http://www.physorg.com/physics-news/ en-us Physorg.com provides the latest news on physics, materials, nanotech, science and technology. Updated Daily. (PhysOrg.com) -- Following the straight and narrow may be good moral advice, but it`s not a great design principle for a distribution network. In new research, a team of biophysicists describe a complex netting of interconnected looping veins that evolution devised to distribute water in leaves. The work, which bucks decades of thinking, may compel engineers to revisit some common assumptions that have informed the building of many human-built distribution networks. http://www.physorg.com/news184947408.html Physics Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:18:01 EST news184947408 In a 1954 speech to the American Physical Society, the University of Chicago's Enrico Fermi fancifully envisioned a particle accelerator that encircled the globe. Such would be the ultimate theoretical outcome, Fermi surmised, of the quest for the ever-more powerful accelerators needed to discover new laws of physics. http://www.physorg.com/news184935747.html Physics Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:20:01 EST news184935747 Researchers in Chicago and London have developed a method for controlling the properties of magnets that could be used to improve the storage capacity of next-generation computer hard drives. http://www.physorg.com/news184935265.html Physics Tue, 09 Feb 2010 10:54:47 EST news184935265 In the words of Todd Squires, of the University of California, Santa Barbara "Nature has long inspired researchers in fluid mechanics to explore the mechanical strategies used by living creatures. Where better to look for innovative solutions to a technological challenge than to organisms that have had millions of years to devise strategies for related challenges?" http://www.physorg.com/news184925149.html Physics Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:40:01 EST news184925149 (PhysOrg.com) -- "Although the orb web of a spider is a lightweight structure, it seems to be a highly optimized structure, presumably as a result of evolution from the Jurassic period or earlier," explain physicists Yuko Aoyananagi and Ko Okumura, who are investigating the structural properties of spider webs. "It seems to resist different loads such as wind and insect impact efficiently and can catch prey even if some threads are broken." http://www.physorg.com/news184853047.html Physics Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:10:53 EST news184853047 (PhysOrg.com) -- Just as water can be superheated and remain liquid above the boiling point if there is no nucleating surface (such as a surface defect or a speck of dust), it can also become supercooled and remain liquid well below its freezing point of 0°C. Now scientists have found that supercooled water freezes at different temperatures in the presence of a surface with a positive or negative charge. http://www.physorg.com/news184834030.html Physics Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:50:02 EST news184834030 (PhysOrg.com) -- Compared to any other liquid on Earth, water behaves in strange and unexpected ways, yet its unusual properties enable and protect life as we know it. By tracking individual water molecules in a "supercooled" state, scientists find what explains one of water's most notable and life-saving features: its astounding capacity to resist gaining or losing heat. http://www.physorg.com/news184840368.html Physics Mon, 08 Feb 2010 08:33:19 EST news184840368 (PhysOrg.com) -- Just as the heartbeats of today's electronic devices depend on the ability to switch the flow of electricity in semiconductors on and off with lightning speed, the viability of the "spintronic" devices of the future -- technologies that manipulate both the flow and magnetic "spin" of electrons -- will require similarly precise control over semiconductor magnetism. http://www.physorg.com/news184602542.html Physics Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:29:44 EST news184602542 (PhysOrg.com) -- A major hurdle in the ambitious quest to design and construct a radically new kind of quantum computer has been finding a way to manipulate the single electrons that very likely will constitute the new machines' processing components or "qubits." http://www.physorg.com/news184599445.html Physics Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:10:02 EST news184599445 (PhysOrg.com) -- Using the same quantum principles that enable the teleportation of information, a new proposal shows how it may be possible to teleport energy. By exploiting the quantum energy fluctuations in entangled particles, physicists may be able to inject energy in one particle, and extract it in another particle located light-years away. The proposal could lead to new developments in energy distribution, as well as a better understanding of the relationship between quantum information and quantum energy. http://www.physorg.com/news184597481.html Physics Fri, 05 Feb 2010 13:05:01 EST news184597481 (PhysOrg.com) -- In December, the Large Hadron Collider, the world?s largest particle accelerator, shattered the world record for highest energy particle collisions. http://www.physorg.com/news184590515.html Physics Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:09:15 EST news184590515 (PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have built an enhanced version of an experimental atomic clock based on a single aluminum atom that is now the world`s most precise clock, more than twice as precise as the previous pacesetter based on a mercury atom. http://www.physorg.com/news184517462.html Physics Thu, 04 Feb 2010 14:51:40 EST news184517462 (PhysOrg.com) -- There are many microorganisms out there, navigating through complex biological fluids. `One of the most common migrations takes place with spermatozoa as it navigates the female reproductive tract,` Joseph Teran tells PhysOrg.com. `But there are other organisms that move through difficult environments as well, and we want to gain a better understanding of how these organisms move through viscoelastic fluids, like those found in biology.