Quantum Physics News

RSS

Research on the Collective Excitations of an Exciton Condensate

Excitons are pairs of holes and electrons present inside a solid material that together act like just one particle. For a long time, it has been assumed that when a number of such excitons exist in the same piece of matter, they can produce a single giant quantum state known as a Bose-Einstein condensate – the same process which is considered to be responsible for a metal losing all of its electrical resistance when it develops into a superconductor, for instance.

11 Dec 2017

Stanford Astrophysicist Develops Software that Models Incompatible Astronomical Observations

A recent study in Science cast doubt on one formerly favored explanation for why an abundance of positrons – the antimatter counterparts of electrons – has been found near Earth. Two nearby collapsed stars, it turns out, aren’t likely to blame because their positrons couldn’t have traveled as far as the Earth.

8 Dec 2017

Black Holes Have Significantly Weaker Magnetic Fields than Previously Thought

Black holes are famous for their muscle: an intense gravitational pull known to gobble up entire stars and launch streams of matter into space at almost the speed of light.

8 Dec 2017

Scientists Discover Magnetic Monopoles in Superfluid Helium Droplets

The startling similarity between the physical laws describing electric phenomena and those describing magnetic phenomena has been known since the 19th century. However, one piece that would make the two perfectly symmetric was missing: magnetic monopoles.

8 Dec 2017

Newly Created Excitonic Insulators Could Potentially be Used in Topological Quantum Computer

Rice University physicists dedicated to creating the working components of a fault-tolerant quantum computer have succeeded in creating a previously unseen state of matter.

8 Dec 2017

Newly Found Galactic Giants Nearly Smash Current Understanding of Cosmos Evolution

A newfound pair of galaxies from the early universe is so massive that it nearly breaks the current understanding of how the cosmos evolved.

7 Dec 2017

ALMA Discovers Giant Galaxies Nestled Inside Massive Dark Matter Halo

Astronomers expect that the first galaxies, those that formed just a few hundred million years after the Big Bang , would share many similarities with some of the dwarf galaxies we see in the nearby universe today.

7 Dec 2017

Astronomers Discover Oldest and Most-Distant Supermassive Black Hole

A team of astronomers led by Carnegie’s Eduardo Bañados used Carnegie’s Magellan telescopes to discover the most-distant supermassive black hole ever observed.

7 Dec 2017

NASA's SuperTIGER Balloon Gets Ready for Second Flight to Explore Cosmic Rays

A science team in Antarctica is preparing to loft a balloon-borne instrument to collect information on cosmic rays, high-energy particles from beyond the solar system that enter Earth's atmosphere every moment of every day.

7 Dec 2017

Spintronics Research Could Help Produce Chips Generating Less Heat

Some of the quantum properties of electrons in two-dimensional semiconductors have been successfully measured by EPFL researchers. This work carried out in the field of spintronics will one day be able to lead to chips that are not just smaller but that which also produce less heat.

6 Dec 2017