NBC News calls it “the ghostly signal that reveals the engine of the universe.” Long-time Slashdot reader fahrbot-bot shares their report: In research published Wednesday in the journal Nature, scientists reported that they’ve made the first detection of almost-ethereal particles called neutrinos that can be traced to carbon-nitrogen-oxygen fusion, known as the CNO cycle, inside the sun. It’s a landmark finding…
Tag: nuclear physics
One of Quantum Physics’ Greatest Paradoxes May Have Lost Its Leading Explanation
fahrbot-bot writes: It’s one of the oddest tenets of quantum theory: a particle can be in two places at once — yet we only ever see it here or there. Textbooks state that the act of observing the particle “collapses” it, such that it appears at random in only one of its two locations. But physicists quarrel over why that would…
How many ETs are in our galaxy? Ask the Alien Civilization Calculator
Researchers at Omni Calculator have created the Alien Civilization Calculator, a unique combination of two different methods of trying to determine how many advanced alien civilizations may exist in our galaxy. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/alien-civilization-calculator-extraterrestrial-intelligence-seti…
Gravitational Waves Reveal Lightest Black Hole Ever Observed
sciencehabit shares a report from Science Magazine: Gravitational wave detectors have spotted a cosmic collision in which a giant black hole swallowed up a mystery object seemingly too heavy to be a neutron star, but too light to be a black hole. Weighing in at 2.6 times the mass of the Sun, the object falls into a hypothetical “mass gap,” a…
Controversial Theory Claims Forests Don’t Just Make Rain — They Make Wind
sciencehabit writes from a report via Science Magazine: With their ability to soak up carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen, the world’s great forests are often referred to as the planet’s lungs. But Anastassia Makarieva, a theorist at the Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute in Russia, says they are its beating heart, too. They recycle vast amounts of moisture into the air…
Quantum rings in the grip of laser light
Ultracold atoms trapped in appropriately prepared optical traps can arrange themselves in surprisingly complex, hitherto unobserved structures, according to scientists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow. In line with their most recent predictions, matter in optical lattices should form tensile and inhomogeneous quantum rings in a controlled manner. …
Black holes are like a hologram
The theory of relativity describes black holes as being spherical, smooth and simple. Quantum theory describes them as being extremely complex and full of information. New research now proposes a surprising solution to this apparent duality. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/black-holes-are-like-a-hologram…
Successfully measuring infinitesimal change in mass of individual atoms for the first time
A new door to the quantum world has been opened: When an atom absorbs or releases energy via the quantum leap of an electron, it becomes heavier or lighter. This can be explained by Einstein’s theory of relativity (E = mc2). However, the effect is minuscule for a single atom. Nevertheless, the team of Klaus Blaum and Sergey Eliseev at the…
Looking for dark matter with the Universe’s coldest material
Scientists have been able to observe the universe and determine that about 80% of the its mass appears to be “dark matter,” which exerts a gravitational pull but does not interact with light, and thus can’t be seen with telescopes. Our current understanding of cosmology and nuclear physics suggests that dark matter could be made of axions, hypothetical particles with unusual…
Charting a course toward quantum simulations of nuclear physics
In nuclear physics, like much of science, detailed theories alone aren’t always enough to unlock solid predictions. There are often too many pieces, interacting in complex ways, for researchers to follow the logic of a theory through to its end. It’s one reason there are still so many mysteries in nature, including how the universe’s basic building blocks coalesce and form…