http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- Fundamental constants, such as the standards for length and mass, are a given in our society. However, research has shown that these constants might be changing slightly with the expansion of the universe. http://www.physorg.com/news180287597.html Physics Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:30:05 EST news180287597 The dusty boxes that line the walls of Jeff Barrett's UC Irvine office mark a high point in his academic career. Their contents: pages and pages of notes, most more than 50 years old, penned by late quantum theorist Hugh Everett III. http://www.physorg.com/news178207143.html Physics Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:59:29 EST news178207143 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) -- Physicists at Harvard University have created a quantum gas microscope that can be used to observe single atoms at temperatures so low the particles follow the rules of quantum mechanics, behaving in bizarre ways. http://www.physorg.com/news176569616.html Physics Wed, 04 Nov 2009 15:07:42 EST news176569616 (PhysOrg.com) -- For more than 50 years, physicists have been intrigued by the concept of closed time-like curves (CTCs). Because a CTC returns to its starting point, it raises the possibility of traveling backward in time. More recently, physicists have theorized that CTC-assisted computers could enable ideal quantum state discrimination, and even make classical computers (with CTCs) equally as powerful as quantum computers. However, a new study argues that CTCs, if they exist, might actually provide much less computational benefit than previously thought. http://www.physorg.com/news175421039.html Physics Thu, 22 Oct 2009 10:40:01 EST news175421039 (PhysOrg.com) -- Troubles at the Large Hadron Collider have led some physicists to suggest the Higgs boson is sabotaging its own discovery. Nahn explains why he disagrees. http://www.physorg.com/news175181725.html Physics Mon, 19 Oct 2009 14:36:42 EST news175181725 (PhysOrg.com) -- MIT physicist Pablo Jarillo-Herrero has won a 2009 David and Lucile Packard Fellowship, an award he will use to study a new class of materials that could have applications in the semiconductor industry and quantum computing. http://www.physorg.com/news174894793.html Physics Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:40:02 EST news174894793 Key Laboratory of Quantum Information (CAS), University of Science and Technology of China has recently demonstrated a metropolitan Quantum Cryptography Network (QCN) for Government Administration in Wuhu, China. The project is reported in Volume 54, Issue 17 (September, 2009) of the Chinese Science Bulletin authored by Fang-xing Xu et al. http://www.physorg.com/news174891921.html Physics Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:06:41 EST news174891921 In the quest for smaller, faster computer chips, researchers are increasingly turning to quantum mechanics -- the exotic physics of the small. The problem: the manufacturing techniques required to make quantum devices have been equally exotic. That is, until now. http://www.physorg.com/news174833014.html Physics Thu, 15 Oct 2009 13:44:35 EST news174833014 A team of scientists, led by a biomedical engineer at The University of Texas at Austin, have demonstrated - for the first time - that mathematical models created from data obtained by DNA microarrays, can be used to correctly predict previously unknown cellular mechanisms. This brings biologists a step closer to one day being able to understand and control the inner workings of the cell as readily as NASA engineers plot the trajectories of spacecraft today. http://www.physorg.com/news174737745.html Biology Wed, 14 Oct 2009 11:16:39 EST news174737745 Chaotic behavior is the rule, not the exception, in the world we experience through our senses, the world governed by the laws of classical physics. http://www.physorg.com/news174143570.html Physics Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:13:42 EST news174143570 (PhysOrg.com) -- Quantum mechanics could help build ultra-high-resolution electron microscopes that won't destroy living cells, according to MIT electrical engineers. http://www.physorg.com/news174035443.html Physics Tue, 06 Oct 2009 08:12:08 EST news174035443 Exploiting quantum mechanics for transmitting information is a tantalizing possibility because it promises secure, high speed communications. Unfortunately, the fragility of methods for storing and sending quantum information has so far frustrated the enterprise. Now a team of physicists in Sweden and Poland have shown that photons that encode data have strength in numbers. Their experiment is reported in Physical Review Letters and Physical Review A and highlighted in the October 5 issue of Physics. http://www.physorg.com/news173964594.html Physics Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:30:22 EST news173964594 (PhysOrg.com) -- One of the classical problems in quantum mechanics concerns a man and his feline companion. The man has placed his cat in an opaque tank and is slowing pumping it full of poison. Now until the man opens the tank and looks inside, he cannot be sure whether the cat is dead or alive. That is to say, the cat is both dead and alive at the same time. Impossible but such is the nature of the problem that faced this man. The man's name is Erwin Schrodinger and the problem is that of his Uncertainty Principle. http://www.physorg.com/news173026471.html Physics Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:55:13 EST news173026471 (Santa Barbara, Calif.) -- Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have made an important advance in quantum mechanics using a superconducting electrical circuit. The finding is reported in this week's issue of the journal Nature. http://www.physorg.com/news172936800.html Physics Wed, 23 Sep 2009 15:00:50 EST news172936800 Promising photonic devices, and theorists attempt to determine whether particle physics and string theory can be reconciled. http://www.physorg.com/news172732219.html Physics Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:10:02 EST news172732219 (PhysOrg.com) -- Hanns-Christoph Naegerl's research group at the Institute for Experimental Physics, Austria, has investigated how ultracold quantum gases behave in lower spatial dimensions. They successfully realized an exotic state, where, due to the laws of quantum mechanics, atoms align along a one-dimensional structure. A stable many-body phase with new quantum mechanical states is thereby produced even though the atoms are usually strongly attracted which would cause the system