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) -- When it comes to the workings of the Web, the brain, or a social network, physics finds universal truths. http://www.physorg.com/news179766565.html Physics Fri, 11 Dec 2009 15:10:09 EST news179766565 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) -- 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 (PhysOrg.com) -- There's nothing University of Nebraska-Lincoln physicist Herman Batelaan likes more than a challenge. And there are few areas of science more challenging than working at the sub-atomic, or quantum, world, where the laws of physics are different from those of our macro world. http://www.physorg.com/news172919873.html Physics Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:18:51 EST news172919873 (PhysOrg.com) -- Since the early days of quantum mechanics, scientists have been trying to understand the many strange implications of the theory: superpositions, wave-particle duality, and the observer`s role in measurements, to name a few. Now, a new proposed law of physics that describes the geometry of physical reality on the cosmological scale might help answer some of these questions. Plus, the new law could give some clues about the role of gravity in quantum physics, possibly pointing the way to a unified theory of physics. http://www.physorg.com/news169725980.html Physics Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:07:00 EST news169725980 (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) -- Quantum key distribution (QKD) could be the next commercial success of quantum physics, and a recent study has taken the field a step closer to this reality. Researchers from the University of Geneva in Switzerland and Corning Incorporated in New York have demonstrated a new QKD prototype that can distribute quantum keys over a distance of 250 km in the lab, improving upon the previous record of 200 km. The scientists hope that the achievement will lead to the goal of distributing quantum keys over intercity distances of 300 km in the near future. http://www.physorg.com/news167390366.html Physics Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:19:59 EST news167390366 (PhysOrg.com) -- In his discussion of accelerated motion on page 60 of The Meaning of Relativity, Albert Einstein made an approximation that allowed him to develop the theory of relativity further. Einstein apparently never had the opportunity to check his original approximation. Now, a University of Missouri physicist has uncovered some clues about the basis of Einstein's theories and presented a more general approximation, which may better link quantum physics with classical physics. http://www.physorg.com/news166874604.html Physics Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:03:55 EST news166874604 When you toss a coin, you either get heads or tails. By contrast, things are not so definite at the microcosmic level. An atomic 'coin' can display a superposition of heads and tails when it has been thrown. However, this only happens if you do not look at the coin. If you do, it decides in favour of one of the two states. If you leave the decision where a quantum particle should go to a coin like this, you get unusual effects. For the first time, physicists at the University of Bonn have demonstrated these effects in an experiment with caesium. Their research will be published in the next issue of the scientific journal Science. http://www.physorg.com/news166368043.html Physics Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:22:05 EST news166368043 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 Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have demonstrated entanglement--a phenomenon peculiar to the atomic-scale quantum world--in a mechanical system similar to those in the macroscopic everyday world. The work extends the boundaries of the arena where quantum behavior can be observed and shows how laboratory technology might be scaled up to build a functional quantum computer. http://www.physorg.com/news163253992.html Physics Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:20:26 EST news163253992 A team of researchers at the University of Illinois has demonstrated that, counter to classical Newtonian mechanics, an entire collection of superconducting electrons in an ultrathin superconducting wire is able to "tunnel" as a pack from a state with a higher electrical current to one with a notably lower current, providing more evidence of the phenomenon of macroscopic quantum tunneling. http://www.physorg.com/news162650639.html Nanotechnology Wed, 27 May 2009 13:48:12 EST news162650639 (PhysOrg.com) -- An ingenious new method of obtaining marine microbe samples while preserving the microbes' natural gene expression has yielded an unexpected boon: the presence of many varieties of small RNAs -- snippets of RNA that act as switches to regulate gene expression in these single-celled creatures. Before now, small RNA could only be studied in lab-cultured microorganisms; the discovery of its presence in a natural setting may make it possible finally to learn on a broad scale how microbial communities living at different ocean depths and regions respond to environmental stimuli. http://www.physorg.com/news161532776.html Biology Thu, 14 May 2009 15:14:11 EST news161532776 An ingenious new method of obtaining marine microbe samples while preserving the microbes' natural gene expression has yielded an unexpected boon: the presence of many varieties of small RNAs - snippets of RNA that act as switches to regulate gene expression in these single-celled creatures. Before now, small RNA could only be studied in lab-cultured microorganisms; the discovery of its presence in a natural setting may make it possible finally to learn on a broad scale how microbial communities living at different ocean depths and regions respond to environmental stimuli. http://www.physorg.com/news161439205.html Biology Wed, 13 May 2009 13:14:02 EST news161439205 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 (PhysOrg.com) -- The idea that far distant particles can somehow 'talk' to each other worried Einstein so much that he called it 'spooky action at a distance'. http://www.physorg.com/news160047045.html Physics Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:32:17 EST news160047045 A clock that is so precise that it loses only a second every 300 million years - this is the result of new research in ultra cold atoms. The international collaboration is comprised of researchers from the University of Colorado, USA and the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen and the results have just been published in the prestigious scientific journal, Science. http://www.physorg.com/news159111429.html Physics Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:37:36 EST news159111429 (Santa Barbara, Calif.) -- In the quest for quantum information processing, diamonds may be a physicist's best friend. http://www.physorg.com/news159024814.html Physics Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:37:09 EST news159024814 (PhysOrg.com) -- Highlighting another challenge to the development of quantum computers, theorists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have shown* that a type of software operation, proposed as a solution to fundamental problems with the computers` hardware, will not function as some designers had hoped. http://www.physorg.com/news158417294.html Physics Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:48:46 EST news158417294 (Physorg.com) -- If physicists lived in Flatland -the fictional two-dimensional world invented by Edwin Abbott in his 1884 novel -some of their quantum physics experiments would turn out differently (not just thinner) than those in our world. The distinction has taken another step from speculative fiction to real-world puzzle with a paper* from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) reporting on a Flatland arrangement of ultracold gas atoms. The new results, which don`t quite jibe with earlier Flatland experiments in Paris, might help clarify a strange property: `superfluidity.` http://www.physorg.com/news157206744.html Physics Wed, 25 Mar 2009 13:33:30 EST news157206744 (PhysOrg.com) -- Local realism is something we live with every day, even if we don`t realize it. The principle of local realism combines two assumptions: locality and realism. Locality says that distant objects cannot directly and instantaneously influence each other (since nothing can travel faster than the speed of light). Realism says that the things we measure and sense are indeed really there apart from our measurements, and it`s not just our measurements that make them exist. http://www.physorg.com/news155382024.html Physics Wed, 04 Mar 2009 09:40:56 EST news155382024 (PhysOrg.com) -- A team of University of Toronto physicists have demonstrated a new technique to squeeze light to the fundamental quantum limit, a finding that has potential applications for high-precision measurement, next-generation atomic clocks, novel quantum computing and our most fundamental understanding of the universe. http://www.physorg.com/news150121818.html Physics Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:30:18 EST news150121818