Merely a decade ago, people were amazed that their cellular phones could send a simple text message. Now smartphones send and receive high-resolution photographs, videos, emails with large attachments, and much more. The desire for endless data has become insatiable.
An international team has used the light produced by the Free Electron Laser FERMI at the research Centre Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste in the AREA Science Park to control the ultrafast movement of electrons. The experiment, published in the journal Nature Photonics, opens the way to the study of more complex processes which occur in nature on the scale of attoseconds (billionths of a billionth of a second), such as photosynthesis, combustion, catalysis and atmospheric chemistry.
Electrical resistance is considered a simple concept, and is similar to friction. While friction slows down objects rolling over a surface, electrical resistance slows the transfer of electrons via a conductive material. Two physicists have discovered that electrons can assist in turning resistance on its head, resulting in the production of vortices and a backward flow of electricity.
Explore the infinite mysteries of black holes and the origin of the universe at the CWU Astronomy Club Star Party. Black holes—where gravity is so strong, not even light can escape—are thought to have formed when the universe began. The event features guest speaker Jason Arakawa, whose interests include astrophysics, cosmology, and general relativity. He is a junior majoring in physics, with an astronomy minor.
Physicists have zoomed in on the transition that could explain why copper-oxides have such impressive superconducting powers.
A team of physicists including Russian researchers succeeded in conducting an experiment in which, for the first time in history, control over ultrafast motion of electrons down to three attoseconds (one attosecond refers to a second as one second refers to the lifetime of the Universe) was proved possible. This fact paves a way to new directions of research that seemed improbable before. The experiment was conducted with the help of the free-electron laser FERMI located at the "Elettra Sincrotrone" research center in Trieste, Italy.
Quantum physics is counterintuitive. Many of the phenomena in the quantum world do not have a classical analog: In the quantum world, a coin is not either heads or tails – but can have both properties at the same time. For a better understanding of such phenomena, laboratory experiments are indispensable.
The life of a subatomic particle can be hectic. The charged nuclei and electrons that zip around the vacuum vessels of doughnut-shaped fusion machines known as tokamaks are always in motion. But while that motion helps produce the fusion reactions that could power a new class of electricity generator, the turbulence it generates can also limit those reactions.
Although the star-covered night sky is regarded by many as a synonym of serenity, the cosmos is in fact a rather hostile place. It hosts many extreme environments that would instantaneously eradicate any life nearby. A new space mission is about to reveal this violent nature in greater detail than ever before: On Feb. 17, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched its ASTRO-H satellite – a very precise and sensitive eye for X-rays emerging from hot and energetic processes in space. After its successful lift-off, the spacecraft was renamed “Hitomi,” which means “pupil of the eye” in Japanese.
Astronomers have discovered a spectacular tail of gas more than 300,000 light years across coming from a nearby galaxy.
Nanoco Group plc, a world leader in the development and manufacture of cadmium-free quantum dots and other nanomaterials, today announced it was selected as the winner of the Prism Awards 2016 in the Materials and Coatings category for its cadmium-free CFQD® quantum dots. The award was presented at a ceremony held in San Francisco during the SPIE Photonics West Conference, February 13-18.
New research demonstrates that particles at the quantum level can in fact be seen as behaving something like billiard balls rolling along a table, and not merely as the probabilistic smears that the standard interpretation of quantum mechanics suggests. But there’s a catch – the tracks the particles follow do not always behave as one would expect from “realistic” trajectories, but often in a fashion that has been termed “surrealistic”.
If topological insulators are doped with impurities that possess magnetic properties, they lose their conductivity. Yet contrary to what has been assumed thus far, it is not the magnetism that leads to this. This has been shown by recent experiments with BESSY II at HZB. The results are now published in Nature Communications. Understanding these effects is crucial for applications of topological insulators in information technology.
While a classical bit found in conventional electronics exists only in binary one or zero states, the more resourceful quantum bit, or ‘qubit,’ is represented by a vector, pointing to a simultaneous combination of the one and zero states. To fully implement a qubit, it is necessary to control the direction of this qubit’s vector, which is generally done using fine-tuned and noise-isolated procedures.
Researchers have demonstrated how the behavior of unusually-shaped black holes could disprove Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the cornerstone of modern physics. However, such an object could only be present in a universe with at least five dimensions.
By Jake Wilkinson
19 Feb 2016