to collapse. The scientists report on their findings in the leading scientific journal Science. http://www.physorg.com/news171188983.html Physics Thu, 03 Sep 2009 14:00:02 EST news171188983 (PhysOrg.com) -- Entropy can decrease, according to a new proposal - but the process would destroy any evidence of its existence, and erase any memory an observer might have of it. It sounds like the plot to a weird sci-fi movie, but the idea has recently been suggested by theoretical physicist Lorenzo Maccone, currently a visiting scientist at MIT, in an attempt to solve a longstanding paradox in physics. http://www.physorg.com/news170586562.html Physics Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:09:54 EST news170586562 Quantum mechanics and Einstein's theory of general relativity are both extremely accurate theories of how the universe works, but all attempts to combine the two into a unified theory have ended in failure. When physicists try to calculate the properties of a quantum theory of gravity, they find quantities that become infinite -- infinities that are so bad they can't be removed by mathematical gambits that work in other areas of physics. http://www.physorg.com/news169733869.html Physics Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:18:47 EST news169733869 Scientists at UC Santa Barbara have devised a new type of superconducting circuit that behaves quantum mechanically -- but has up to five levels of energy instead of the usual two. The findings are published in the August 7 issue of Science. http://www.physorg.com/news169221847.html Physics Tue, 11 Aug 2009 15:04:34 EST news169221847 The first desktop computers changed the way we managed data forever. Three decades after their introduction, we rely on them to manage our time, social life and finances -- and to keep this information safe from prying eyes and online predators. http://www.physorg.com/news168179517.html Technology Thu, 30 Jul 2009 13:32:29 EST news168179517 (PhysOrg.com) -- In comparison to classical physics, quantum physics predicts that the properties of a quantum mechanical system depend on the measurement context, i.e. whether or not other system measurements are carried out. A team of physicists from Innsbruck, Austria, led by Christian Roos and Rainer Blatt, have for the first time proven in a comprehensive experiment that it is not possible to explain quantum phenomena in non-contextual terms. The scientists report on their findings in the current issue of Nature. http://www.physorg.com/news167461123.html Physics Wed, 22 Jul 2009 13:00:04 EST news167461123 (PhysOrg.com) -- A University of Queensland physicist is seeking answers to a persistent problem throughout human history: how do I compute things? None, however, have had the same impact as what we today know as simply the computer, the harbinger of the digital age. http://www.physorg.com/news166110420.html Physics Mon, 06 Jul 2009 15:20:01 EST news166110420 At the quantum level, the atoms that make up matter and the photons that make up light behave in a number of seemingly bizarre ways. Particles can exist in "superposition," in more than one state at the same time (as long as we don't look), a situation that permitted Schrödinger's famed cat to be simultaneously alive and dead; matter can be "entangled" -- Albert Einstein called it "spooky action at a distance" -- such that one thing influences another thing, regardless of how far apart the two are. http://www.physorg.com/news164885583.html Physics Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:34:04 EST news164885583 A huge consortium of European researchers is solving some of the fundamental obstacles blocking real quantum computing applications in the short term. At the same time, it is helping to pave the way to a quantum computer. http://www.physorg.com/news163995787.html Nanotechnology Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:30:02 EST news163995787 Does mysticism have a place in quantum mechanics today, or is the idea that the mind plays a role in creating reality best left to philosophical meditations? Harvard historian Juan Miguel Marin argues the former - not because physicists today should account for consciousness in their research, but because knowing the early history of the philosophical ideas in quantum mechanics is essential for understanding the theory on a fundamental level. http://www.physorg.com/news163670588.html Physics Mon, 08 Jun 2009 09:10:47 EST news163670588 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of physicists and engineers at Bristol University has demonstrated exquisite control of single particles of light - photons - on a silicon chip to make a major advance towards long-sought-after quantum technologies, including super-powerful quantum computers and ultra-precise measurements. http://www.physorg.com/news163427868.html Physics Fri, 05 Jun 2009 13:39:06 EST news163427868 Scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed an efficient method to detect entanglement shared among multiple parts of an optical system. They show how entanglement, in the form of beams of light simultaneously propagating along four distinct paths, can be detected with a surprisingly small number of measurements. Entanglement is an essential resource in quantum information science, which is the study of advanced computation and communication based on the laws of quantum mechanics. http://www.physorg.com/news161026685.html Physics Fri, 08 May 2009 18:38:40 EST news161026685 Imagine a time when the entire universe froze. According to a new model for dark energy, that is essentially what happened about 11.5 billion years ago, when the universe was a quarter of the size it is today. http://www.physorg.com/news161026176.html Physics Fri, 08 May 2009 18:30:17 EST news161026176 (PhysOrg.com) -- When it comes to nonlocal correlations, some correlations are more nonlocal than others. As the subject of study for several decades, nonlocal correlations (for example, quantum entanglement) exist between two objects when they can somehow directly influence each other even when separated by a large distance. Because these correlations require `passion-at-a-distance` (a term coined by physicist Abner Shimony), they violate the principle of locality, which states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light (even though quantum correlations cannot be used to communicate faster than the speed of light). Besides being a fascinating phenomenon, nonlocality can also lead to powerful techniques in computing, cryptography, and information processing. http://www.physorg.com/news160911231.html Physics Thu, 07 May 2009 10:34:35 EST news160911231