e9

TSU physicists are investigating the effects of radiation on DNA

Scientists from TSU's Laboratory of Experimental High Energy Physics and their colleagues from the University of Bordeaux are studying new ways of modeling the effects of low doses of radiation at the cellular level. For the first time, physicists will simulate the effects of radiation on DNA and calculate the probability of developing cancer in various chemical and biological environments.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Hu9Aa6

How loud is too loud when it comes to sports whistles?

How loud is too loud when it comes to whistle tweets? Referees and others using whistles on the job need a simple way to determine whether it's harmful to their hearing, so a group of researchers set out to put it to the test and to provide some clarity and damage risk criteria for impulse noise exposures.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2VCPlRq

Energy-free superfast computing invented by scientists using light pulses

Superfast data processing using light pulses instead of electricity has been created by scientists.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Jm0aRl

Holographic imaging of electromagnetic fields using electron-light quantum interference

In conventional holography a photographic film can record the interference pattern of monochromatic light scattered from the object to be imaged with a reference beam of un-scattered light. Scientists can then illuminate the developed image with a replica of the reference beam to create a virtual image of the original object. Holography was originally proposed by the physicist Dennis Gabor in 1948 to improve the resolution of an electron microscope, demonstrated using light optics. A hologram can be formed by capturing the phase and amplitude distribution of a signal by superimposing it with a known reference. The original concept was followed by holography with electrons, and after the invention of lasers optical holography became a popular technique for 3-D imaging macroscopic objects, information encryption and microscopy imaging.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2VDZ3TT

How Nigerian music can help you choose a ripe watermelon

The quickest way to decide if a watermelon is ripe or not is by tapping on it. And if you're having trouble detecting the subtleties of the sound, listen to some Nigerian traditional music to get your ears attuned, says an international group of physics and music researchers.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2W44j2u

Physicists discover new type of spin waves

Current technologies for information transfer and processing are challenged by fundamental physical limits. The more powerful they become, the more energy they need, and the more heat is released to the environment. Also, there are physical limits on the smallness and efficiency of communication devices. The recent discovery by physicists at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and Lanzhou University in China offers a new route for progress on these issues. In the latest edition of the scientific journal Nature Communications, they describe a novel type of spin wave that can be used to transmit and process information with considerably higher efficiency and lower energy consumption.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2vZwy3u

ATLAS experiment sets strong constraints on supersymmetric dark matter

Dark matter is an unknown type of matter present in the universe that could be of particle origin. One of the most complete theoretical frameworks that includes a dark matter candidate is supersymmetry. Many supersymmetric models predict the existence of a new stable, invisible particle called the lightest supersymmetric particle (LSP), which has the right properties to be a dark matter particle. 

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2JhQsiZ

Locating a shooter from the first shot via cellphone

In the past several decades, militaries have worked hard to develop technologies that simultaneously protect infantry soldiers' hearing and aid in battlefield communication. However, these advanced Tactical Communication and Protective Systems, or TCAPS—earmuffs or earplugs with built-in microphones allowing active hearing protection—don't help if a soldier takes them off to assess the location of incoming gunfire.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2YnT4zh

Researchers present new direct-detection constraints on Sub-GeV dark matter

In a recent study, a team of researchers has presented new direct-detection constraints on eV-to-GeV dark matter interacting with electrons, using a new prototype detector developed as part of the Sub-Electron-Noise Skipper-CCD Experimental Instrument (SENSEI) project. The SENSEI collaboration is comprised of researchers from several institutions, including the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Stony Brook University, Tel Aviv University and the University of Oregon.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2QajC4p

How acoustics detected artillery in WWI

During World War I, William Lawrence Bragg led a team of engineers in the development of an acoustic method to locate enemy artillery, work that was so successful that it was soon used widely throughout the British army.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2W2K7xP

A surprising experiment opens the path to new particle manipulation methods

Researchers at Aalto University have discovered a surprising phenomenon that changes how we think about how sound can move particles. Their experiment is based on a famous experiment recognisable from high school science classrooms worldwide—the Chlandni Plate experiment, where particles move on a vibrating surface. The experiment was first performed in 1787 by Ernst Chladni, who is now known as the father of acoustics. Chladni's experiment showed that when a plate is vibrating at a certain frequency, heavy particles move towards the regions with less vibration, called nodal lines. This experiment has been extensively repeated during the centuries since, and has shaped the common understanding of how heavy particles move on a vibrating plate. But researchers at Aalto University have now shown a case where heavy particles move towards the regions with more vibrations, or antinodes. "This is a surprising result, almost a contradiction to common beliefs," says Professor Quan Zhou.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2DZ6LNk

What happens when a raindrop hits a puddle?

