http://www.physorg.com/physics-news/physics/ en-us PhysOrg.com provides the latest news on physics, materials, nanotech, science and technology. (AP) -- Scientists are preparing the world's largest atom smasher to explore the depths of matter after successfully restarting the $10 billion machine following more than a year of repairs. http://www.physorg.com/news178024871.html Physics - General Physics Sat, 21 Nov 2009 11:21:52 EST news178024871 (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 produced from a free-electron laser (FEL) - a source that provides pulses of light that can be 1,000 times shorter than those at conventional storage ring light sources. http://www.physorg.com/news177952043.html Physics - General Physics Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:24:58 EST news177952043 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. http://www.physorg.com/news177951527.html Physics - General Physics Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:00:46 EST news177951527 (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. http://www.physorg.com/news177949235.html Physics - General Physics Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:27:46 EST news177949235 (PhysOrg.com) -- The investment in nuclear power has been growing around the world over the last few years, being viewed as a means for countries to control their energy security, avoid the price fluctuations of other energy sources, and reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, but concerns are now being raised. http://www.physorg.com/news177839133.html Physics - General Physics Thu, 19 Nov 2009 09:50:06 EST news177839133 A recent experiment at the DOE's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has found that a proton's nearest neighbors in the nucleus of the atom may modify the proton's internal structure. http://www.physorg.com/news177787801.html Physics - General Physics Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:31:37 EST news177787801 Like surfers on monster waves, electrons can ride waves of plasma to very high energies in a very short distance. Scientists have proven that plasma acceleration works. Now they're developing it as a way to dramatically shrink the size and cost of particle accelerators for science, medicine, industry, and myriad other uses. http://www.physorg.com/news177786729.html Physics - General Physics Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:13:04 EST news177786729 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, connect his tiny devices to the external pumps and reservoirs delivering liquids into the system. While pondering this one day, he randomly picked up two magnets and began playing with them. As the magnets pulled apart and then snapped back together, Atencia realized that he had his solution. http://www.physorg.com/news177761689.html Physics - General Physics Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:00:02 EST news177761689 (PhysOrg.com) -- In everything from computer processor chips to car engines to electric powerplants, the need to get rid of excess heat creates a major source of inefficiency. But new research points the way to a technology that might make it possible to harvest much of that wasted heat and turn it into usable electricity. http://www.physorg.com/news177761180.html Physics - General Physics Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:07:11 EST news177761180 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. http://www.physorg.com/news177700443.html Physics - General Physics Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:14:20 EST news177700443 (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, researchers have found innate correlations among some of these phenomena, showing that the amount of money that individuals in a society donate to a charity can be used to determine the distribution of personal wealth in that society. The connection between these two topics can also be used for exploring the complexity of a society's economic system. http://www.physorg.com/news177667305.html Physics - General Physics Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:10:03 EST news177667305 (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 was exploding. Pushpendra Singh, PhD, a mechanical engineering professor at NJIT who has studied and written about the phenomenon, has not only thought about it, but can explain why. http://www.physorg.com/news177616622.html Physics - General Physics Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:30:05 EST news177616622 (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 represents a key building block in the development of organic semiconductor elements. Supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF, the success of this project rested on the mathematical transformation of the measured data. This made it possible to interpret the distribution of the electrons and draw conclusions about the potential properties of organic semiconductor elements. http://www.physorg.com/news177582885.html Physics - General Physics Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:35:28 EST news177582885 (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 of a minute or so, that could provide the first experimental confirmation of string theory. http://www.physorg.com/news177262216.html Physics - General Physics Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:34:37 EST news177262216 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. http://www.physorg.com/news177230113.html Physics - General Physics Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:35:57 EST news177230113 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. http://www.physorg.com/news176969873.html Physics - General Physics Mon, 09 Nov 2009 06:18:45 EST news176969873 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. http://www.physorg.com/news176963593.html Physics - General Physics Mon, 09 Nov 2009 05:00:02 EST news176963593 (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 made of tiny aluminum wires suspended like a bridge between two supports, producing sound in a similar way. The new wire bridge also has the advantage of being much easier to fabricate than the nanotube device, offering the potential for a wide range