Following up on earlier theoretical predictions, MIT researchers have now demonstrated experimentally the existence of a fundamentally new kind of magnetic behavior, adding to the two previously known states of magnetism. Ferromagnetism – the simple magnetism of a bar magnet or compass needle – has been known for centuries. In a second type of magnetism,…
You’ve heard the hype a hundred times: Physicists hope to someday build a whiz-bang quantum computer that can solve problems that would overwhelm an ordinary computer. Now, four separate teams have taken a step toward achieving such “quantum speed-up” by demonstrating a simpler, more limited form of quantum computing that, if it can be improved,…
The whole point of an explanation is to reduce something you don’t know to something you do. By that standard, you don’t gain much by explaining anything in terms of black holes. Appealing to the most mysterious objects known to science as an explanation sounds like using one mystery to explain another. Yet this is…
The 12 matter particles we know about are all the types there are, according to researchers analysing CERN data. Matter particles, also called fermions, are the elementary components of the universe, making up everything visible in the universe. “For a long time, however, it was not clear whether we know all components,” says Professor Ulrich…
Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s Fundamental Physics Prize Foundation is awarding two special prizes of $3 million each to British cosmologist Stephen Hawking for his work on black holes and to seven scientists at the world’s biggest atom-smasher for their roles in the discovery of a new subatomic particle believed to be the long-sought Higgs boson….
As a ball rolled down an incline, young Sylvester James Gates, along with the other students in his class, were tasked with timing it and observing the principles of mechanics in action. “I saw a piece of magic happen right before my very eyes,” he says. “Because, while I was well aware that mathematics was…
The “uncrackable codes” made by exploiting the branch of physics called quantum mechanics have been sent down kilometres of standard broadband fibre. This “quantum key distribution” has until now needed a dedicated fibre separate from that used to carry data. The technique, reported in Physical Review X, shows how to unpick normal data streams from…
Fully fledged quantum computers are still a long way off. But devices that can simulate quantum systems are proving uniquely useful.
Supersymmetry, or SUSY, has gained popularity as a way to explain some of the inconsistencies in the traditional theory of subatomic physics known as the Standard Model. The new observation, reported at the Hadron Collider Physics conference in Kyoto, is not consistent with many of the most likely models of SUSY. Prof Chris Parke, who…
The movement of electrons across tiny distances between metals has the power to change the colour of the gap. Nanophotonics researchers discovered that spaces smaller than a nanometre between metals undergo observable colour changes thanks to the movement of electrons in the surrounding area — meaning the scientists could see quantum mechanical processes in action….