Have you ever taken a walk through the rain on a warm spring day and seen that perfect puddle? You know, the one where the raindrops seem to touch down at just the right pace, causing a dance of vanishing circles?

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2JedxTA

A mathematical method for calculating black-hole properties from gravitational-wave data

Sean McWilliams, an assistant professor at West Virginia University, has developed a mathematical method for calculating black hole properties from gravitational wave data. He has written a paper describing his method and posted it on the arXiv preprint server. The paper has been accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Wzukn9

'Fire streaks' ever more real in the collisions of atomic nuclei and protons

Collisions of lead nuclei take place under extreme physical conditions. Their course can be described using a model which assumes that the transforming, extremely hot matter—the quark-gluon plasma—flows in the form of hundreds of streaks. Until now, the "fire streaks" seemed to be purely theoretical structures. However, the latest analysis of collisions of individual protons reinforces the hypothesis that they represent a real physical phenomenon.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2WAUG8e

A new filter to better map the dark universe

The earliest known light in our universe, known as the cosmic microwave background, was emitted about 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The patterning of this relic light holds many important clues to the development and distribution of large-scale structures such as galaxies and galaxy clusters.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2LrMNAT

Physicists propose perfect material for lasers

Weyl semimetals are a recently discovered class of materials in which charge carriers behave the way electrons and positrons do in particle accelerators. Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Ioffe Institute in St. Petersburg have shown that these materials represent perfect gain media for lasers. The research findings were published in Physical Review B.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/300ZkyJ

Researchers discover a trigger for directed cell motion

When an individual cell is placed on a level surface, it does not keep still, but starts moving. This phenomenon was observed by the British cell biologist Michael Abercrombie as long ago as 1967. Since then, researchers have been thriving to understand how cells accomplish this feat. This much is known: Cells form so-called lamellipodia—cellular protrusions that continuously grow and contract—to propel themselves toward signaling cues such as chemical attractants produced and secreted by other cells. When such external signals are missing—as in the observation by Abercrombie—cells begin actively looking for them. In doing so, they use search patterns that can also be observed in sharks, bees or dogs. They transiently move in one direction, stop, wiggle on the spot for a while, and then continue moving in another direction. But how do cells maintain the direction of their movement over a longer period of time?

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2VqpfkL

Mystery of texture of Guinness beer: Inclination angle of a pint glass is key to solution

A team of researchers from Osaka University and Kirin Holdings Company, Limited demonstrated that the texture formation in a pint glass of Guinness beer is induced by flow of a bubble-free fluid film flowing down along the wall of the glass, a world first. This phenomenon is found to be analogous to roll waves commonly observed in water sliding downhill on a rainy day. Their research results were published in Scientific Reports.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2vKDFwT

New material also reveals new quasiparticles

Researchers at PSI have investigated a novel crystalline material that exhibits electronic properties that have never been seen before. It is a crystal of aluminum and platinum atoms arranged in a special way. In the symmetrically repeating unit cells of this crystal, individual atoms were offset from each other in such a way that they—as connected in the mind's eye—followed the shape of a spiral staircase. This resulted in novel properties of electronic behaviour for the crystal as a whole, including so-called Rarita-Schwinger fermions in its interior and very long and quadruple topological Fermi arcs on its surface. The researchers have now published their results in the journal Nature Physics.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2DV0WjX

Move over, silicon switches: There's a new way to compute

Logic and memory devices, such as the hard drives in computers, now use nanomagnetic mechanisms to store and manipulate information. Unlike silicon transistors, which have fundamental efficiency limitations, they require no energy to maintain their magnetic state: Energy is needed only for reading and writing information.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2VjMIUF

Neutrons investigate tomatoes for insights into interplant chatter

Plants are chatty creatures. In the last decade, researchers have shown plants communicate using underground fungal networks to exchange chemical information. However, exactly how that process works at the microscopic level is not well understood.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2H93opg

Academics show how to create a spotlight of sound with LEGO-like bricks

Academics have created devices capable of manipulating sound in the same way as light—creating exciting new opportunities in entertainment and public communication.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2LvAKmc

ATLAS Experiment adds more pieces to the Higgs boson puzzle

The Higgs boson was discovered in 2012 by the ATLAS and CMS Experiments at CERN, but its coupling to other particles remains a puzzle.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2vK6QQI

Twisting whirlpools of electrons

In Jules Verne's famous classic 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the iconic submarine Nautilus disappears into the Moskenstraumen, a massive whirlpool off the coast of Norway. In space, stars spiral around black holes; on Earth, swirling cyclones, tornadoes and dust devils rip across the land.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Ha8e5H

