Physics

The experimental measurement of the fine-structure constant. © Pierre Cladé, Saïda Guellati-Khélifa and Tatsumi Aoyama The most precise measurement ever of the fine-structure constant has placed new constraints on theories that predict the existence of “dark sector” particles. The new value, which researchers in France measured using clouds of cold rubidium atoms, provides a stringent

You can now play a video game called Quantum Odyssey, which teaches all you need to rigorously understand quantum computation. Understanding the logic (set of rules, laws) followed by the building blocks of our Universe is no trivial matter – even more, to use this very logic and create meaningful computation, such as solving a

Safe, but separate: The author’s daughter taking an exam at home during distance learning. (Courtesy: Amara Graps) Since 10 March 2020, when Latvia went into lockdown, my 11-year-old daughter Vija has attended only 16 in-school sessions. It’s an understatement to say that my work as a space entrepreneur and senior scientist at the Planetary Science

Taken from the December 2020 issue of Physics World. Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app. Inside view Kellie Gerardi returning from a successful microgravity research flight. (CC BY 4.0 Kellie Gerardi) When the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the Moon in 1969 the whole world

In-flight video still from BOBCAT during liquid helium transfer at an altitude of 130,000 feet. Credit: NASA Balloon-borne telescopes can observe a wealth of astrophysical phenomena that ground-based instruments cannot, but onerous cooling requirements limit how much equipment can be taken aloft. Researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center found a way to minimize this

Reconstructed vortex rings inside a magnetic micropillar. Credit: Claire Donnelly Researchers have observed three-dimensional magnetic vortex rings in a real-world magnetic material for the first time. Contrary to theoretical predictions, these rings – which are spin configurations within the material’s bulk – are remarkably stable and could move through the material like smoke rings move

A team led by investigators at MGH has developed a low-cost, compact, portable and low-power “head only” MRI scanner that could be mounted in an ambulance, wheeled into a patient’s room, or put in small clinics or doctors’ offices around the world. (Courtesy: Massachusetts General Hospital) MRI is the standard modality for assessing neurological disorders,

Ultracold reactions: shadows of atoms trapped in layers of an optical lattice, before they are paired into ultracold potassium-rubidium molecules. (Courtesy: Ye Group/JILA) A new technique to cool reactive molecules to temperatures low enough to achieve quantum degeneracy – something not generally possible before – has been created by researchers in the US. In this

Protein trio: what can we learn from molecular music? (Courtesy: Holger87/CC BY-SA 3.0) Protein folding is a process that is crucial to life and understanding its intricacies is an important challenge of computational biology. In many fields of science, converting data into sounds has helped researchers deal with complex patterns. Now, an international team of

By: Hannah Pell In the 2004 movie National Treasure, the main character Ben Gates — a historian, cryptographer, and treasure hunter played by Nicholas Cage — is determined to solve the generational mystery passed down to him from his grandfather. The only clue that Ben has is: The secret lies with Charlotte. Based on this,

The IOP’s Teacher Training Scholarship programme provides an attractive route into physics teaching for recent graduates as well as mid-career scientists and engineers working across a range of industries Back to school: Alastair Miatt (above) says the industry perspectives gained throughout his career at Jaguar Land Rover now help him to make physics relatable to

Like much of the world, scientists thrive on coffee. It’s not just because of the caffeine though, it turns out that even spilled coffee fuels research. Most people are annoyed by nagging coffee stains, but to physicist Sidney Nagel they were inspiration. If you’re a coffee lover (or you live with one), I guarantee that

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a lively chat about some of the best physics done this year as we unveil our Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2020. Our choices run the gamut from medical physics to particle astrophysics – and we even have two “Holy Grails” in the fields of superconductivity and semiconductor

Each December, Physics World selects its Top 10 Breakthroughs of the year. Watch this video to find out which research has made it onto this year’s shortlist. On Thursday 17 December, one of the ten will be crowned Physics World’s Breakthrough of the Year 2020. In addition to having been reported in Physics World in 2020, our

Ultrasound absorbers: false-colour 3D representation of a 0.21×0.28 mm wing section of the moth Lasiocampa quercus showing the structure, diversity, and arrangement of base scales (orange) and cover scales (blue and yellow). (Courtesy: Simon Reichel/Thomas Neil/Zhiyuan Shen/Marc Holderied) Natural acoustic metamaterials found on the wings of some moths could help the insects avoid being eaten

Thumbs-up for randomness David Drahi in the quantum optics lab. (Courtesy: David Drahi) While world events are often difficult to predict, true randomness is surprisingly hard to find. In recent years, physicists have turned to quantum mechanics for a solution, using the inherently unpredictable behavior of photons to generate the truly random numbers that underpin

