Physics

Some unexplained results from the XENON1T dark-matter detector — a 1,300-kg vat of super-pure liquid xenon shielded from cosmic rays in a cryostat submerged in water deep 1.5 km beneath the Gran Sasso mountains of Italy — may have been caused by dark energy particles produced in a region of …

When two substances are brought together, they will eventually settle into a steady state called the thermodynamic equilibrium. In new research, a team of physicists at Aalto University wanted to disrupt this state to see what happens; they subjected combinations of oils with different dielectric constants and conductivities to an …

Physicists from the Department of Health Science and Technology in the Institute of Food Nutrition and Health at the ETH Zürich have applied the science of rheology to the seemingly quaint purpose of improving the quality of a cup of black tea. Black tea brewed in tap water; whereas tea …

Physicists from the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have observed a process called WWW production: the simultaneous creation of three massive W bosons in high-energy proton-proton collisions. Display of a candidate WWW→ 3 leptons + neutrinos event; the event is identified by its decay to a muon …

An acoustic amplifier developed by Sandia National Laboratories researchers measures 0.5 mm2 (0.0008 square inches), and is more than 10 times more effective than the earlier versions. The acousto-electric chip includes a radio-frequency amplifier, circulator and filter; SEM image shows details of the amplifier. Image credit: Bret Latter / Matt …

Physicists from the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have successfully performed measurements of ‘lepton flavor universality,’ a fundamental principle of the Standard Model of particle physics. Their results are the first such measurement from LHC, and the most precise one to date, surpassing the precision obtained from …

Quark-gluon plasma is a state of dense matter with the quarks and gluons being its constituents. Soon after the Big Bang the matter was just in such a phase. When the Universe was expanding and cooling down the quark-gluon plasma turned into hadrons (neutrons and protons), which further formed the …

Physicists at the Heavy Ion Research Facility in China have observed the lightest uranium isotope to date, uranium-214 (214U), and precisely measured the α-decay properties of two previously known isotopes, 216U and 218U. Enhanced α-particle preformation in 214U and 216U. Image credit: Zhang et al., doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.126.152502. Uranium is a …

Dark matter with masses below 1 GeV can scatter, become captured, deposit annihilation energy, and increase the heat flow within extrasolar gas giants, rogue planets and brown dwarfs peppered throughout the Milky Way Galaxy, according to a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Leane Smirnov suggest light dark …

Molecular quantum gases (that is, ultracold and dense molecular gases) have many potential applications, including quantum control of chemical reactions, precision measurements, quantum simulation and quantum information processing. For molecules, to reach the quantum regime usually requires efficient cooling at high densities. In new research, physicists from the James Franck …