Physics

Gravitational Radiation Not The Answer For Universal Inflation- Yet

A team of researchers from Case Western Reserve University has found that gravitational radiation—widely expected to provide “smoking gun” proof for a theory of the early universe known as “inflation”— can be produced by another mechanism. According to phy ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 15 2008 - 6:45pm

Quantum Chaos, Unthermalizable States And Really Tiny Balloons

When a hypothetical, quantum-scale balloon is popped in a vacuum, do the particles inside spread out as predicted by classical mechanics or do something else, since matter at the infinitesimally small quantum scale is both a wave and a particle, and its lo ...

Article - News Staff - Apr 18 2008 - 12:06am

A Solar System 'Bounce' Model Of Dinosaur Extinction

Throughout the history of Earth there have been numerous mass extinctions and there are just as many theories as to why they occurred. The largest we know of occurred some 250 million years ago, give or take, but the mass extinction of the dinosaurs more r ...

Article - News Staff - May 2 2008 - 10:02am

Backward Wave Oscillators Get Tiny So The Terahertz Market Can Get Huge

A golden coil smaller in diameter than a human hair and a diamond pin embossed with gold may represent the future of high frequency electronics. Carol L. Kory, who specializes in complex electromagnetic computer simulations, will present two papers describ ...

Article - News Staff - May 3 2008 - 5:54pm

What Lasers And Milk Have In Common

"Random lasers" are not what chooses the songs in your CD player in shuffle mode, they are a class of microlasers which use the principle of random light scattering as an integral part of the their operation. In conventional lasers light is trapp ...

Article - News Staff - May 4 2008 - 12:30pm

The Particle Whisperers

As many parents know, it's often easier to keep your kids under control by exerting less authority rather than more. A child who fidgets uncontrollably in a confining booster seat, for example, may be perfectly content on a plain old chair. A team of ...

Article - News Staff - May 4 2008 - 11:25pm

The Quantum Mechanical Con Game (Don't Try This In A Bar)

For the first time, physicists have come up with a scheme that would allow a quantum mechanical expert to win every time in a con game with a victim who only knows about classical physics. Prior quantum cons have typically been vulnerable to simple counter ...

Article - News Staff - May 4 2008 - 11:27pm

Debunking Einstein, Hawking And What We Know About Black Holes

Physicists at Penn State say they have provided a mechanism by which information can be recovered from black holes; objects from which, according to Einstein's theory of general relativity, not even light can escape. The team's findings pave the ...

Article - News Staff - May 15 2008 - 10:11am

First Measurement Of Entangled States In Nitrogen 'Pins Down' Electons- And Doesn't

When atoms form molecules, they share their outer electrons and this creates a negatively charged cloud. The electrons buzz around between the two positively charged nuclei, making it impossible to tell which nucleus they belong to. They are delocalized. I ...

Article - News Staff - May 15 2008 - 11:25pm

Want Better Piezoelectrics? Just Relaxor

A research team working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has found an explanation for the extreme sensitivity to mechanical pressure or voltage of a special class of solid materials called relaxors. The ability to control and ta ...

Article - News Staff - May 17 2008 - 10:54am