Prototype for DUNE detector will test new technology that can handle more neutrinos

Long before the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment takes its first measurements in an effort to expand our understanding of the universe, a prototype for one of the experiment's detectors is blazing new trails in neutrino detection technology.

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Researchers show an old law still holds for quirky quantum materials

Long before researchers discovered the electron and its role in generating electrical current, they knew about electricity and were exploring its potential. One thing they learned early on was that metals were great conductors of both electricity and heat.

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Using gravitational wave observations of a binary black hole merger to verify the no-hair theorem

An international team of researchers including Prof. Badri Krishnan at Radboud University has verified an important property of black holes known as the no-hair theorem using gravitational wave observations. Their research is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

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Study suggests nature may have had a hand in shaping Great Sphinx of Giza

A trio of experimental physicists and applied mathematicians at New York University has found evidence that Egypt's Great Sphinx of Giza may have originated as a natural formation. For their study, published in the journal Physical Review Fluids, Samuel Boury, Scott Weady and Leif Ristroph, looked into natural erosion processes and tested the idea that the Sphinx got its start naturally via strong winds.

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Water and electricity: Charge effects can influence flowing droplets

From precise inkjet printing to clear vision through spectacle lenses—the influence of droplets and their movement shapes numerous areas of our daily lives. While droplets should remain precisely in place on inkjet prints, it is desirable that they move quickly across the surface of spectacle lenses. Research into wetting processes, therefore, plays a crucial role in further improving technological applications.

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Theoretical work indicates that the future Electron Ion Collider can be used to measure the shape of atomic nuclei

Scientists have developed a new way to study the shapes of atomic nuclei and their internal building blocks. The method relies on modeling the production of certain particles from high-energy collisions of electrons with nuclear targets. Such collisions will take place at the future Electron Ion Collider (EIC). The findings are published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

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Scientists propose new method to search for deviations from the Standard Model of physics

In the search for new particles and forces in nature, physicists are on the hunt for behaviors within atoms and molecules that are forbidden by the tried-and-true Standard Model of particle physics. Any deviations from this model could indicate what physicists affectionately refer to as "new physics."

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LHCb: Correlations show nuances of the particle birth process

High-energy ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider are capable of producing a quark-gluon plasma. But are heavy atomic nuclei really necessary for its formation? And above all: how are secondary particles later born from this plasma? Further clues in the search for answers to these questions are provided by the latest analysis of collisions between protons and protons or ions, observed in the LHCb experiment.

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Using the world's three most powerful particle accelerators to reveal the space-time geometry of quark matter

Physicists from the Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE) have been conducting research on the matter constituting the atomic nucleus utilizing the world's three most powerful particle accelerators. Their focus has been on mapping the "primordial soup" that filled the universe in the first millionth of a second following its inception.

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Understanding charged particles helps physicists simulate element creation in stars

New research from North Carolina State University and Michigan State University opens a new avenue for modeling low-energy nuclear reactions, which are key to the formation of elements within stars. The research lays the groundwork for calculating how nucleons interact when the particles are electrically charged.

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Study unveils new insights into asymmetric particle collisions

A study has been published in Nuclear Science and Techniques, by researchers led by Prof. Hua Zheng from Shaanxi Normal University, heralding a significant breakthrough in high-energy particle physics. This study sheds new light on the behavior of particles in high-energy collisions, an area of research integral to deepening our understanding of the universe's origins.

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Experiment shows how water-filled channels crisscrossing multi-crystal ice lead to fractures

A combined team of materials scientists and engineers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Yale University, has shown via lab experiment, how water-filled channels crisscrossing multi-crystal ice can lead to fractures in materials such as cement and asphalt. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, the group describes the experiments they conducted with transparent objects, water and silicone, to show how liquid channels in ice can lead to fractures in porous materials.

