General Physics news

CERN atom-smasher restarts after 14-month hiatus: official

Physics / General Physics

2 hours ago | 4 / 5 (1) | 0

The world's biggest atom-smasher, shut down after its inauguration in September 2008 amid technical faults, restarted on Friday, a spokesman for the European Organisation for Nuclear Research said.

Tapering a Free-Electron Laser to Extract More Juice

Physics / General Physics

1hour ago | not rated yet | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers from the NSLS and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) have demonstrated a technique that could be used to significantly improve the quantity and quality of light ...

Ultra-Powerful Laser Reproduces How Star's Jets Travel through Interstellar Space

Physics / General Physics

2 hours ago | 4.3 / 5 (4) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- A multi-trillion-watt laser at the University of Rochester has simulated a stellar jet -- an outpouring of matter from a fledgling star -- with unprecedented realism.

Novel connector uses magnets for leak-free microfluidic devices

Physics / General Physics

Nov 18, 2009 | 4.8 / 5 (4) | 0

Like other users of microfluidic systems, National Institute of Standards and Technology researcher Javier Atencia was faced with an annoying engineering problem: how to simply, reliably and most of all, tightly, ...

Stimulus grant will improve physics arXiv

Physics / General Physics

Nov 18, 2009 | 3.5 / 5 (2) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Stimulus funding will enhance Cornell's e-print arXiv of scientific papers to help users identify a work's main concepts, see research reports in context and easily find related work.

Researchers Find Innate Correlations Among Different Power Law Phenomena

Physics / General Physics

Nov 17, 2009 | 4.3 / 5 (15) | 12

(PhysOrg.com) -- Studying the patterns that emerge in natural and social phenomena is a popular area of research, although usually individual phenomena are studied separately from each other. In a recent study, ...

LHC nears restart after repairs

Physics / General Physics

Nov 17, 2009 | 4.4 / 5 (16) | 3

The European Organization for Nuclear Research says it expects to restart the world's largest atom smasher by this weekend after more than a year of repairs.

Spotting evidence of directed percolation

Physics / General Physics

Nov 17, 2009 | 3.5 / 5 (2) | 0

A team of physicists has, for the first time, seen convincing experimental evidence for directed percolation, a phenomenon that turns up in computer models of the ways diseases spread through a population ...

Engineer Discovers Why Particles Like Flour Disperse on Liquids

Physics / General Physics

Nov 16, 2009 | 4.3 / 5 (15) | 2

(PhysOrg.com) -- Even if you are not a cook, you might have wondered why a pinch of flour (or any small particles) thrown into a bowl of water will disperse in a dramatic fashion, radiating outward as if it ...

Measuring Electron Orbitals

Physics / General Physics

Nov 16, 2009 | 5 / 5 (6) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- For the first time, it has been possible to measure electron density in individual molecular states using what is known as the photoelectric effect. Now published in Science, this method repres ...

A line on string theory

Physics / General Physics

Nov 12, 2009 | 4.7 / 5 (44) | 15

(PhysOrg.com) -- A Harvard theoretical physicist has discussed with scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland the possibility that they may discover a theorized "stau" particle, with a lifetime ...

Do we need dark matter?

Physics / General Physics

Nov 12, 2009 | 4.2 / 5 (19) | 35

It's the biggest problem in physics: the matter we can see in the universe accounts for just five per cent of the observed gravity that holds galaxies together.

NSLS-II Project Beamline Conceptual Designs

Physics / General Physics

Nov 10, 2009 | 5 / 5 (1) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- The NSLS-II Experimental Facilities Division achieved an important milestone in September when the conceptual design reports for the initial six project beamlines were completed and submitted to NSLS-II management.

Peckish bird briefly downs big atom smasher

Physics / General Physics

Nov 09, 2009 | 4.1 / 5 (14) | 22

A peckish bird briefly knocked out part of the world's biggest atom smasher by causing a chain reaction with a piece of bread, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said Monday.

Russian bomb physicist Ginzburg dead at 93

Physics / General Physics

Nov 09, 2009 | 5 / 5 (6) | 0

Nobel Physics prize winner Vitaly Ginzburg, who helped develop the Soviet hydrogen bomb, has died at age 93, the Russian Academy of Sciences said Monday.

Contracts Awarded for Production of NSLS-II Storage Ring Magnets

Physics / General Physics

Nov 09, 2009 | 5 / 5 (1) | 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- All seven contracts for the production of the NSLS-II storage ring magnets have now been awarded -- a significant milestone for the project. The magnets -- 750 in total -- will be made by vendors in the United ...

Plasma-in-a-bag for sterilizing devices

Physics / General Physics

Nov 09, 2009 | not rated yet | 1

The practice of sterilizing medical tools and devices helped revolutionize health care in the 19th century because it dramatically reduced infections associated with surgery. Through the years, numerous ways of sterilization ...

Tiny Music Player Made from Wire Bridge (w/ Video)

Physics / General Physics

Nov 04, 2009 | 4.2 / 5 (17) | 1

(PhysOrg.com) -- In 2008, scientists built a loudspeaker made of carbon nanotubes that produced sound and music based on the thermoacoustic effect. Now, a different team of scientists has built a loudspeaker ...