Scientists' report world's first X-ray of a single atom

A team of scientists from Ohio University, Argonne National Laboratory, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and others, led by Ohio University Professor of Physics, and Argonne National Laboratory scientist, Saw Wai Hla, have taken the world's first X-ray SIGNAL (or SIGNATURE) of just one atom. This groundbreaking achievement could revolutionize the way scientists detect the materials.

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How the humble neutron can help solve some of the universe's deepest mysteries

Scientists are unleashing the power of neutrons to improve understanding of everyday materials and tackle fundamental questions in physics.

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Stephen Hawking's last collaborator on physicist's final theory

When Thomas Hertog was first summoned to Stephen Hawking's office in the late 1990s, there was an instant connection between the young Belgian researcher and the legendary British theoretical physicist.

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Absolute vs. relative efficiency: How efficient are blue LEDs, actually?

The absolute internal quantum efficiency (IQE) of indium gallium nitride (InGaN) based blue light-emitting diodes (LEDs) at low temperatures is often assumed to be 100%. However, a new study from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Electrical and Computer Engineering researchers has found that the assumption of always perfect IQE is wrong: the IQE of an LED can be as low as 27.5%.

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Active Brownian particles have four distinct states of motion, researchers find

Active Brownian motion describes particles that can propel themselves forward while still being subjected to random Brownian motions as they are jostled around by their neighboring particles. Through a new analysis published in The European Physical Journal E, Meng Su at Northwestern Polytechnical University in China, together with Benjamin Lindner at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, have discovered that these motions can be accurately described using four distinct mathematical patterns.

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Experiments see first evidence of a rare Higgs boson decay

The discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in 2012 marked a significant milestone in particle physics. Since then, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations have been diligently investigating the properties of this unique particle and searching to establish the different ways in which it is produced and decays into other particles.

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Researchers investigate the swarming behavior of microrobots

Miniaturization is progressing rapidly in many fields, and the trend toward the creation of ever smaller units is also prevalent in the world of robot technology. In the future, minuscule robots used in medical and pharmaceutical applications might be able to transport medication to targeted sites in the body. Statistical physics can contribute to the foundations for the development of such technologies.

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First measurements of hypernuclei flow at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

Physicists studying particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) have published the first observation of directed flow of hypernuclei. These short-lived, rare nuclei contain at least one "hyperon" in addition to ordinary protons and neutrons.

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The first experimental observation of subpicosecond electron bunches originating from an ultracold source

Identifying new sources that produce electrons faster could help to advance the many imaging techniques that rely on electrons. In a recent paper published in Physical Review Letters, a team of researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology demonstrated the scattering of subpicosecond electron bunches from an ultracold electron source.

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Scientists propose revolution in complex systems modeling with quantum technologies

Scientists have made a significant advancement with quantum technologies that could transform complex systems modeling with an accurate and effective approach that requires significantly reduced memory.

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CERN facility takes a solid tick forward towards a nuclear clock

Atomic clocks are the world's most precise timekeepers. Based on periodic transitions between two electronic states of an atom, they can track the passage of time with a precision as high as one part in a quintillion, meaning that they won't lose or gain a second over 30 billion years—more than twice the age of the universe.

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The laws of physics have not always been symmetric, which may explain why you exist

For generations, physicists were sure the laws of physics were perfectly symmetric. Until they weren't.

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Electronic noses sniff out volatile organic compounds

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are chemicals emitted as gases that can have adverse health effects. They are often found in paints, pharmaceuticals, and refrigerants, among other common products, but they can also act as markers of explosives, insect infestation, food spoilage, and disease.

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Actively reducing noise by ionizing air

Did you know that wires can be used to ionize air to make a loudspeaker? Simply put, it's possible to generate sound by creating an electric field in a set of parallel wires, aka a plasma transducer, strong enough to ionize the air particles. The charged ions are then accelerated along the magnetic field lines, pushing the residual non-ionized air in a way to produce sound.