They sniff out drugs, cadavers, missing people, explosives, and even cancer. Dogs are more than man’s best friend, they are some of the best chemical detectors in existence. They are so good that by modifying a commercially available explosives detector to act like a dog’s nose, researchers were able to make the detector much more

New spin on topology: spin guided light scattering has been observed in a liquid crystal (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Serg-DAV) Just as topological insulators provide protection to electrons travelling along their edges and surfaces, photons can also be topologically protected. This can occur when photon scattering modes are associated with just one spin state. Now, researchers in India

Paler blue dot: An image of the planet Uranus taken by the spacecraft Voyager 2 on 14 January 1986 from a distance of approximately 12.7 million km. (Courtesy: NASA/JPL) Uranus and Neptune are the least-explored planets in our solar system. Apart from the Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew past them in the 1980s, no human-built

The polyurethane and gold sensor can resist shear forces and rubbing. Credit: © 2020 Someya et al. Researchers in Japan have developed the first artificial-skin patch that does not affect the touch sensitivity of the real skin beneath it. The new ultrathin sensor, which is made from multilayers of conductive and dielectric nanomesh structures, could

Two-level systems: two of NIST’s superconducting thermometers for measuring cryogenic temperatures are glued to the lower left and upper right of this amplifier. (Courtesy: J Wheeler/NIST) A simple miniature thermometer that can quickly and accurately measure the temperature of ultracold microwave-based devices has been built by Joel Ullom and colleagues at the National Institute of

The fastest timescales. The highest pressures. Absolute zero. The nanoscale. These conditions are far from our everyday experience, but studying how things behave in different situations can reveal a more complete picture of their nature—and can lead to revolutionary breakthroughs. Click to enlarge. This false-color map of a random light field includes a large number

[embedded content] The Arecibo Observatory and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have released shocking footage of the moment earlier this week when the 900 tonne platform collapsed onto the 305 m-wide dish. The video was captured by a drone that was filming as disaster struck. In a briefing along with the release of the footage, the NSF

Fuel gauges with higher accuracy could help ensure that satellites stay operational for longer and more is made of their time in orbit. Credit: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory When a spacecraft launches, it uses roughly 75-90% of its propellant getting into orbit. The remaining fraction determines how long it can remain up there, but gauging

Precursors of life: comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as seen by Rosetta (Courtesy: ESA/Rosetta/NAVCAM, CC BY-SA IGO 3.0) Some key molecular building blocks of life could have been created far earlier on in the formation of the solar system than previously thought. Experiments and simulations done by Sergio Ioppolo at Queen Mary University of London and an international

Good vibrations: artist’s concept of sound being transmitted in a fermionic superfluid. (Courtesy: Christine Daniloff/MIT) The acoustic properties of an ultracold fermion gas have been measured either side of the superfluid transition temperature in an experiment that has been described as “near perfect” and “beautiful”. The results could have significant implications for understanding everything from

[embedded content] The Canadian teenager Maryam Tsegaye has bagged a total of $400,000 in prizes for making the above video about quantum tunnelling. Tsegaye, 17, is winner of the 2020 Breakthrough Junior Challenge, which was founded by the billionaires Yuri and Julia Milner. Tsegaye is a student at École McTavish Public High School in Fort

All you need to know about the physics of smart speakers and why John Bell’s contributions to quantum physics are still making us think today Sounds good: the physics of smart speakers is the cover feature of the December 2020 edition of Physics World “Alexa, play some Christmas music.” “OK Google, turn on the fairy

Scratchy. My ultra-smooth gel pen made a distracting and mildly irritating sound that I can only describe as scratchy with each stroke. I became acutely aware of the process involved in forming each letter. I flipped a page in my memo pad to make room for more notes, but the loud, prolonged crinkling of the

The second week in December is Black in Nanotech Week and its co-founder Olivia Geneus is our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast. Geneus talks to Margaret Harris about her interest in using nanotechnology to develop new ways of treating cancer, and about the need to highlight the accomplishments of Black

Quantum advantage: the Gaussian boson sampling experiment at the University of Science and Technology of China. (Courtesy: Chao-Yang Lu) A optical circuit has performed a quantum computation called “Gaussian boson sampling” (GBS) 100 trillion times faster than a supercomputer could, according to researchers in China. This feat was achieved by Jian-Wei Pan and Chao-Yang Lu

Taken from the December 2020 issue of Physics World. Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app. Despite its many successes, physicists are still struggling to nail down a coherent interpretation of quantum mechanics, as it best represents “reality”. Jim Baggott explores the arguments first put forth

