Physics and Matter News - October 2009 Archives

LANL Roadrunner models nonlinear physics of high-power lasers (10/31/2009)

Los Alamos scientists are using an adapted version of VPIC, a particle-in-cell plasma physics code, to model the nonlinear physics of laser backscatter energy transfer and plasma instabilities to assist colleagues at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as they attempt to reach fusion ignition at the National Ignition Facility next year. ...> Full Article

Gamma-ray photon race ends in dead heat; Einstein wins this round (10/30/2009)

A pair of gamma-ray photons -- one possessed of a million times the energy of the other -- arrived at virtually the same instant at NASA's orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, after a 7.3 billion year race across the universe. Some proponents of alternatives to Einstein's theory of gravity would have predicted that the more energetic would have been much farther behind the less energetic one. They were wrong -- Einstein wins this round. ...> Full Article

Magnetic mixing creates quite a stir (10/29/2009)

Sandia researchers have developed a process that can mix tiny volumes of liquid, even in complicated spaces.Researchers currently use all types of processes to try and create mixing, with only "mixed" success. "In small devices," says Sandia materials scientist Jim Martin, "people have tried all kinds of pillars and mixing cells to initiate mixing, but these approaches don't work well." Researchers need simpler and more reliable ways to mix in tiny places such as micrometer-sized channels, Martin said. ...> Full Article

Researchers study materials, combustion, cancer with new 'T-ray' instrument (10/28/2009)

Iowa State University researchers are beginning to work with a new $500,000 terahertz ray instrument that provides a new way to measure and characterize materials. The instrument should produce useful data for the automotive, aviation, food, energy, materials, pharmaceuticals, medical, forensics, defense and homeland security fields. ...> Full Article

Researchers create first hyperlens for sound waves (10/27/2009)

Berkeley Lab researchers have developed the world's first acoustic hyperlens, a device that provides an eightfold boost in the magnification power of ultrasound, underwater sonar and other sound-based imaging technologies. ...> Full Article

Physicists turn to radio dial for finer atomic matchmaking (10/24/2009)

Investigating mysterious data in ultracold gases of rubidium atoms, scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland and their collaborators have found that properly tuned radio-frequency waves can influence how much the atoms attract or repel one another, opening up new ways to control their interactions. ...> Full Article

A new technique identifies versions of the same song (10/23/2009)

A team of researchers from Pompeu Fabra University has developed a system to identify common patterns in versions of songs, which will help to quantify the similarity of musical pieces. The technique, which appears in the New Journal of Physics, could be applied to analyze time series of data in other fields, such as economy, biology or astronomy. ...> Full Article

Making monster waves (10/21/2009)

Research into monstrous rogue waves points the way to improved long distance optical communication, and could help us understand how giant, destructive waves form at sea. ...> Full Article

Scientists use supercomputers to 'see' black holes (10/20/2009)

Scientists at Rochester Institute of Technology have won time on one of the fastest computers in the world in their quest to "shine light" on black holes and test unexplored aspects of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The team is also collaborating with scientists at other institutions to create an open toolkit and cyberinfrastructure to model black holes, neutron stars and accretion disks. ...> Full Article

On the road to fusion energy, an accelerator to study warm dense matter (10/18/2009)

Warm dense matter exists in the cores of gas giant planets and the preliminary stages of nuclear fusion, among other inaccessible places. With an accelerator being built at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as part of the Heavy Ion Fusion Science Virtual National Laboratory, a collaboration among Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, scientists will soon be able to study warm dense matter in the laboratory. ...> Full Article

Grant to design neutrino detector (10/17/2009)

A consortium led by UC Davis physics professor Robert Svoboda will design the world's largest neutrino detector under a $4.4 million contract recently awarded by the National Science Foundation. ...> Full Article

Quantum computer chips now 1 step closer to reality (10/16/2009)

In the quest for smaller, faster computer chips, researchers are increasingly turning to quantum mechanics -- the exotic physics of the small. The problem: the manufacturing techniques required to make quantum devices have been equally exotic. That is, until now. ...> Full Article

Physicists discover novel electronic properties in two-dimensional carbon structure (10/15/2009)

Rutgers researchers have discovered novel electronic properties in two-dimensional sheets of carbon atoms called graphene that could one day be the heart of speedy and powerful electronic devices. The new findings, previously considered possible by physicists but only now being seen in the laboratory, show that electrons in graphene can interact strongly with each other. The physicists discovered that the fractional quantum Hall effect in graphene is even more robust than in standard semiconductors. ...> Full Article

A road of no return (10/12/2009)

Light readily bounces off obstacles in its path. Some of these reflections are captured by our eyes, thus participating in the visual perception of the objects around us. In contrast to this usual behavior of light, MIT researchers have implemented for the first time a one-way structure in which microwave light flows losslessly around obstacles or defects. This concept, when used in lightwave circuits, might one day reduce their internal connections to simple one-way conduits with much improved capacity and efficiency. ...> Full Article

Scientists discover quantum fingerprints of chaos (10/10/2009)

Poul Jessen and his team in the University of Arizona's College of Optical Sciences are the first to produce experimental evidence that classical chaos occurs in the quantum world. ...> Full Article

Researchers create smaller and more efficient nuclear battery (10/9/2009)

Batteries can power anything from small sensors to large systems. While scientists are finding ways to make them smaller but even more powerful, problems can arise when these batteries are much larger and heavier than the devices themselves. University of Missouri researchers are developing a nuclear energy source that is smaller, lighter and more efficient. ...> Full Article

For future superconductors, a little bit of lithium may do hydrogen a lot of good (10/8/2009)

Study suggests strategies for converting hydrogen to metal at significantly lower pressures ...> Full Article

Large-scale cousin of elusive 'magnetic monopoles' found (10/7/2009)

Researchers working at the NIST Center for Neutron Research have created a molecular magnetic "monopole," an analog to the elusive magnetic monopole particles theorized in 1931 by Paul Dirac -- but never actually found. ...> Full Article

Building a better qubit (10/7/2009)

Combining 6 photons together results in highly robust qubits ...> Full Article

Physicists seek to keep next-gen colliders in 1 piece (10/6/2009)

Controlling huge electromagnetic forces that have the potential to destroy the next generation of particle accelerators is the subject of a new paper by a University of Manchester physicist. ...> Full Article

Physicists observe magnetism in gas for the first time (10/4/2009)

An international team of physicists has for the first time observed magnetic behavior in an atomic gas, addressing a decades-old debate as to whether it is possible for a gas or liquid to become ferromagnetic and exhibit magnetic properties. ...> Full Article

Physicist works to understand atomic collisions important to ultracold quantum gasses (10/3/2009)

A K-State physics professor is studying what happens when atoms collide in groups of three and four. These few-body collisions play an important role in experiments on ultracold quantum gasses. ...> Full Article

Spallation Neutron Source first of its kind to reach megawatt power (10/2/2009)

The Department of Energy's Spallation Neutron Source, already the world's most powerful facility for pulsed neutron scattering science, is now the first pulsed spallation neutron source to break the one-megawatt barrier. ...> Full Article

Physicists create first atomic-scale map of quantum dots (10/1/2009)

University of Michigan physicists have created the first atomic-scale maps of quantum dots, a major step toward the goal of producing "designer dots" that can be tailored for specific applications. ...> Full Article