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First SuperCDMS detector towers ready for dark matter detection experiment

After years of pioneering work, researchers at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have completed the detector towers that will soon sit at the heart of the SuperCDMS SNOLAB dark matter detection experiment.

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If the Higgs can reach the Hidden Valley, we will see new physics in next-generation accelerators

It may be that the famous Higgs boson, co-responsible for the existence of masses of elementary particles, also interacts with the world of the new physics that has been sought for decades. If this were indeed to be the case, the Higgs should decay in a characteristic way, involving exotic particles. At the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow, it has been shown that if such decays do indeed occur, they will be observable in successors to the LHC currently being designed.

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Physicists take the temperature of fluid flows and discover new role for turbulence

A team of physicists has discovered a new role for a specific type of turbulence—a finding that sheds light on fluid flows ranging from the Earth's liquid core to boiling water.

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Simulation provides images from the carbon nucleus

What does the inside of a carbon atom's nucleus look like? A new study by Forschungszentrum Jülich, Michigan State University and the University of Bonn provides the first comprehensive answer to this question. In the study, the researchers simulated all known energy states of the nucleus.

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Magnetic tunnel junction device with highest tunnel magnetoresistance developed through precision interfacial control

The National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) has achieved a tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) ratio of 631% at room temperature, breaking the previous world record, which had stood for 15 years.

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Extracting the best flavor from coffee

Espresso coffee is brewed by first grinding roasted coffee beans into grains. Hot water then forces its way through a bed of coffee grains at high pressure, and the soluble content of the coffee grains dissolves into the water (extraction) to produce espresso.

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The realization of a continuous time crystal based on a photonic metamaterial

A time crystal, as originally proposed in 2012, is a new state of matter in which the particles are in continuous oscillatory motion. Time crystals break time-translation symmetry. Discrete time crystals do so by oscillating under the influence of a periodic external parametric force, and this type of time crystal has been demonstrated in trapped ions, atoms and spin systems.

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RHIC gets ready to smash gold ions for Run 23

The start of this year's physics run at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) also marks the start of a new era. For the first time since RHIC began operating at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2000, a brand new detector will track what happens when the nuclei of gold atoms smash into one another at nearly the speed of light. That new detector, sPHENIX, has been a decade in the making. It has a host of components for making precision measurements never possible before at RHIC.

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A blueprint for a quantum computer in reverse gear

Large numbers can only be factorized with a great deal of computational effort. Physicists at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, led by Wolfgang Lechner are now providing a blueprint for a new type of quantum computer to solve the factorization problem, which is a cornerstone of modern cryptography. The research was recently published in Communications Physics.

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Scientists find link between photosynthesis and 'fifth state of matter'

Inside a lab, scientists marvel at a strange state that forms when they cool down atoms to nearly absolute zero. Outside their window, trees gather sunlight and turn them into new leaves. The two seem unrelated—but a new study from the University of Chicago suggests that these processes aren't so different as they might appear on the surface.

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Microbot toys demonstrate how biological machines move

By connecting small self-propelling toys in a chain, researchers at the UvA Institute of Physics have found the key to studying the movement of microscopic organisms and molecular motors inside our cells.

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Test signal generator uses 'made-up' electrons to save researchers time

Working with a great deal of dexterity and concentration, Jingo Bozzini, an electronics engineer, solders the tiny legs of a chip onto the green circuit board. "Soldering isn't my strong suit," he grins. He's much more interested in programming the circuit on the chip, which was also the focus of his final practical exam last year.

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Zeroing in on a fundamental property of the proton's internal dynamics

Inside the proton are elementary particles called quarks. Quarks and protons have an intrinsic angular momentum called spin. Spin can point in different directions. When it is perpendicular to the proton's momentum, it is called a transverse spin. Just like the proton carries an electric charge, it also has another fundamental charge called the tensor charge. The tensor charge is the net transverse spin of quarks in a proton with transverse spin.

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