A method that can be used to predict the growth of earthquake faults also aids prediction of the tiniest of phenomena–how arrays of “artificial atoms,” or quantum dots, assemble and stack themselves on semiconductor materials, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers report in the July 15 issue of Physical Review B.
The insight could aid development of more reliable methods for fabricating lasers, sensors and other devices that exploit quantum dots’ special el
Magnetic memory-based information storage systems are getting smaller and smaller, while their capacities are getting larger. However, there is a limit to how small they can get. If the tiny magnets used to store information are smaller than around five nanometres (millionths of a millimetre), vibrations caused by temperature can erase their orientation and, therefore, the information they contain. This is known as the superparamagnetic limit, which physically limits the capacity of magnetic storage
Energy emissions far greater than predicted by Planck’s Law
You can’t get something for nothing, physicists say, but sometimes a radical innovation can come close.
Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories — exceeding the predictions of a 100-year-old law of physics — have shown that filaments fabricated of tungsten lattices emit remarkably more energy than solid tungsten filaments in certain bands of near-infrared wavelengths when heated.
This greater use
New class of superweak particles may reveal secrets of hidden mass in universe
A UC Irvine study has revealed a new class of cosmic particles that may shed light on the composition of dark matter in the universe.
These particles, called superweakly interacting massive particles, or superWIMPs, may constitute the invisible matter that makes up as much as one-quarter of the universe’s mass.
UCI physicists Jonathan Feng, Arvind Rajaraman and Fumihiro Takayama report th
NASA launched its second Mars Exploration Rover, Opportunity, late Monday night aboard a Delta II launch vehicle whose bright glare briefly illuminated Florida Space Coast beaches.
Opportunity’s dash to Mars began with liftoff at 11:18:15 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (8:18:15 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla.
The spacecraft separated successfully from the Delta’s third stage 83 minutes later, after it had been boosted out of Earth orbit
Astronomers looking for planetary systems that resemble our own solar system have found the most similar formation so far. British astronomers, working with Australian and American colleagues, have discovered a planet like Jupiter in orbit round a nearby star that is very like our own Sun. Among the hundred found so far, this system is the one most similar to our Solar System. The planet’’s orbit is like that of Jupiter in our own Solar System, especially as it is nearly circular and there
Daniel S. Carman (Ohio University) and nearly 150 members of Jefferson Lab’s CLAS Collaboration studied the spin transfer from a polarized electron beam to a produced Lambda particle. Their results were recently published in Physical Review Letters.
Measurements taken using Jefferson Lab’s CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS) are telling us more about how matter is produced from “nothing,” that is, the vacuum.
Using the CLAS in Hall B, Daniel S. Carman of Ohio Universit
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility have produced first light from their 10 kilowatt Free-Electron Laser (FEL). This device has been upgraded from the “one kilowatt Infrared Demonstration” FEL, which broke power records by delivering 2,100 watts of infrared light during 2001. Only one and one-half years after the one kilowatt FEL was dismantled, the newly improved FEL, designed to produce 10 kilowatts of infrared and one kilowatt of ultraviol
Achievement Could Improve Understanding of Superconductivity
A team of researchers at JILA, a joint institute of the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder, has done the physics equivalent of efficiently turning yin into yang. They changed individual potassium atoms belonging to a class of particles called fermions into molecules that are part of a fundamentally different class of particles known as bosons
NASA-funded researchers recently obtained the first complete proof of a 50-year-old hypothesis explaining how liquid metals resist turning into solids
The research is featured on the cover of the July issue of Physics Today. It challenges theories about how crystals form by a process called nucleation, important in everything from materials to biological systems.
“Nucleation is everywhere,” said Dr. Kenneth Kelton, the physics professor who leads a research team from Washing
ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft is progressing further every day on its journey to the Red Planet. Everything is set for arrival at Mars on the night of 25 December 2003, after a journey of about 400 million kilometres. In the weeks since its launch, engineers have started to thoroughly test the spacecraft and its equipment.
This testing phase is standard for all spacecraft on the way to their destination. Known as commissioning, it began 3 weeks after the launch. During this time, ground cont
An X-ray movie of the Vela pulsar, made from a series of observations by NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, reveals a spectacularly erratic jet that varies in a way never seen before. The jet of high-energy particles whips about like an untended firehose at about half the speed of light. This behavior gives scientists new insight into the nature of jets from pulsars and black holes.
Chandra observed the Vela pulsar, a rotating neutron star, 13 times between January 2000 and August 2002. The
Gemini Observatory’s new spectrograph, without the help of adaptive optics, recently captured images that are among the sharpest ever obtained of astronomical objects from the ground.
Along with the images and spectra acquired during recent commissioning of the Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph (GMOS) on the 8-metre Gemini South Telescope in Chile, one image is particularly compelling. This Gemini image reveals remarkable details, previously only seen from space, of the Hickson C
This innovative instrument is aimed to hunt the elusive gravitational waves using extremely sophisticated technological solutions.
On July 23rd in Cascina, near Pisa (Italy), the new Virgo interferometer will be inaugurated. The innovative Virgo gravitational-wave-detector is the outcome of more than ten years of collaborative research and development between the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (Infn, Italy) and the National Scientific Research Centre (Cnrs, France). Letizia Mor
A material used to protect submarines from sonar detection is the latest technological breakthrough in ensuring the safe and effective dose of ultrasound in medicine. Practitioners and thousands of patients in physiotherapy departments worldwide will benefit from the latest technology, which will ensure a step forward in the reliability of delivered ultrasound treatment.
The material forms a key component in a novel desk-top ultrasound power meter developed by the UK’s national standards lab
An international team of astronomers have used a unique instrument on the 8-m Gemini South Telescope to determine the ages of stars across the central region of the barred spiral galaxy, M83. Preliminary results provide the first hints of a domino model of star formation where star formation occurs in a time sequence, driven by the movements of gas and stars in the central bar.
The new instrument, called CIRPASS, simultaneously produces 500 spectra, taken from across the whole region of inte
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