Physics

    (Credit: Robin Dienel/Carnegie Institution for Science)We are constantly learning new things about the universe, but the more we know, the clearer it becomes that we’re missing pieces of the puzzle. The possible existence of dark matter is one of the more vexing missing pieces, but a team from …

Named a swirlonic state, the newly-discovered state of active matter is comprised of swirlons, formed by groups of active quasiparticles orbiting their common center of mass. Swirlons demonstrate a surprising behavior: in response to an external load they move with a constant velocity proportional to the applied force, just as …

The high-pressure magnetic phase observed in iron trithiohypophosphate, a 2D material that transitions from an insulator to a metal when compressed, likely forms a precursor to superconductivity. The magnetic structure of FePS3. Image credit: Cavendish Laboratory. Iron trithiohypophosphate (FePS3), or magnetic graphene, belongs to a family of materials known as …

Physicists from the ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have found first evidence of the Higgs boson decaying to a low-mass dilepton system (either an electron or a muon pair with opposite charge) and a photon. Known as Dalitz decay, this is one of …

  The 20th century was notable for numerous reasons, not least of which that humanity split the atom. In the remnants of atomic explosions, scientists found never-before-seen elements like einsteinium. Now, almost 70 years after its discovery, scientists have collected enough einsteinium to conduct some basic analysis. Scientists understood that …

Gravitational-wave detectors can be used to measure gravitational-field hair of extreme black holes, according to a paper published in the journal Physical Review D. Extreme Kerr black holes have gravitational hair that can be measured at finite distances and violates the uniqueness theorems. Image credit: Sci-News.com / Zdeněk Bardon / …

Spinning black holes store rotational energy that can be extracted; when a black hole is immersed in an externally supplied magnetic field, reconnection of magnetic field lines within the ergosphere can generate negative energy particles that fall into the black hole event horizon while the other accelerated particles escape stealing …

First theorized in the 1970s, axions are hypothetical particles that were proposed to preserve a time-reversal symmetry of the nuclear force. These particles may make up dark matter and may be produced thermally inside the cores of neutron stars, escape the stars due to their feeble interactions with matter, and …

A team of physicists from the United States and Japan has experimentally observed a phenomenon called quantum oscillation in a two-dimensional topological insulator — monolayer tungsten ditelluride (WTe2). The team’s findings, published in the journal Nature, hint at the existence of an entirely new type of quantum particle — a …

Quantum teleportation is essential for many quantum information technologies, including long-distance quantum networks. Using fiber-coupled devices, including state-of-the-art low-noise superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors and off-the-shelf optics, scientists from Fermilab, Caltech, ATT, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the University of Calgary, and Harvard University have demonstrated sustained, long-distance (44 km of fiber) …