Quantum Physics News

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New Family of Four-Quark Objects

An international team of high-energy physicists says the discovery of an electrically charged subatomic particle called Zc(4020) is a sign that they have begun to unveil a whole new family of four-quark objects.

11 Nov 2013

Surprising New Class of Quasars Discovered in Distant Galaxies

Like our Milky Way, every known large galaxy has at its center a supermassive black hole, some of which are surrounded by a super-bright disk of hot gas called a quasar -- but now a research team that includes Penn State astronomers has discovered a surprising new class of quasars in distant galaxies that even the most current theories had not predicted.

11 Nov 2013

Astronomers Discover Bizarre Asteroid with Six Comet-Like Tails of Dust

Astronomers have discovered a "weird and freakish object" resembling a rotating lawn sprinkler in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The find, reported online in today's (Nov. 7) issue of the Astrophysical Journal Letters, has left them scratching their heads and searching for an explanation for the strange asteroid's out-of-this-world appearance.

11 Nov 2013

Researchers Investigate Origins of Young Supermassive Black Holes

Black holes—massive objects in space with gravitational forces so strong that not even light can escape them—come in a variety of sizes. On the smaller end of the scale are the stellar-mass black holes that are formed during the deaths of stars. At the larger end are supermassive black holes, which contain up to one billion times the mass of our sun. Over billions of years, small black holes can slowly grow into the supermassive variety by taking on mass from their surroundings and also by merging with other black holes. But this slow process can't explain the problem of supermassive black holes existing in the early universe—such black holes would have formed less than one billion years after the Big Bang.

8 Nov 2013

Controversial Theory on Accelerating Expansion of the Universe Ruled Out

In a new study, Dartmouth researchers rule out a controversial theory that the accelerating expansion of the universe is an illusion.

8 Nov 2013

Atom Interferometer with Picometer-Level Sensitivity May Detect Gravitational Waves in Space-Time

NASA technologists working to advance a pioneering technology that promises to detect tiny perturbations in the curvature of space-time now want to apply the same technique to map variations in Earth's gravity field.

8 Nov 2013

Physicists Successfully Determine Quantum Geometry of Crystals

Geometrical phases occur in many places in nature. One of the simplest examples is the Foucault pendulum: a tall pendulum free to swing in any vertical plane. Due to the earth rotation, the actual plane of swing rotates relative to the earth. One observes that every day the plane of rotation changes by a small “geometric” angle, associated to the spherical shape of the earth.

8 Nov 2013

Hunting for Cold Dark Matter Axions

Leslie Rosenberg and his colleagues are about to go hunting. Their quarry: A theorized-but-never-seen elementary particle called an axion.

8 Nov 2013

Nobel Prize Winner to Shed New Light on Schrödinger’s Cat at Dublin City University

Dublin City University and Magnet Broadband are delighted to confirm that Professor Serge Haroche will visit DCU as the latest Nobel Prize winner to speak in the highly popular Nobel Laureate Lecture Series. Professor Haroche, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2012, will offer the general public a unique insight into the strange world of Quantum Physics and how its applications can transform life as we know it, now and in the future. Professor Haroche’s lecture, Shedding New Light on Schrödinger’s Cat, will take place in DCU on Monday 11th November at 11:00am.

7 Nov 2013

Pulsar-Timing Arrays Reveal New Information about Frequency and Strength of Black Hole Mergers

Throughout our universe, tucked inside galaxies far, far away, giant black holes are pairing up and merging. As the massive bodies dance around each other in close embraces, they send out gravitational waves that ripple space and time themselves, even as the waves pass right through our planet Earth.

7 Nov 2013