Physics

New Metamaterial Is A 'Perfect' Absorber Of Light- In The Microwave Range Anyway

Don't put a down payment on that invisible plane just yet but a team of scientists from Boston College and Duke University developed a highly-engineered metamaterial capable of absorbing all of the light that strikes it – to a scientific standard of p ...

Article - News Staff - May 29 2008 - 5:01pm

Superconductors, Cappuccinos And What 'Suprafroths' Can Teach Us About Physics

The last time you had a cappuccino, did you think 'I bet I can learn something about type-I superconductors here?' Well, a team of Ames Laboratory physicists did and have found that the bubble-like arrangement of magnetic domains in superconducti ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 5 2008 - 11:45pm

Spooky Action Up Close- Quantum Effects In Diamonds

Researchers from the Physikalisches Institut of the University of Stuttgart have create entangled quantum states in diamond, which means there is finally a diamond men care about- namely the one that might some day be inside a quantum computer working at r ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 8 2008 - 11:37am

Lasers Reversed- Using Light To Cool Semiconductors

When lasers illuminate material it usually warms up, so laser beams are used for cutting sheet steel, for welding or even as scalpels. But this effect can also be reversed. When the frequency of the laser beam makes the irradiated material just not absorbi ...

Article - News Staff - Jun 29 2008 - 12:09pm

Fundamental Physics Perhaps Not So Fundamental

We all know what happens when cars collide on the freeway or an anvil lands on Wile E. Coyote's head- physics at the macro level is predictable. But what about a single hydrogen atom and a lone molecule of deuterium, the smallest atom and one of the s ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 2 2008 - 9:37pm

Symmetry And The Standard Model (1)

It’s Physics World time again, folks! This month’s (July 2008) issue has a cover headline “On reflection: Symmetry and the Standard Model”, and a diagram of the 8-dimensional E8 group squashed flat like a beached jellyfish on the 2-dimensional page. The ar ...

Article - Robert H Olley - Jul 5 2008 - 1:43pm

New Logic: The Attraction Of Magnetic Computation

European researchers are the first to demonstrate functional components that exploit the magnetic properties of electrons to perform logic operations. Compatible with existing microtechnology, the new approach heralds the next era of faster, smaller and mo ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 9 2008 - 9:53pm

Mathematical Tomb Raiding... Or Symmetry And The Standard Model (2)

Have you ever been puzzled by a statement like this: “Rotating a spin-1/2 particle by 360° does not bring it back to the same quantum state, but to the state with the opposite quantum phase; this is detectable, in principle, with interference experiments. ...

Article - Robert H Olley - Jul 16 2008 - 1:48am

Peak Gas Temperature Provides A New Way To Measure Black Holes

By measuring a peak in the temperature of hot gas in the center of the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 4649, scientists have determined the mass of the galaxy's supermassive black hole. The method, applied for the first time, gives results that are consi ...

Article - News Staff - Jul 16 2008 - 4:56pm

Is The Ring Destined For The Cracks Of Doom?

I first came across the word synchrotron in connection with the Crab Nebula, as well explained here at Hyperphysics. However, the phenomenon is these days very much down-to-earth: last weekend I returned from our last ever session at the Daresbury Synchrot ...

Article - Robert H Olley - Jul 17 2008 - 9:37am