Cosmochemists at the University of California, San Diego, have solved a long standing mystery in the formation of the solar system: Oxygen, the most abundant element in Earth’s crust, follows a strange, anomalous pattern in the oldest, most pristine rocks, one that must result from a different chemical process than the well-understood reactions that form minerals containing oxygen on Earth.
Dark matter, believed by physicists to outweigh all the normal matter in the universe by more than five to one, is by definition invisible. But certain features associated with dark matter might be detectable, according to some of the many competing theories describing this elusive matter. Now scientists at MIT and elsewhere have developed a tool that could test some of these predictions and thus prove, or disprove, one of the leading theories.
By David L. Chandler
28 Oct 2013
Texas A&M University at Qatar hosted representatives of the European Organization for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research (CERN) and visiting physicists to a workshop this month at Hamad bin Khalifa University (HBKU) Student Center.
Converting heat directly into power could be a major source of renewable energy. A novel approach to study this so called thermoelectricity may help to design new materials that are highly efficient. In an experiment with cold atoms trapped by lasers at ETH Zurich an international group of physicists precisely simulates the behavior of thermoelectric materials.
The New Horizons in Engineering Distinguished Lectureship Series at Clarkson University has announced that Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Deputy Director for Science & Technology William H. Goldstein will speak next month in a presentation titled "Does Physics Still Matter?"
Planets are formed in disks of gas and dust around nascent stars. Now, combined observations with the compound telescope ALMA and the Herschel Space Observatory have produced a rare view of a planetary construction site in an intermediate state of evolution: Contrary to expectations, the disk around the star HD 21997 appears to contain both primordial gas left over from the formation of the star itself and dust that appears to have been produced in collisions between planetesimals - small rocks that are the building blocks for the much larger planets.
Almost every galaxy has at its core a supermassive black hole, millions of times more massive than our sun, each gravitationally dictating the fate of its host. Though black holes reveal much about gravity and its effects on the visible universe, actually testing them has been impossible – until now.
Light can be confined inside a reflective medium—a stream of water, a thread of glass fiber. In fiber optics, the light moves, trapped in a glass strand via the mechanism of total internal reflection. Light “totally” bounces at the surfaces, back and forth, carrying information over vast distances.
Scientists have a new way to edge around a difficult problem in quantum physics, now that a research team from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Maryland's Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) have proved* their recent theory about how particles of light flow within a novel device they built.
EPFL scientists have provided the first evidence ever that it is possible to generate a magnetic field by using heat instead of electricity. The phenomenon is referred to as the Magnetic Seebeck effect or ‘thermomagnetism’.
A new study set out to use numerical simulations to validate previous theoretical predictions describing materials exhibiting so-called antiferromagneting characteristics. A recently discovered theory shows that the ordering temperature depends on two factors -- namely the spin-wave velocity and the staggered magnetisation.
You might think that a pair of parallel plates hanging motionless in a vacuum just a fraction of a micrometer away from each other would be like strangers passing in the night—so close but destined never to meet. Thanks to quantum mechanics, you would be wrong.
Physicist Prof. Dr. Andreas Ludwig has been chosen for an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship, the highest international research prize in Germany. Professor Ludwig, who is currently at the University of California, Santa Barbara, USA may be researching at the University of Cologne in the future. The awards ceremony is taking place in Berlin on 7 May, 2014.
CERN is launching Accelerate @ CERN, its new country specific one month research award for artists who have never had a longer stay at a science laboratory before. It is the sister strand of CERN's successful flagship artists residency programme, Collide @ CERN. Both are part of Arts @ CERN, which was initiated by CERN’s Cultural Policy, Great Arts for Great Science in 2011.
Scientists used the powerful X-ray laser at the U.S. Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to create movies detailing trillionths-of-a-second changes in the arrangement of copper atoms after an extreme shock. Movies like these will help researchers create new kinds of materials and test the strength of existing ones.