Latest Magnetism Stories

So far, it has only been possible to image magnetic domains in 2 dimensions. Now, for the first time, Scientists at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin have managed to create 3-dimensional images of these domains deep within magnetic materialsEvery magnetic material is divided into such magnetic domains. Scientists call them "Weiss domains" after physicist Pierre-Ernest Weiss, who predicted their existence theoretically more than a hundred years ago. In 1907, he recognized that the magnetic...

Using hyperthermia, Virginia Tech engineering researchers and a colleague from India unveiled a new method to target and destroy cancerous cells. The research was presented at the 63rd annual meeting of the American Physical Society Nov. 23 in Long Beach, Calif.The cancer treatment uses hyperthermia to elevate the temperature of tumor cells, while keeping the surrounding healthy tissue at a lower degree of body heat. The investigators used both in vitro and in vivo experiments to confirm...

Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the German national metrology institute have used NIST's miniature atom-based magnetic sensor to successfully track a human heartbeat, confirming the device's potential for biomedical applications.Described in Applied Physics Letters,* the study is the first to be performed under conditions resembling a clinical setting with the NIST mini-sensors, which until now have been operated mostly in physics laboratories....

Atoms are proxies for electrons in ultracold optical emulatorA Rice University-led team of physicists is reporting the first success in a three-year effort to build a precision simulator for superconductors using a grid of intersecting laser beams and ultracold atomic gas.The research appears this week in the journal Nature. Using lithium atoms cooled to within a few billionths of a degree of absolute zero and loaded into optical tubes, the researchers created a precise analog of a...

Research is closing in on the next-generation of ultra-high-density magneto-optical storage devices that could store more than 6,000 Terabits (6 petabits) of data, more than 70 times the contents of the entire U.S. Library of Congress, on a single 5-inch disc. Yet the vast storage amount is limited by the ability to write data quickly enough to the device. In the Journal of Applied Physics, researchers at Sun Yat-Sen University in China have demonstrated a way to record on ferromagnetic films...

Chinese scientists have shown that magnetic memory, logic and sensor cells can be made faster and more energy efficient by using an electric, not magnetic, field to flip the magnetization of the sensing layer only about halfway, rather than completely to the opposite direction. They describe the new cell design in the Journal of Applied Physics, which is published by the American Institute of Physics (AIP).Magnetic random access memory (or MRAM) cells have long been investigated as possible...

Breakthrough paves way to store and process information in novel spin-electronicsProcessing large amounts of information in today's electronics requires large amounts of power, which results in heating. Heat can ruin modern electronics by potentially damaging the stuff that makes them work--the ever smaller and denser structures in a computer's "brain," the microprocessor that incorporates all of its logic functions.So, researchers have been investigating something called...

Just as the path of photons of light can be directed by a mirror, atoms possessing a magnetic moment can be controlled using a magnetic mirror. Research reported in the Journal of Applied Physics investigates the feasibility of using magnetic domain walls to direct and ultimately trap individual atoms in a cloud of ultracold atoms."We are looking for ways to build magnetic systems that can manipulate atoms," says author Thomas Hayward of the University of Sheffield in the United...

PTB physicists want to improve tumour therapy by heat treatment in cooperation with biomedical physicians from JenaThose who have to fight a powerful enemy must look for allies. This is why physicists from different scientific fields have decided to cooperate with biomedical physicians in order to place the fight against cancer through heat treatment by means of magnetic nanoparticles on a solid, scientific basis. It is the objective of the cooperation to improve the success of the therapy....

For a thrilling eight minutes, NASA researchers will soon get a peek at one of the sun's most mysterious regions, where temperatures fluctuate from tens of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit to several million, and solar flares and coronal mass ejections originate -- potentially threatening spacecraft, Earth-based communications and the lives of explorers in space.To learn more about this turbulent region of the sun, known as the transition region, Marshall solar physicists and engineers have...