Latest Elementary particle Stories
Physicists at New York University have created "handshaking" particles that link together based on their shape rather than randomly. Their work, reported in the latest issue of the journal Nature, marks the first time scientists have succeeded in "programming" particles to join in this manner and offers a type of architecture that could enhance the creation of synthetic materials. "We expect these interactions to offer unprecedented opportunities for engineering...
International collaboration hunting oscillation of muon to electronPhysicists may see data as soon as late summer from the prototype for a $278 million science experiment in northern Minnesota that is being designed to find clues to some fundamental mysteries of the universe.But it could take years before the nation's largest "neutrino" detector answers the profound questions that matter to scientists.Construction is underway now on a 220-ton detector that is the "integration...
Three Iowa State University physicists who took winter trips to the Large Hadron Collider for meetings and experimental work are starting to see real data from the planet's biggest science experiment.Finally.The multibillion-dollar collider made international news on Sept. 10, 2008, when it sent its first beam of protons around 17 miles of underground tunnel near Geneva, Switzerland. But breakdowns in the machine's high-current electrical connections forced a complete shutdown for more than a...
Dying, for stars, has just gotten more complicated.For some stellar objects, the final phase before or instead of collapsing into a black hole may be what a group of physicists is calling an electroweak star.Glenn Starkman, a professor of physics at Case Western Reserve University, together with former graduate students and post-docs De-Chang Dai and Dejan Stojkovic, now at the State University of New York in Buffalo, and Arthur Lue, at MIT's Lincoln Lab, offer a description of the structure...
Fermilab team of physicists analyze two-lepton dataNew high-energy particle research by a team working with data from Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory further heightens the uncertainty about the exact nature of a key theoretical component of modern physics "” the massive fundamental particle called the Higgs boson.Analysis of data from particle collisions resulting in two leptons helps improve measurements of the mass of another heavy subatomic particle called the top quark, says...
Force of interaction between magnetic particles grows stronger with increasing distanceAn experiment has confirmed that spinons, particle-like magnetic excitations, can be confined in a magnetic insulator similar to the way elementary quarks are confined within individual protons and neutrons. The finding, in a well-described magnetic system, may offer new ways to explore Quantum Chromodynamics, the theory that describes the fundamental interactions of quarks.The observations of spinon...
Chemists and physicists have succeeded in getting custom-shaped microparticles to interact and self-assemble in a controlled way in a liquid crystal.The research, federally funded by the National Science Foundation, appeared in the Nov. 20 edition of the journal Science."We're learning the rules about how these lithographic particles self-assemble," said Thomas G. Mason, a UCLA professor of chemistry and physics and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA....
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US, have performed sophisticated laser measurements to detect the subtle effects of one of nature's most elusive forces - the "weak interaction". Their work, which reveals the largest effect of the weak interaction ever observed in an atom, is reported in Physical Review Letters and highlighted in the August 10th issue of APS's on-line journal Physics (physics.aps.org).Along with...
Here's a question. How many gumballs of different sizes can fit in one of those containers at the mall so as to reward a well-spent quarter? It's hard to believe that most people never consider it even when guessing the number of candies in a bowl at Halloween.But physicists at the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center at New York University recently developed a new way to help answer the question. They say the solution is found in how the particles pack in terms of many...
The Large Hadron Collider is an enormous particle accelerator whose 17-mile tunnel straddles the borders of France and Switzerland. A group of physicists at the University of Nevada, Reno has analyzed data from the accelerator that could ultimately prove or disprove the possibility of a fifth force of nature.As the largest science instrument ever built, the LHC has the science community buzzing with excitement as it may help in understanding the inner workings of Nature.Remarkably, some of...
