New theory explains mystery behind fast magnetic reconnection

When magnetic field lines of opposite directions merge, they create explosions that can release massive amounts of energy. On the sun, the merging of opposing field lines causes solar flares and coronal mass ejections, giant bursts of energy that can travel to Earth within a day.

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How quantum weirdness is improving electron microscopes

Quantum weirdness is opening new doors for electron microscopes, powerful tools used for high-resolution imaging.

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Heat flow shown to be more efficient when temperature is oscillating than when static

A team of researchers from the Institute of Scientific Instruments working with a colleague from Charles University, both in the Czech Republic, has shown that heat flows more efficiently when the temperature of the material through which it is flowing oscillates, as opposed to remaining steady. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group describes experiments they conducted with heating and cooling helium in a container and its relevance to a theory proposed just two years ago.

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Novel particle detector used to study alternate path to carbon creation in stars

Washington University in St. Louis is part of a collaboration that has yielded new insight into one of the universe's primordial reactions that made all life on Earth possible.

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Specially sourced argon may soon whisper secrets about universe's dark matter

A deposit of nearly pure argon left undisturbed since Earth's formation is about to help physicists understand more about the universe.

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Visualizing the proton through animation and film

Try to picture a proton—the minute, positively charged particle within an atomic nucleus—and you may imagine a familiar, textbook diagram: a bundle of billiard balls representing quarks and gluons. From the solid sphere model first proposed by John Dalton in 1803 to the quantum model put forward by Erwin Schrödinger in 1926, there is a storied timeline of physicists trying to visualize the invisible.

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Researchers use muonic X-rays to find elemental makeup of samples without damaging them

By combining technologies originally designed for high-energy particle accelerators and astronomy observations, researchers can now for the first time analyze the elemental makeup of samples without damaging them, which could be useful for researchers working in other fields such as archaeology, reports a new study in Scientific Reports.

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Kinematics of stretched sheets

In a new study now published as a report and also illustrated as the online cover-page of Science Advances, Julien Chopin, Arshad Kudrolli, and a research team in Physics in the U.S. and Brazil showed how twisted hyper-elastic sheets formed multi-layered self-scrolled yarns. By incorporating dominant stretching with folding kinematics, they measured torque and energetics originating from geometric nonlinearities. They then introduced a geometric model to explain the formation and structure of such self-scrolled yarns. The outcomes showed how a simple twist of origami in the tensional twist-folding framework led to the transformation of stretchable sheets into self-assembled architectures.

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First mass measurement with rare-RI ring reveals fine structure of element abundance patterns

Scientists have demonstrated the effectiveness of an innovative nuclear mass measurement method using the rare-RI ring (R3) facility at the Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory, and applied it to the mass measurement of a neutron-rich palladium isotope. The study was published in Physical Review Letters on April 15. 

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Researchers create exotic magnetic structures with laser light

Research at Lund University in Sweden has found a new way to create nano-sized magnetic particles using ultrafast laser light pulses. The discovery could pave the way for new and more energy-efficient technical components and become useful in the quantum computers of the future.

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Time travel could be possible, but only with parallel timelines

Have you ever made a mistake that you wish you could undo? Correcting past mistakes is one of the reasons we find the concept of time travel so fascinating. As often portrayed in science fiction, with a time machine, nothing is permanent anymore—you can always go back and change it. But is time travel really possible in our universe, or is it just science fiction?

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New and surprising duality found in theoretical particle physics

A new and surprising duality has been discovered in theoretical particle physics. The duality exists between two types of scattering processes that can occur in the proton collisions made in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland and France. The fact that this connection can, surprisingly, be made points to the fact that there is something in the intricate details of the standard model of particle physics that is not fully understood. The standard model is the model of the world on sub-atomic scale that explains all particles and their interactions, so when surprises appear, there is cause for attention. The scientific article is now published in Physical Review Letters.

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Topological synchronization of chaotic systems

Can we find order in chaos? Physicists have shown, for the first time that chaotic systems can synchronize due to stable structures that emerge from chaotic activity. These structures are known as fractals, shapes with patterns which repeat over and over again in different scales of the shape. As chaotic systems are being coupled, the fractal structures of the different systems will start to assimilate with each other, taking the same form, causing the systems to synchronize.

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The physics of a singing saw

The eerie, ethereal sound of the singing saw has been a part of folk music traditions around the globe, from China to Appalachia, since the proliferation of cheap, flexible steel in the early 19th century. Made from bending a metal hand saw and bowing it like a cello, the instrument reached its heyday on the vaudeville stages of the early 20th century and has seen a resurgence thanks, in part, to social media.

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Theoretical model offers a new perspective on black hole formation and evolution

Black holes are regions in space characterized by gravitational fields so intense that no matter or radiation can escape from them. They are solutions to Einstein's field equations, with a point of unphysical infinite density at their center.

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Large Hadron Collider restarts after three-year break

The Large Hadron Collider restarted Friday after a three-year break for upgrades that will allow it to smash protons together at even greater speeds, in the hope of making new ground-breaking discoveries.

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Study illustrates nuances of gravitational pull of ice sheets

It is well known that global warming is causing sea levels to rise via two processes: thermal expansion, when water expands because of its increased temperature, and melting of land-based ice, when meltwater flows into the ocean. Less known, regarding the latter, is the nuanced phenomenon of gravitational pull. When a large ice sheet begins to melt, global-mean sea level rises, but local sea level near the ice sheet may in fact drop.

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Study introduces loss-free matter-wave polaritons in an optical lattice system

Polaritons are quasiparticles that are formed when photons couple strongly with excitations of matter. These quasi-particles, which are half-light and half-matter, underpin the functioning of a wide range of emergent photonic quantum systems, including semiconductor-based nanophotonic devices and circuit quantum electrodynamic systems.

