UK researchers decry ‘shameful’ cuts to international support fund

24 Mar 2021

Some of the projects affected by the cuts will be research “hubs” such as the Water Security and Sustainable Development Hub that address issues including flood, drought and climate change risks. (Courtesy: iStock_piyaset)

Over 4500 researchers have signed an open letter warning of significant long-term damage due to cuts made to research funded through international aid money. The reductions, which were announced on 11 March, have been met with outrage from the community, being described as “embarrassing”, “shameful” and “myopic”. Last week six researchers resigned from a UK Research and Innovation advisory group in protest at the move.

 

New imaging algorithm can spot fast-moving and rotating space junk

24 Mar 2021

Space junk: a computer-generated image of objects in Earth orbit that are currently being tracked. Approximately 95% of the objects are orbital debris, rather than functioning satellites. (Courtesy: NASA)

A new imaging algorithm devised by researchers in the US could improve our ability to track space junk orbiting the Earth. Through simulated tests, the team has showed how a cross-correlation of the signals reflected by a piece of debris could be used to extract high-resolution, undistorted images of how an object spins as it travels through space – allowing it to be tracked more accurately. Their algorithm could soon prove invaluable in protecting satellite systems from colliding with space junk.

 

Arecibo Observatory: a scientific giant that fell to Earth

17 Mar 2021 James Dacey

1 December 2020 was a dark day for Puerto Rico and the global astronomy community. The iconic Arecibo Observatory collapsed, with the radio telescope’s 900-tonne suspended platform crashing into the 305 m dish below. Warning signs had been there in the preceding months, but that did little to soften the shock felt by the astronomy community.

 

Meteorite hunters find fireball fragments in England, CERN collider has discovered 59 new hadrons

11 Mar 2021 Hamish Johnston

In this podcast episode we talk to Áine O’Brien of the University of Glasgow who is part of a team of meteorite experts who have gathered up remnants of a 100 kg carbonaceous chondrite meteoroid that exploded over southern England on the last day of February. She explains how a network of cameras and clever mathematics allowed scientists to work out where the fragments landed, and what it was like being out in the field looking for them. O’Brien also talks about how studying the meteorites could shed light on the conditions in which the solar system formed.

 

Atomic nuclei go for a quantum swing

04 Mar 2021 Isabelle Dumé

Exciting nuclei of iron atoms with a flash of X-ray light. (Courtesy: MPI for Nuclear Physics)

Scientists routinely use laser light to control how an atom’s electrons move from one electronic state to another, but controlling an atom’s nuclear state is far more challenging. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, have now used X-ray light to achieve coherent control over nuclear excitations for the first time. As well as contributing to a better understanding of quantum matter, the work could hasten the development of technologies such as ultraprecise nuclear clocks and batteries that can store huge amounts of energy.

 

Quantum mechanics gives new insights into the Gibbs paradox

20 Mar 2021 Lisa Tse

Ignorance is bliss A cartoon depicting the differences between 'ignorant' observers of mixing gases in the classical and quantum versions of the Gibbs paradox. (Courtesy: Bethan Morris, PhD student at University of Nottingham)

Entropy has been a subject of debate among physicists ever since it was formulated in classical thermodynamics some 150 years ago. One such debate centres on the so-called Gibbs paradox, in which the entropy of a system seems to depend on how much an observer knows about it. Astounding and confounding the physics community when it was first put forward by the American physicist Josiah Willard Gibbs in 1875, the paradox has since found numerous resolutions, albeit mainly in the classical setting with ideal gases.

Researchers at the University of Oxford and the University of Nottingham, UK, have now shed light on what the Gibbs paradox may look like in the quantum realm.

 

Working in medical physics: not your average career

30 Jun 2020 James Dacey

For certain fields of physics, it can be tough to explain how the research has a direct benefit to society. That is never the case with medical physics – a career where you can apply a technical skillset to directly improve people’s everyday lives. In this episode of the Physics World Stories podcast, Andrew Glester catches up with three medical physicists from The Christie – the largest cancer hospital in Europe – to learn about their careers.

 

Autonomous cars: potential lifesavers but with new risks

26 Aug 2020 James Dacey

Studies suggest that human error is responsible for over 90% of the 1.25 million people who die each year globally due to car accidents. Therefore, improving driver safety is one of the biggest incentives for increasing the autonomy of vehicles. But this brave new world of autonomous driving is not without its own risks – as Andrew Glester discovers in the August episode of the Physics World Stories podcast.

 

Searching for signs of past life on Mars with NASA’s Perseverance rover

10 Feb 2021 James Dacey

February 2021 is an exciting month for Mars exploration, with three separate missions arriving at the red planet. In this episode of the Physics World Stories podcast, Andrew Glester takes a closer look at one of those missions – NASA’s Perseverance rover. Equipped with sophisticated imaging devices, Perseverance will look for signs of ancient microbial life and will help pave the way for future human missions to our neighbouring planet.

 

NASA’s Perseverance rover lands safely on Mars

18 Feb 2021 James Dacey

Illustration of NASA’s Perseverance rover firing its descent stage engines as it nears the Martian surface (Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA’s Perseverance rover has landed on Mars, completing its seven-month journey to the red planet. The Mars 2020 mission will search for signs of ancient microbial life and collect rock samples that will be returned to Earth later in the decade. Perseverance’s arrival marks the end of a busy February for Mars exploration, with the United Arab Emirates and China successfully delivering Mars orbiters earlier this month.

