Latest Absolute zero Stories
Physicists face the daunting task of developing new, reliable ways of measuring extreme low temperaturesAs physicists strive to cool atoms down to ever more frigid temperatures, they face the daunting task of developing new, reliable ways of measuring these extreme lows. Now a team of physicists has devised a thermometer that can potentially measure temperatures as low as tens of trillionths of a degree above absolute zero. Their experiment is reported in the current issue of Physical Review...
Cooling strontium could lead to increasingly precise clocks, quantum computers and ultracold chemistryTwo independent teams have, for the first time, created Bose-Einstein condensates of strontium atoms. The ability to cool strontium to very low temperatures and control its motion could lead to increasingly precise clocks and may advance our progress toward quantum computers and novel experiments in ultracold chemistry. The new Bose-Einstein condensate is reported in two papers in Physical...
Physicists at the University of California-San Diego say they've created speedy integrated computer circuits capable of working in very cold environments. The circuits, built with particles called excitons, can operate at commercially cold temperatures, bringing the possibility of a new type of extremely fast computer based on excitons closer to reality, researchers said. The accomplishment follows the team's demonstration last summer of an integrated circuit capable of working at 1.5...
PHOENIX, July 21 /PRNewswire/ -- A new solar-assisted heat pump allows homeowners to lower carbon dioxide production by an impressive 370 pounds a year, the equivalent of planting seven mature trees or carpooling to work one day each week.By drawing energy from a solar panel during peak daylight hours and using it to help power the outdoor fan, the new Lennox SunSource heat pump can save homeowners up to 8 percent on their electric bills. Homeowners may also save with federal tax credits of...
Last night, the detectors of Planck's High Frequency Instrument reached their amazingly low operational temperature of -273°C, making them the coldest known objects in space. The spacecraft has also just entered its final orbit around the second Lagrange point of the Sun-Earth system, L2. Planck is equipped with a passive cooling system that brings its temperature down to about -230°C by radiating heat into space. Three active coolers take over from there, and bring the temperature...
Ohio State University researchers have developed a new strategy to overcome one of the major obstacles to a grand challenge in physics.What they've discovered could eventually aid high-temperature superconductivity, as well as the development of new high-tech materials.In 2008, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) chose three multi-university teams to tackle an ambitious problem: trap atoms inside a light crystal -- also called an "optical lattice" -- that can simulate exotic...
"Ye canna change the laws of physics!" Scotty warned Captain Kirk on "Star Trek." But engineers and physicists at the University of Maryland may rewrite one of them.The Third Law of Thermodynamics is on the minds of John Cumings, assistant professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering, and his research group as they examine the crystal lattice structure of ice and seek to define exactly what happens when...
AMSTERDAM, Netherlands -- The original manuscript of a paper Albert Einstein published in 1925 has been found in the archives of Leiden University's Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics, scholars said Saturday. The German-language manuscript is titled "Quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas," and is dated December 1924. Considered one of Einstein's last great breakthroughs, it was published in the proceedings of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin in January, 1925....
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- MIT scientists have brought a supercool end to a heated race among physicists: They have become the first to create a new type of matter, a gas of atoms that shows high-temperature superfluidity. Their work, to be reported in the June 23 issue of Nature, is closely related to the superconductivity of electrons in metals. Observations of superfluids may help solve lingering questions about high-temperature superconductivity, which has widespread applications for magnets,...
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - MIT scientists have brought a supercool end to a heated race among physicists: They have become the first to create a new type of matter, a gas of atoms that shows high-temperature superfluidity. Their work, to be reported in the June 23 issue of Nature, is closely related to the superconductivity of electrons in metals. Observations of superfluids may help solve lingering questions about high-temperature superconductivity, which has widespread applications for magnets,...