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New accelerator at Fermilab approved for construction start

The U.S. Department of Energy has formally approved the start of full construction for the PIP-II project, an essential upgrade to the accelerator complex at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. The heart of the project is a powerful new superconducting linear accelerator that will enable the world's most intense high-energy neutrino beam.

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Looking beyond the standard model to explore neutron decay

This prototype NIST sensor may help solve some mysteries of the universe by looking beyond the Standard Model.

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Lab creates superfluid circuit using fermions to study electron behavior

Researchers at Dartmouth College have built the world's first superfluid circuit that uses pairs of ultracold electron-like atoms, according to a study published in Physical Review Letters.

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Twisting Oreos shows creme filling sticks to one side

Imagine the perfect way to eat an Oreo. Perhaps you twist the top layer, separating the cookie into two parts, and then eat them one by one. Alternatively, you could dunk the treat into milk to soften it just the right amount. Or maybe, if you're a rheologist who studies complex fluids, you snack on the cookie while you test its mechanical properties in your lab.

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Almost ready for prime time: Deep UV photodetectors head to real-world testing

Numerous devices and detectors sense and catalog deep ultraviolet frequencies that the Earth's ozone layer otherwise absorbs. Most solar-blind space-borne imaging platforms still rely on photomultiplier tubes and/or microchannel plates working with silicon photodiodes that increase the systems' complexity and weight.

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Observation of the branched flow of spatially incoherent light in dish soap

A team of researchers at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology has conducted the first experimental observation of the branched flow of spatially incoherent light—in this case, using liquid dish soap. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review X, the group describes their experiments involving shining light on 2D samples of liquid dish soap and their observations.

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A novel computing approach to recognizing chaos

Chaos isn't always harmful to technology, in fact, it can have several useful applications if it can be detected and identified.

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Time might not exist, according to physicists and philosophers, but that's okay

Does time exist? The answer to this question may seem obvious: of course it does! Just look at a calendar or a clock.

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Physics models better define what makes pasta 'al dente'

Achieving the perfect al dente texture for a pasta noodle can be tough. Noodles can take different times to fully cook, and different recipes call for different amounts of salt to be added. To boot, sometimes noodles will stick to each other or the saucepan.

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Breakthrough MicroBooNE measurement elucidates neutrino interactions

Physicists studying ghost-like particles called neutrinos from the international MicroBooNE collaboration have reported a first-of-its-kind measurement: a comprehensive set of the energy-dependent neutrino-argon interaction cross sections. This measurement marks an important step towards achieving the scientific goals of next-generation of neutrino experiments—namely, the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE).

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Simulating supernova remnants, star formation in earthbound lab

Molecular clouds are collections of gas and dust in space. When left alone, the clouds remain in their state of peaceful equilibrium.

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Inferring the size of a collective of self-propelled Vicsek particles from the random motion of a single unit

Collective dynamics are ubiquitous in the natural world. From neural circuits to animal groups, there are countless instances in which the interactions among large numbers of elementary units bestow surprisingly complex patterns of tantalizing beauty on the collective. One of the longstanding goals of researchers in many fields is to understand behaviors of a large group of individual units by monitoring the actions of a single unit. For example, an ornithologist can learn many things about the behaviors of a flock by monitoring only a single bird.

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Key particle weighs in a bit heavy, confounding physicists

The grand explanation physicists use to describe how the universe works may have some major new flaws to patch after a fundamental particle was found to have more mass than scientists thought.

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The most precise-ever measurement of W boson mass suggests the standard model needs improvement

After 10 years of careful analysis and scrutiny, scientists of the CDF collaboration at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today that they have achieved the most precise measurement to date of the mass of the W boson, one of nature's force-carrying particles. Using data collected by the Collider Detector at Fermilab, or CDF, scientists have now determined the particle's mass with a precision of 0.01%—twice as precise as the previous best measurement. It corresponds to measuring the weight of an 800-pound gorilla to 1.5 ounces.

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Research places new limits on the bizarre behavior of neutrinos

In a laboratory under a mountain, physicists are using crystals far colder than frozen air to study ghostly particles, hoping to learn secrets from the beginning of the universe. Researchers at the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE) announced this week that they had placed some of the most stringent limits yet on the strange possibility that the neutrino is its own antiparticle. Neutrinos are deeply unusual particles, so ethereal and so ubiquitous that they regularly pass through our bodies without us noticing. CUORE has spent the last three years patiently waiting to see evidence of a distinctive nuclear decay process, only possible if neutrinos and antineutrinos are the same particle. CUORE's new data shows that this decay doesn't happen for trillions of trillions of years, if it happens at all. CUORE's limits on the behavior of these tiny phantoms are a crucial part of the search for the next breakthrough in particle and nuclear physics—and the search for our own origins.

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Researchers find a new way to measure flying baseballs

As the Major League Baseball season gets underway, a burning question for many fans of the third most popular sport in the United States is how many homeruns they will see this season. 

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Astrophysicists theorize a new type of neutron star

A pair of researchers, one with Manly Astrophysics, the other with Universidad de Murcia, has proposed the existence of a new type of neutron star. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, Arthur Suvorov and Kostas Glampedakis suggest that an exotic type of neutron star could be created if there is an ultra-strong magnetic field created during a collision between neutron stars.

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The relationship between active areas and boundaries with energy input in snapping shells

New research looks at how the geometry of shells relates to the energy input required to actuate snap-through instability.

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New algorithm could be quantum leap in search for gravitational waves

A new method of identifying gravitational wave signals using quantum computing could provide a valuable new tool for future astrophysicists.

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