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Breaking the stillness: Scientists observe and explain the oscillations of circular hydraulic jumps

In a new study published in Physical Review Letters, scientists explore how small water jets can create stable periodic oscillations on a solid disk, uncovering a connection between these movements and the waves they generate and providing insights into the dynamic interplay of fluid behavior.

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Physicists model chromosome folding, reveal how loops affect spatial organization of the genome

Human chromosomes are long polymer chains that store genetic information. The nucleus of each cell contains the entire human genome (DNA) encoded on 46 chromosomes with a total length of about 2 meters. To fit into the microscopic cell nucleus and at the same time provide constant access to genetic information, chromosomes are folded in the nucleus in a special, predetermined way. DNA folding is an urgent task at the intersection of polymer physics and systems biology.

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Meet the new instruments that will take advantage of SLAC's upgraded X-ray laser

Teams at the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory recently celebrated the completion of a major upgrade to the world's first hard X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL), the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the US Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

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New computer code for mechanics of tissues and cells in three dimensions

Biological materials are made of individual components, including tiny motors that convert fuel into motion. This creates patterns of movement, and the material shapes itself with coherent flows by constant consumption of energy. Such continuously driven materials are called active matter.

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Reactor physics research: Advanced neural networks reveal new potential in solving K-eigenvalue problems

In a new study of reactor physics published in the journal Nuclear Science and Techniques, researchers from Sichuan University, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, have introduced two innovative neural networks to address the longstanding challenges associated with K-eigenvalue problems in neutron diffusion theory. These problems, which are fundamental in the nuclear engineering realm, are pivotal for the simulation and analysis of nuclear reactors.

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Using heavy-ion collisions at the LHC, scientists determine the thickness of neutron 'skin' in lead-208 nuclei

Lead-208 has an intriguing nucleus. It is neutron rich, containing 82 protons and 126 neutrons. One of its more interesting properties is its structure: its center is composed of both protons and neutrons, but at its edge, there is a diffuse shell of mostly neutrons. Scientists call this the neutron "skin."

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CERN researchers see shape shifting in gold nuclei

A little like humans, the nuclei of atoms tend to shrink as they lose weight. But atomic nuclei are complex quantum systems formed from neutrons and protons that are themselves composite particles made of quarks. As such, their usually spherical or nearly spherical shapes do not always simply shrink as particles are removed from their interior. In fact, exotic, neutron-deficient mercury and bismuth nuclei have been seen to alternate dramatically from football (soccer) shapes to rugby ball shapes as single neutrons are removed from the nucleus.

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Study resolves puzzles in gravitational collapse of gravitational waves

Black holes are regions in space where the gravitational pull is so strong that nothing can escape them, not even light. These fascinating regions have been the focus of countless studies, yet some of the physics underlying their formation is not yet fully understood.

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Putting sound waves to work to create safer public spaces

The risk of hearing loss does not come just from loud machinery or other obvious noise. It can also affect people in public environments like theaters and concert halls. Absorbing this excess sound to make public environments safer for hearing and using the unwanted sound waves to create electricity is the aim of a paper, entitled "Piezoelectric system on harnessing sound energy in closed environment," published in Physics of Fluids.

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Tiny Big Bang: ALICE experiment restarts with lead ions

On September 26, 2023, the accelerator team at the CERN European Council for Nuclear Research in Geneva declared stable lead-beam conditions, ushering in the first data-taking campaign of lead-ion collisions in five years. From then until the late evening of October 29, the accelerator produced lead-ion collisions at the world's highest-ever collision energy of 5.36 terra electron volts per colliding nuclear particle (nucleon–nucleon collision).

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How to think about a four-dimensional universe

In Einstein's famous theory of relativity the concepts of immutable space and time aren't just put aside, they're explicitly and emphatically rejected. Space and time are now woven into a coexisting fabric. That is to say, we truly live in a four-dimensional universe. Space and time alone cease to exist; only the union of those dimensions remains.

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The CMS collaboration at CERN presents its latest search for 'dark photons'

The CMS experiment has presented its first search for new physics using data from Run 3 of the Large Hadron Collider. The new study looks at the possibility of "dark photon" production in the decay of Higgs bosons in the detector.