of audio applications. http://www.physorg.com/news176543078.html Physics - General Physics Wed, 04 Nov 2009 09:00:01 EST news176543078 (PhysOrg.com) -- The first stars in the universe may have been very different from the stars we see today, yet they may hold clues to understanding some of the mysterious features of the universe. These "dark stars," first theorized in 2007, could grow to be much larger than modern stars, and would be powered by dark matter particles that annihilate inside them, rather than by nuclear fusion. In the early universe, dark stars would have emitted visible light like the Sun, but today their light would be redshifted into the infrared range by the time it reaches us, and so dark stars would be invisible to the naked eye. http://www.physorg.com/news176457990.html Physics - General Physics Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:40:01 EST news176457990 (PhysOrg.com) -- Research by Michigan State University scientists has shed new light on the properties of neutron stars, galactic oddities that are formed when a large star runs out of fuel and collapses. http://www.physorg.com/news176409161.html Physics - General Physics Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:33:35 EST news176409161 (PhysOrg.com) -- The first experiments are now underway using the world's most powerful X-ray laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source, located at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Illuminating objects and processes at unprecedented speed and scale, the LCLS has embarked on groundbreaking research in physics, structural biology, energy science, chemistry and a host of other fields. http://www.physorg.com/news176388048.html Physics - General Physics Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:10:07 EST news176388048 An international team of physicists at Los Alamos National Laboratory has succeeded in using intense laser light to accelerate protons to energies never before achieved. Using this technique, scientists can now accelerate particles to extremely high velocities that would otherwise only be possible using large accelerator facilities. Physicists around the world are examining laser particle acceleration and laser produced radiation for potential future uses in cancer treatment. http://www.physorg.com/news176375335.html Physics - General Physics Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:09:30 EST news176375335 (PhysOrg.com) -- Terms such as the "invisible hand," laissez-faire policy, and free-market principles suggest that economic growth and decline in capitalist societies seem to be somehow self-regulated. Now, scientists Arto Annila of the University of Helsinki and Stanley Salthe of Binghampton University in New York show that economic activity can be regarded as an evolutionary process governed by the second law of thermodynamics. Their perspective may provide insight into some fundamental economic questions, such as the causes of economic growth and diversification, as well as why it`s so difficult to predict economic growth and decline. http://www.physorg.com/news176365278.html Physics - General Physics Mon, 02 Nov 2009 08:00:03 EST news176365278 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of scientists from France have worked out why teapots dribble at low flow rates, and how to stop them. The effect is called the "teapot effect", and solving it could finally put an end to tea stains from dribbling teapots. http://www.physorg.com/news176363839.html Physics - General Physics Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:00:02 EST news176363839 (PhysOrg.com) -- Finally, an optical frequency comb that visibly lives up to its name. Scientists at the University of Konstanz in Germany and the National Institute of Standards and Technology in the U.S. have built the first optical frequency comb -- a tool for precisely measuring different frequencies of visible light -- that actually looks like a comb. http://www.physorg.com/news176046009.html Physics - General Physics Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:41:00 EST news176046009 A team of researchers led by a Case Western Reserve University physicist is planning the world's largest, most sensitive experiment to catch the stuff of dark matter, stuff that's proved way beyond invisible. http://www.physorg.com/news176041529.html Physics - General Physics Thu, 29 Oct 2009 14:10:02 EST news176041529 Does your laptop sometimes get so hot that it can almost be used to fry eggs? New technology may help cool it and give information technology a unique twist, says Jairo Sinova, a Texas A&M University physics professor. http://www.physorg.com/news176037299.html Physics - General Physics Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:15:50 EST news176037299 (PhysOrg.com) -- "Scientists have been working with dipole fields for quite some time," Peter Barker tells PhysOrg.com. "However, most of the work is focused on very small particles, like atoms, or on larger particles, such as for use as optical tweezers. There is an interim region between atoms and large particles, and that is what we are looking at. We want to be able to control molecules a little differently." http://www.physorg.com/news176032268.html Physics - General Physics Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:52:22 EST news176032268 (PhysOrg.com) -- By taking advantage of the vagaries of the natural world, Duke University engineers have developed a novel approach that they believe can more efficiently harvest electricity from the motions of everyday life. http://www.physorg.com/news175966447.html Physics - General Physics Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:35:22 EST news175966447 Racing across the universe for the last 7.3 billion years, two gamma-ray photons arrived at NASA's orbiting Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope within nine-tenths of a second of one another. The dead-heat finish may stoke the fires of debate among physicists over Einstein's special theory of relativity because one of the photons possessed a million times more energy than the other. http://www.physorg.com/news175965994.html Physics - General Physics Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:27:56 EST news175965994