` http://www.physorg.com/news184498702.html Physics Thu, 04 Feb 2010 09:39:06 EST news184498702 (PhysOrg.com) -- MIT researchers have demonstrated the first laser built from germanium that can produce wavelengths of light useful for optical communication. It`s also the first germanium laser to operate at room temperature. Unlike the materials typically used in lasers, germanium is easy to incorporate into existing processes for manufacturing silicon chips. So the result could prove an important step toward computers that move data -- and maybe even perform calculations -- using light instead of electricity. But more fundamentally, the researchers have shown that, contrary to prior belief, a class of materials called indirect-band-gap semiconductors can yield practical lasers. http://www.physorg.com/news184493799.html Physics Thu, 04 Feb 2010 08:17:25 EST news184493799 (PhysOrg.com) -- UT Dallas researchers have laid the groundwork for attaching virtually any organic molecule to silicon, a technological feat that promises to greatly improve semiconductor devices` performance in health care and solar power applications in particular. http://www.physorg.com/news184442470.html Physics Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:01:30 EST news184442470 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of University of Toronto chemists have made a major contribution to the emerging field of quantum biology, observing quantum mechanics at work in photosynthesis in marine algae. http://www.physorg.com/news184423418.html Physics Wed, 03 Feb 2010 13:00:06 EST news184423418 The water content of leaves, their thickness, their density and other properties can now be determined without even having to touch them. A team of researchers from the CSIC Institute of Acoustics and the Agri-Food Research and Technology Centre (CITA) of Aragón has just presented an innovative technique that enables plant leaves to be studied using ultrasound in a quick, simple and non-invasive fashion. http://www.physorg.com/news184415874.html Physics Wed, 03 Feb 2010 10:38:22 EST news184415874 (PhysOrg.com) -- In general, the field of many-body physics involves the interactions and collective behavior of large numbers of particles. Scientists have made significant progress in exploring this field, which has led to applications in condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, and astrophysics. However, one challenging area that remains is understanding many-body systems on the quantum level. http://www.physorg.com/news184402943.html Physics Wed, 03 Feb 2010 09:10:01 EST news184402943 An international team of researchers has identified a new theoretical approach that may one day make the synthesis of hydrogen fuel storage materials less complicated and improve the thermodynamics and reversibility of the system. http://www.physorg.com/news184345350.html Physics Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:02:57 EST news184345350 (PhysOrg.com) -- Neutron scattering experiments performed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory give strong evidence that, if superconductivity is related to a material's magnetic properties, the same mechanisms are behind both copper-based high-temperature superconductors and the newly discovered iron-based superconductors. http://www.physorg.com/news184337478.html Physics Tue, 02 Feb 2010 13:30:01 EST news184337478 (PhysOrg.com) -- University of Michigan researchers have shown that tension on DNA molecules can affect gene expression---the process at the heart of biological function that tells a cell what to do. http://www.physorg.com/news184336712.html Physics Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:38:49 EST news184336712 (PhysOrg.com) -- Considerable progresses made in controlling quantum gases open up a new avenue to study chemical processes. Rudolf Grimm`s research team at the Austrian Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information has now succeeded in directly observing chemical exchange processes in an ultracold sample of cesium atoms and Feshbach molecules. They report on their findings in the journal Physical Review Letters. http://www.physorg.com/news184314807.html Physics Tue, 02 Feb 2010 06:33:47 EST news184314807 (PhysOrg.com) -- "One of the many reasons people study ultracold gases is for their potential as model quantum systems," Deborah Jin tells PhysOrg.com. "There is a need to model quantum many-body systems because a lot of important physics - from condensed matter and material physics to nuclear and particle physics - increasingly require an understanding of complicated quantum behavior. Ultracold gases can possible provide that through models we can interact with, helping to close the gap between what we can describe theoretically and what actually happens." http://www.physorg.com/news184234274.html Physics Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:10:02 EST news184234274 (PhysOrg.com) -- Every chemistry student knows that if you stir a mixture of chemicals you speed up the reactions between them, but less well-known is that chemical reactions can themselves stir up the mixture. This was demonstrated in experiments reported in Physical Review Letters on January 29, which showed that common chemical reactions can create fluid motion. http://www.physorg.com/news184230493.html Physics Mon, 01 Feb 2010 09:10:01 EST news184230493 Under an Air Force Office of Scientific Research, multi-university grant, a team led by University of New Mexico professor, Dr. Mansoor Sheik-Bahae created the first-ever all-solid-state cryocooler that can be applied to airborne and spaceborne sensors. http://www.physorg.com/news183987251.html Physics Fri, 29 Jan 2010 11:34:52 EST news183987251 (PhysOrg.com) -- After more than five decades of research, a major milestone toward the harnessing of fusion power is expected within the next year or two. This milestone, known as "fusion ignition," should take place at an experimental facility built for that purpose in California. Known as the National Ignition Facility, or NIF, it started initial experiments last fall. http://www.physorg.com/news183983627.html Physics Fri, 29 Jan 2010 10:34:07 EST news183983627 Scientists have long studied how atoms and molecules structure themselves into intricate clusters. Unlocking the design secrets of Nature offers lessons in engineering artificial systems that could self-assemble into any desired form. http://www.physorg.com/news183909154.html Physics Thu, 28 Jan 2010 14:00:04 EST news183909154 (PhysOrg.com) -- Some of the most recent research in imaging involves metamaterials, the synthetic materials that possess properties that are not observed in nature. Metamaterials are structured materials, in the sense that they are composed of cells. However, these finite cell sizes impose significant limitations on performance. Particularly in the area of imaging, cell size imposes limitations on resolution. http://www.physorg.com/news183904148.html Physics Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:31:12 EST news183904148 (PhysOrg.com) -- One of the biggest goals of the LHC is to discover the Higgs boson, the only particle in the Standard Model that has not yet been observed. In general, physicists are pretty confident that the Higgs does in fact exist, although they have spent a lot of effort searching for the particle in less powerful accelerators without success. While patiently waiting for the LHC to reach its full energy and a Higgs particle to leave a signature in a detector, some physicists are investigating alternative scenarios. One of the most recent proposals is that the Higgs is not a particle, but an unparticle called the Unhiggs. http://www.physorg.com/news183901225.html Physics Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:41:08 EST news183901225 US scientists have produced a laser shot with an unprecedented energy level that could be a key step towards nuclear fusion, the US National Nuclear Security Administration said Wednesday. http://www.physorg.com/news183879299.html Physics Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:35:37 EST news183879299