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Many physicists assume we must live in a multiverse—but their basic math may be wrong

One of the most startling scientific discoveries of recent decades is that physics appears to be fine-tuned for life. This means that for life to be possible, certain numbers in physics had to fall within a certain, very narrow range.

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How Einstein's daydream of light created relativity

Einstein's fascination with light, considered quirky at the time, would lead him down the path to a brand new theory of physics.

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Is anything absolute with relativity?

The theory of relativity is at once simple and elegant but also maddeningly nonintuitive. There's no need to get into the full guts and glory of that theory here, but there is one feature of Einstein's work that takes center stage, and would eventually lead him into a complete reshaping of Newton's gravity, altering our very conceptions of the fabric of the universe.

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Researchers realize water-air acoustic communication based on broadband impedance matching

With increasing demand for exploration and utilization of marine resources, achieving direct and efficient communication between water and air has been an urgent need. Sound waves, as the only propagation way with low attenuation in both water and air, has been considered the most practical way to achieve water-air communication.

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Magnetic shielding for particle detectors

Particle physicists who hunt for neutrinos, cosmic-rays and other charged particles rely on sophisticated instruments that detect very faint bursts of light given off when incident particles interact with a medium. The most common such instruments, called Cherenkov detectors, use photomultiplier tubes to capture as much of this light as possible. This provides a meaningful signal from which to glean information about the particle from whence it came. But their efficiency drops when subjected to Earth's magnetic field.

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Crumpled sheets reveal a mechanism for glassy relaxations

We often crumple a scrap piece of paper into a ball before throwing it. This mundane action, however, creates a unique complex system with surprising mechanical properties. Take a thin plastic sheet such as cellophane and try it yourself. While a regular flat sheet will simply bend under the influence of gravity, a crumpled sheet is stiffer and can hold its own weight. It also has shape memory—it has many stable configurations and thus will tend to keep the shape it is deformed to.

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Muon g-2 experiment measures the positive muon anomalous magnetic moment to 0.20 ppm

The Muon g-2 Collaboration is a large group of researchers at different institutes worldwide collaborating on the Muon g-2 experiment. This is a research effort aimed at exploring the interactions of muons, short-lived particles that are essentially heavy electrons, using powerful accelerators at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab).

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Model suggests that mammalian sperm cells have two modes of swimming

A new mathematical model predicts that mammalian sperm cells have two distinct swimming modes. This prediction opens new questions about potential connections between sperm cells' motor activity and their transitions to hyperactivation phases that may play an important role in fertilization. The finding is part of a larger effort to use math and fluid dynamics to describe how mammalian sperm move

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Model shows how fish synchronize tail fins to save energy

Researchers from Tohoku University have developed a model that simulates the motion of fish tail fins. The model uncovers the underlying mechanisms behind a commonly observed phenomenon in fish: how they synchronize the movement of their tail fins, riding the resultant vortices created, thereby saving energy.

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Want the secret to less painful belly flops? These researchers have the answer

Anyone who's ever done a belly flop into a swimming pool knows it ends with a blunt-sounding splat, a big splash and a searing red sting. What most people don't know is why.

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Physicists ask: Can we make a particle collider more energy efficient?

Ever since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, physicists have wanted to build new particle colliders to better understand the properties of that elusive particle and probe elementary particle physics at ever-higher energy scales.

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Scientists use supercomputers to make optical tweezers safer for living cells

Optical tweezers manipulate tiny things like cells and nanoparticles using lasers. While they might sound like tractor beams from science fiction, the fact is their development garnered scientists a Nobel Prize in 2018.

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Micro heat engine research cracks an age-old thermodynamic puzzle

Designing a heat engine that can produce maximum power at maximum efficiency is a major challenge. Practical heat engines are limited to a theoretical efficiency called the Carnot limit, which sets a cap on how much heat can be converted to useful work.

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