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Laser-Plasma Accelerators Offer New Options to Unravel How the Universe is Put Together

It took every inch of the Large Hadron Collider's 17-mile length to accelerate particles to energies high enough to discover the Higgs boson. Now, imagine an accelerator that could do the same thing in, say, the length of a football field. Or less.

28 May 2014

Photons ‘Glue’ Together Quantum Mechanical States Forming Polaritons

Scientists from the University of Southampton, in collaboration with the Universities of Sheffield and Crete, have developed a new hybrid energy transfer system, which mimics the processes responsible for photosynthesis.

28 May 2014

Saturn's Titan Moon Helps Understand Atmospheres of Exoplanets

Scientists working with data from NASA's Cassini mission have developed a new way to understand the atmospheres of exoplanets by using Saturn's smog-enshrouded moon Titan as a stand-in. The new technique shows the dramatic influence that hazy skies could have on our ability to learn about these alien worlds orbiting distant stars.

28 May 2014

Dark Matter Rich Gas Cloud Survives Collision with Milky Way

The Smith Cloud, a large gas cloud with enough gas to form two million suns, is on the verge of colliding with the Milky Way.

27 May 2014

Research Team Confirms Link Between Gamma Bursts and their Counterparts in Several Radio Frequencies

Blazars are among the largest and most energetic objects in the universe. Jets of matter ("jets") shoot from the cores of these active galaxies shoot, which are accompanied by huge bursts of gamma rays.

26 May 2014

Scientists Discover Previously Unknown Phase in Iron Arsenide Superconductors

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have discovered a previously unknown phase in a class of superconductors called iron arsenides. This sheds light on a debate over the interactions between atoms and electrons that are responsible for their unusual superconductivity.

26 May 2014

Supernova SN2013cu Picked on a Routine Sky Scan by the iPTF

Supernovae—stellar explosions—are incredibly energetic, dynamic events. It is easy to imagine that they are uncommon, but the universe is a big place and supernovae are actually fairly routine.

26 May 2014

Astronomers Believe Smith Cloud is Wrapped in Halo of Dark Matter

Like a bullet wrapped in a full metal jacket, a high-velocity hydrogen cloud hurtling toward the Milky Way appears to be encased in a shell of dark matter, according to a new analysis of data from the National Science Foundation's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT). Astronomers believe that without this protective shell, the high-velocity cloud (HVC) known as the Smith Cloud would have disintegrated long ago when it first collided with the disk of our Galaxy.

26 May 2014

Frontiers of Cold Matter on May 29-30 Celebrating Paul Julienne’s 70th Birthday

JQI fellow Paul Julienne has recently retired from NIST but continues to perform high-level theoretical research in the subject he helped to create---ultracold matter. In honor of his birthday, a meeting called Frontiers of Cold Matter is being held May 29-30 at JQI.

26 May 2014

The P5's Report Recommends Strategic Path for US Particle Physics

Particle physics will become even more of an international endeavor in the coming decades, according to a panel charged with developing a strategic plan for the future of US particle physics, whose long-awaited recommendations were released today.

26 May 2014