Tri-state area: this megaflash contained a superbolt that was 1000 times brighter than normal lightning. It was observed by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper and covers much of Tennessee, extending into Alabama and North Carolina. Superbolts – the rare and most extreme form of lightning — can be more than a thousand times brighter than regular

Researchers from MIT have come up with a new way to fabricate nanoscale structures using an innovative “shrinking” technique. The new method uses equipment many laboratories already have and is relatively straightforward, so it could make nanoscale fabrication more accessible. Image Credit: Illustration by Abigail Malate, American Institute of Physics Conventional nanostructure manufacturing techniques—ones that

Precisely sending and receiving single molecules. Courtesy: L Grill A change in the position of a single molecule can determine the outcome of a chemical reaction, but studying such movements is difficult because molecular motion is random at the atomic scale. Researchers at the University of Graz in Austria, together with colleagues in Germany and

In this interview, Johannes Handsteiner describes an experiment to test the foundations of quantum mechanics. Handsteiner was part of a team at the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Vienna, Austria, that designed a Bell test experiment using light from now-ancient quasars. Handsteiner explains why his team went to such lengths to

© AuntMinnieEurope.com Clinicians could have better information about foetal heart health thanks to a new imaging method developed by researchers from King’s College London. The team described how they used 4D MRI to measure volumetric blood flow in a recent paper. To achieve 4D imaging, the researchers reconstructed multiple 3D images into cine loops that

If you made a wish on every star in the universe, you’d need to make about a trillion trillion wishes—that’s a 1 followed by 24 zeros. Of course, you can’t see all of those stars from your bedroom window. You can’t even see them all from the Hubble Space Telescope, and you won’t be able

Telltale traces: Horizontal yellow streaks show Brown-Zak fermions propagating along straight trajectories with high mobility (low resistance). Courtesy: J Barrier Researchers at the University of Manchester in the UK have identified a new family of quasiparticles in superlattices made from graphene sandwiched between two slabs of boron nitride. The work is important for fundamental studies

Lead author Jan Lagendijk (left) and first author Bas Raaymakers from UMC Utrecht. A research paper describing the first clinical use of a 1.5 T MRI-Linac for MRI-guided radiotherapy has won its authors the 2020 Physics in Medicine & Biology (PMB) citations prize. This annual prize recognizes the PMB paper that received the most citations

With the 2020 Fall Meeting of the Materials Research Society now underway, what better way to kick things off than a quiz about songs and bands with materials in their titles or lyrics? (Warning: we’re not saying we necessarily like all the music mentioned!) Rock hard : how well do you know your pop trivia

Taken from the November 2020 issue of Physics World. Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app. Ring of fire The first direct image of a black hole, taken by the Event Horizon Telescope in 2019, was a major step forward in black-hole studies. (Courtesy: EHT Collaboration)

Puzzling protons: Alexey Grinin and Dery Taray working on the vacuum system of the 1S-3S experiment at the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics. (Courtesy: MPQ) A new and extremely precise measurement of the radius of the proton using hydrogen spectroscopy has been made by Thomas Udem, Randolf Pohl and colleagues in at the Max

Arches of chaos: Jovian-minimum-distance maps for the Greek and Trojan orbital configurations. (Courtesy: Nataša Todorović, Di Wu and Aaron Rosengren/Science Advances) If we had a “Physics paper title of the year award”, the 2020 winner would surely have to be “The arches of chaos in the solar system”, which was published this week in Science

Cool tool: A photo of the scanning quantum cryogenic atom microscope, or SQCRAMscope. (Courtesy: Benjamin Lev) Physicists have deployed a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) as a “quantum microscope” to study phase transitions in a high-temperature superconductor. The experiment marks the first time a BEC has been used to probe such a complicated condensed-matter phenomenon, and the

Taken from the December 2020 issue of Physics World, where it appeared under the headline “‘Delight’ as Biden elected US president”. Members of the Institute of Physics can enjoy the full issue via the Physics World app from 1 December. Physicists welcome the election of Joe Biden as US president but he faces challenges to

Sugar. A variant on the sweetest ingredient in many a sumptuous holiday feast, glycolaldehyde has now been found in a star-forming region of space far from the galactic center called G31.41+0.31, about 26,00 light years away from Earth. Directly linked to the origin of life, glycolaldehyde is an advantageous find for researchers seeking out habitable

“My mission is to demystify quantum computing,” says Ilyas Khan, who is founder and chief executive of Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) – a UK-based provider of software for quantum computers. Khan is our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, and he explains how CQC helps its clients use quantum computers to