Experimental device generates electricity from the coldness of the universe

The obvious drawback of solar panels is that they require sunlight to generate electricity. Some have observed that for a device on Earth facing space, which has a frigid temperature, the chilling outflow of energy from the device can be harvested using the same kind of optoelectronic physics we have used to harness solar energy. New work, in a recent issue of Applied Physics Letters, looks to provide a potential path to generating electricity like solar cells but that can power electronics at night.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2WtkGlU

First demonstration of antimatter wave interferometry

Matter waves constitute a crucial feature of quantum mechanics, in which particles have wave properties in addition to particle characteristics. This wave-particle duality was postulated in 1924 by the French physicist Louis de Broglie. The existence of the wave property of matter has been successfully demonstrated in a number of experiments with electrons and neutrons, as well as with more complex matter, up to large molecules.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Yf8q9r

Reconstructing the acoustics of Notre Dame

The April 15 fire that devastated the roof of the 850-year-old Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral left many people around the globe wondering whether it's possible to rebuild it in a way that can recreate the cultural icon's complex signature acoustics.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2DMpc7Z

The evolution of skyrmions in Ir/Fe/Co/Pt multilayers and their topological Hall signature

Magnetic skyrmions are tiny entities, manifesting in magnetic materials that consist of localized twists in the magnetization direction of the medium. Each skyrmion is highly stable because eliminating it requires untwisting the magnetization direction of the material, just as a knot on a string can only be untied by pulling the rest of the string out of the knot. Magnetic skyrmions are a promising candidate for next-generation magnetic storage devices because of their stability and tiny size—-with widths of 50 nanometers or less, they occupy only a fraction of the area of magnetic bits in current hard disks. For this reason, researchers have been intensively searching out materials that can contain magnetic skyrmions, and studying their electrical and magnetic properties.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2UZMMnz

Laser-driven spin dynamics in ferrimagnets: How does the angular momentum flow?

When exposed to intense laser pulses, the magnetization of a material can be manipulated very fast. Fundamentally, magnetization is connected to the angular momentum of the electrons in the material. A team of researchers led by scientists from the Max Born Institute for Nonlinear Optics and Short Pulse Spectroscopy (MBI) has now been able to follow the flow of angular momentum during ultrafast optical demagnetization in a ferrimagnetic iron-gadolinium alloy in great detail, in order to understand the fundamental processes and their speed limits. The results were published in Physical Review Letters.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2PMaH96

New material to pave the way for more efficient electronic devices

Researchers at the University of Bristol have successfully demonstrated the high thermal conductivity of a new material, paving the way for safer and more efficient electronic devices – including mobile phones, radars and even electric cars.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2IVrMww

Promising material could lead to faster, cheaper computer memory

Computer memory could become faster and cheaper thanks to research into a promising class of materials by University of Arkansas physicists.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2JakRPp

Nuclear 'magic numbers' collapse beyond the doubly magic nickel 78

Scientists from the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Research and collaborators have used the center's heavy ion accelerator, the RI Beam Factory, to demonstrate that nickel-78, a neutron-rich "doubly magic" isotope of nickel with 28 protons and 50 neutrons, still maintains a spherical shape that makes it relatively stable despite the large imbalance in the number of protons and neutrons. They also discovered a surprise—observations from the experiment suggest that nickel-78 may be the lightest nucleus with 50 neutrons to have a magic nature. Lighter isotones—meaning nuclei with the same number of neutrons but different number of protons—would inevitably be deformed, despite having the magic number of neutrons.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Y5MpKb

Transforming waste heat into clean energy

Do you feel the warmth coming off your computer or cell phone? That's wasted energy radiating from the device. With automobiles, it is estimated that 60% of fuel efficiency is lost due to waste heat. Is it possible to capture this energy and convert it into electricity?

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2IQMy0t

New research may be used to treat cancer, heal combat wounds

Army research is the first to develop computational models using a microbiology procedure that may be used to improve novel cancer treatments and treat combat wounds.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2IWd0FQ

Why a drop of oil bounces in a water/ethanol gradient and eventually falls to the bottom of a jar

A team of researchers working at the University of Twente has solved the mystery of why a drop of oil bounces repeatedly when dropped in a water/ethanol gradient but eventually falls to the bottom of a jar. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group describes their study of the odd behavior.

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2Lfnu50

Searching for lost WWII-era uranium cubes from Germany

Back in 2013, Timothy Koeth, an associate research professor at the University of Maryland, received a rather extraordinary birthday gift: a little cloth lunch pouch containing a small object wrapped in brown paper towels. As Koeth peeled back the layers, his eyes grew wide with astonishment. He immediately asked, "Where did you get that?"

from General Physics News - Science News, Physics News, Physics, Material Sciences, Science http://bit.ly/2IXy5jp