Physics
Numbers are yet to be crunched and the data analysis goes on, but one thing appears to be certain: scientists at CERN have discovered a new boson, and it's probably the Higgs particle, the missing particle of the Standard Model which is thought to lend all matter its mass. Both the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN observe a new particle with mass between 125 and 126 GeV, comfortably within the band of possible Higgs masses previously identified. Read More
If you're anything like us, you probably spent many an hour in your younger days bouncing up and down on a seesaw (or teeter-totter or teeter board, depending on where you grew up. And, even now, you might fight the desire to relive your childhood and jump on one as you walk past a playground. But Melbourne-based design group ENESS has created a seesaw, which comes complete with hundreds of LEDs and a physics engine to explore the forces at work on the familiar playground staple, that might just prove too difficult to resist. Read More
Physicists at the Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, have achieved a milestone that might soon revolutionize the world of quantum computing, quantum physics, and perhaps shed new light on the mystery of the dark matter in our universe. Experimenting with nanoelectronics, a group led by Prof. Leo Kouwenhoven has succeeded in detecting the elusive Majorana fermion in the laboratory, without the need for a particle accelerator. Read More
Round performance numbers aren't necessarily important milestones, but they do exude an undeniable aura of accomplishment. This was the case when researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) used their largest pulsed magnet to crack the 100 Tesla mark (roughly 2 million times larger than the Earth's magnetic field) by generating a 100.75 Tesla magnetic pulse without damaging the magnet. Read More
A significant step on the path to quantum computing has been taken by an international team of researchers applying a 22-year old theory. They have succeeded in creating quantum bits within a semiconductor for the very first time. Read More
A team of scientists led by the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (MPA) has produced the highest resolution map of the Milky Way's magnetic field ever produced. The map pools over 41,000 measurements from across 26 projects. "The resulting database is equivalent to peppering the entire sky with sources separated by an angular distance of two full moons," said Dr. Tracy Clarke of the Naval Research Laboratory. Read More
British researchers say they've seen a new particle using data from the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. The chi b(3P) is the first new particle that has been clearly observed using the LHC, the world's largest particle accelerator, which is housed in a 17-mile (27-km) long tunnel near the border of Switzerland and France. Read More
The results of two recent experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Geneva suggest physicists are close to discovering the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle. Combined, the two experiments have narrowed the possible band of possible Higgs boson masses. Though not sufficient to claim a discovery, the latest experiments restrict the region in which the Higgs boson might be hiding. Read More
A perfect vacuum is impossible to achieve, at least in theory. As anyone with any interest in quantum physics would know, the vacuum is full of various particles that fluctuate in and out of existence. These "virtual" particles have been the focus of scientist, Christopher Wilson. Working with his team at Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology, Wilson has succeeded in producing real photons from these virtual photons. Which, in layman's terms, means that they have created measurable light ... from nothing. Read More
OPERA confirms earlier claims of faster-than-light neutrinos
On September 23rd, researchers from the European OPERA project made the now-famous announcement that they had observed neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light. Given that Einstein's special theory of relativity states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, their proclamation was naturally met with some skepticism – various physicists stated that there was likely a flaw in the design, implementation or calculations involved the experiment. To their credit, the OPERA collaborative made a point of inviting other scientists to try to replicate their results. In the meantime, however, they’ve replicated those results themselves, and announced today that neutrinos still appear to be the speediest particles in the universe. Read More