 

Arecibo Observatory: a scientific giant that fell to Earth

17 Mar 2021 James Dacey

1 December 2020 was a dark day for Puerto Rico and the global astronomy community. The iconic Arecibo Observatory collapsed, with the radio telescope’s 900-tonne suspended platform crashing into the 305 m dish below. Warning signs had been there in the preceding months, but that did little to soften the shock felt by the astronomy community.

In this episode of the Physics World Stories podcast, Andrew Glester speaks with astronomers about the impact of this dramatic event. Abel Méndez, a planetary astrobiologist at the University of Puerto Rico, explains why the observatory was a beacon for Puerto Rican scientists and engineers. Mourning continues but Méndez and colleagues have already submitted a white paper to the National Science Foundation with plans for a new telescope array on the same site.

 

Proton contains more anti-down quarks than anti-up

16 Mar 2021

Quark and gluon sea: in this illustration of the proton the large spheres represent the three valence quarks, the small spheres other quarks and the springs the gluons holding them together. (Courtesy: Brookhaven National Laboratory.)

The sea of short-lived particles in the proton has a far higher abundance of anti-down quarks than anti-up quarks, new research has shown. An international team including Paul Reimer of Argonne National Laboratory in the US, discovered the asymmetry by firing a beam of protons at a hydrogen (proton) target at Fermilab. The results shed new light on highly complex interactions within the proton and could lead to a better understanding of the dynamics that unfold following high-energy proton collisions.

 

D-Wave demonstrates performance advantage in quantum simulation

16 Mar 2021 Maria Violaris

Simulated and simulator An illustration of the structure of the quantum magnet (above) that was simulated by a D-Wave quantum processor (below). (Courtesy: D-Wave Systems)

Researchers at the quantum computing firm D-Wave Systems have shown that their quantum processor can simulate the behaviour of an “untwisting” quantum magnet much faster than a classical machine. Led by D-Wave’s director of performance research Andrew King, the team used the new low-noise quantum processor to show that the quantum speed-up increases for harder simulations. The result shows that even near-term quantum simulators could have a significant advantage over classical methods for practical problems such as designing new materials.

 

Spacecraft in a ‘warp bubble’ could travel faster than light, claims physicist

19 Mar 2021

Warp drive: could positive-energy solitons move a spacecraft faster than the speed of light? (Courtesy: iStock/VikaSuh)

Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity famously dictates that no known object can travel faster than the speed of light in vacuum, which is 299,792 km/s. This speed limit makes it unlikely that humans will ever be able to send spacecraft to explore beyond our local area of the Milky Way.

However, new research by Erik Lentz at the University of Göttingen suggests a way beyond this limit. The catch is that his scheme requires vast amounts of energy and it may not be able to propel a spacecraft.

 

Three-node quantum network makes its debut

17 Mar 2021

Entanglement exchange Creating entanglement between multiple nodes in a network is a milestone for quantum communications. (Courtesy: iStock/Kngkyle2)

Scientists at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have taken an important step towards a quantum Internet by connecting three qubits (nodes) in two different labs into a quantum network. Such quantum networks could be used for secure communication, for safer means of identification or even distributed quantum computing.

The group, led by Ronald Hanson, is no stranger to setting up quantum links. In 2015 members of the group performed the first loophole-free Bell inequality violation, successfully entangling two electron spin states over 1.3 kilometres in an experiment that finally put the lid on the 80-year-old Einstein-Podolski-Rosen dispute about the nature of entanglement.

 

Glashow resonance is spotted in a neutrino detector at long last

17 Mar 2021

Glashow event visualization: each coloured circle shows an IceCube sensor that was triggered by the event; red circles indicate sensors triggered earlier in time, and green-blue circles indicate sensors triggered later. (Credit: IceCube Collaboration)

Physicists working on the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica say they have made the first observation of the Glashow resonance – a process first predicted more than 60 years ago. If confirmed, the observation would provide further confirmation of the Standard Model of particle physics and help astrophysicists understand how astrophysical neutrinos are produced.

In 1959, the theoretical physicist and future Nobel laureate Sheldon Glashow worked out that an electron and an antineutrino could interact via the weak interaction to produce a W boson. Subsequent calculations indicated that this coupling – known as the Glashow resonance – should occur at antineutrino energies of around 6.3 PeV (6.3 x 1015 V).

 

Ultracold atoms permit direct observation of quasiparticle dynamics

18 Mar 2021 Oliver Stockdale

Analogue interaction Illustration of how an impurity atom may gradually evolve into a quasiparticle by interacting with a surrounding medium. This mechanism is similar to how an electron can distort a crystal lattice when it moves through a solid, as shown in the inset. (Courtesy: CCQ, Aarhus University)

Theories of how quasiparticles form have been around for more than 80 years, but direct observations of the process have remained elusive due to experimental challenges. A team of researchers at the Center for Complex Quantum Systems, Aarhus University, Denmark has recently overcome these obstacles by studying quasiparticle formation and dynamics in ultracold atoms.

The Soviet physicist Lev Landau developed a theory of quasiparticles – emergent phenomena that arise from a complex interaction between many real particles – in the 1930s. This theory, which is still routinely used in practical applications ranging from superconductivity to transport processes in electronic devices, considers the motion of an electron through a solid and describes how the electron (the quantum impurity) triggers the formation of a quasiparticle within the solid.

An ultracold analogue

MEDICAL NEWS IN THE TREATMENT OF COVID-19 MULTI-MUTATIONS 2020 -2021

MEDICAL NEWS IN THE TREATMENT OF COVID-19 MULTI-MUTATIONS 2020 -2021

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