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) -- 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 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 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 Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:27:46 EST news177949235 Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have made an important advance in electrically controlling quantum states of electrons, a step that could help in the development of quantum computing. The work is published online today on the Science Express Web site. http://www.physorg.com/news177938057.html Physics Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:18:55 EST news177938057 The world's biggest atom-smasher, which was shut down soon after its inauguration amid technical faults, is set to restart this weekend, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research said on Friday. http://www.physorg.com/news177921856.html Physics Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:46:14 EST news177921856 (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 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 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 Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:13:04 EST news177786729 (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. http://www.physorg.com/news177780308.html Physics Wed, 18 Nov 2009 15:50:02 EST news177780308 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 Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:00:02 EST news177761689 To exploit the quantum world to the fullest, a key commodity is entanglement -the spooky, distance-defying link that can form between objects such as atoms even when they are completely shielded from one another. Now, physicists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a collaborative organization of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland, have developed a promising new source of entangled photons using quantum dots tweaked with a laser. The JQI technique may someday enable more compact and convenient sources of entangled photon pairs than presently available for quantum information applications such as the distribution of "quantum keys" for encrypting sensitive messages. http://www.physorg.com/news177763808.html Physics Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:50:39 EST news177763808 (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 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 Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:14:20 EST news177700443 Everybody loves a race to the wire, even when the result is a tie. The great irony is the ultraprecise clocks that could result from this competition could probably break any tie. http://www.physorg.com/news177694595.html Physics Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:37:16 EST news177694595 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 or how water soaks through loose soil. Their observation strengthens the case for directed percolation's relevance to real systems, and lends new vigor to long-standing theories about how it works. Their experiment is reported in Physical Review E and highlighted with a Viewpoint in the November 16 issue of Physics. http://www.physorg.com/news177685136.html Physics Tue, 17 Nov 2009 13:10:02 EST news177685136 (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 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 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 18:30:05 EST news177616622 (PhysOrg.com) -- One of the drawbacks associated with using semiconductor lasers is that many of them can only produce a beam of a single wavelength, and can only send that beam in one direction at a time. There have been efforts to tune lasers so that different wavelengths can be achieved, but these lasers still emit light only in one direction, and one wavelength at a given time. All that could change, though. Harvard University scientists Federico Capasso and Nanfang Yu , in Cambridge, Massachusetts, have been working with an international team to develop a laser that offers multibeam emission. http://www.physorg.com/news177582639.html Physics Mon, 16 Nov 2009 09:50:01 EST news177582639 (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 Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:35:28 EST news177582885 Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have demonstrated the first "universal" programmable quantum informationprocessor able to run any program allowed by quantum mechanics -- the rules governing the submicroscopic world -- using two quantum bits (qubits) of information. The processor could be a module in a future quantum computer, which theoretically could solve some important problems that are intractable today. http://www.physorg.com/news177515046.html Physics Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:45:25 EST news177515046 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists and curiosity seekers who want to know what a partially or completely cloaked object would look like in real life can now get their wish -- virtually. A team of researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany has created a new visualization tool that can render a room containing such an object, showing the visual effects of such a cloaking mechanism and its imperfections. http://www.physorg.com/news177268469.html Physics Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:00:19 EST news177268469 There is good news for the global effort to reduce the amount of lead in the environment and for the growing array of technologies that rely upon the piezoelectric effect. A lead-free alternative to the current crop of piezoelectric materials has been identified by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley. http://www.physorg.com/news177340310.html Physics Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:18:46 EST news177340310 (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 Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:34:37 EST news177262216 Scientists at the University of Adelaide have made a breakthrough that could change the world's thinking on what light is capable of. http://www.physorg.com/news177244484.html Physics Thu, 12 Nov 2009 11:00:02 EST news177244484 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 Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:35:57 EST news177230113 (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Texas Tech University, Queen's University in Belfast, Ireland, the University of Rome and the National Research Council in Italy recently made a discovery about the non-uniform chemical compositions of ionic liquids that could lead to greater understanding and manipulation of these multi-purpose, designer solvents. http://www.physorg.com/news177087904.html Physics Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:20:05 EST news177087904 (PhysOrg.com) -- Sensors, communications devices and imaging equipment that use a prism and a special form of light -- a surface plasmon-polariton -- may incorporate multiple channels or redundant applications if manufacturers use sculptured thin films. http://www.physorg.com/news177086474.html Physics Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:42:05 EST news177086474 (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. http://www.physorg.com/news177061572.html Physics Tue, 10 Nov 2009 08:00:02 EST news177061572 (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 States, Russia, China, Europe, and New Zealand. http://www.physorg.com/news177020042.html Physics Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:30:01 EST news177020042 (PhysOrg.com) -- In a recently published paper, Aram Harrow at the University of Bristol and colleagues from MIT in the United States have discovered a quantum algorithm that solves large problems much faster than conventional computers can. http://www.physorg.com/news177011105.html Physics Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:20:02 EST news177011105