news 2017

Simon Stellmer has been awarded a prestigious ERC Starting Grant. He will now use ultracold mercury atoms to investigate fundamental symmetries in nature. Why is there matter in the universe at all? To date there has been no conclusive answer to this question. Our understanding of the Big Bang is based on the assumption that equal amounts of antimatter and matter were created.

Simon Stellmer has been awarded a prestigious ERC Starting Grant. He will now use ultracold mercury atoms to investigate fundamental symmetries in nature. Why is there matter in the universe at all? To date there has been no conclusive answer to this question. Our understanding of the Big Bang is based on the assumption that equal amounts of antimatter and matter were created.

Muscle malfunctions may be as simple as a slight strain after exercise or as serious as heart failure and muscular dystrophy. A new technique developed at McGill now makes it possible to look much more closely at how sarcomeres, the basic building blocks within all skeletal and cardiac muscles, work together.

When many people try to squeeze through a passageway at the same time, it creates a bottleneck that slows everyone down. It turns out the reverse is true for electrons, which can move through small openings more quickly when travelling in large groups than when flying solo. The theory of so-called superballistic flow predicts that electrons can pass more easily through constrictions by interacting with one another, and thereby "cooperating," than they can individually.

A Lancaster physicist has led an international study, based on data from the European Space Agency Mars Express orbiter , which throws new light on the interaction between the planet Mars and supersonic particles in the solar wind. As the energetic particles of the solar wind speed across interplanetary space, their motion is modified by objects in their path.

Quantum physics teaches us that unobserved particles may propagate through space like waves. This is philosophically intriguing and of technological relevance: a research team at the University of Vienna has demonstrated that combining experimental quantum interferometry with quantum chemistry allows deriving information about optical and electronic properties of biomolecules, here exemplified with a set of vitamins.

For the first time, ETH researchers have succeeded in applying a millennia-old method for making fabrics to create a completely organic nanoweave.

In a new paper published in Science , researchers at the University of Pennsylvania provided a detailed look into how self-assembled squid lenses have evolved to adjust for light distortion, which allows them to see clearly in the dim waters of the open ocean. In addition to contributing to the field of nanotechnology by outlining self-assembly at the nanometer length scale, the research could one day help scientists build improved artificial lenses that can focus light perfectly.

Physicists demonstrate how heating up a quantum system can be used as a universal probe for exotic states of matter In physical sciences, certain quantities appear as integer multiples of fundamental and indivisible elements. This quantization of physical quantities, which is at the heart of our description of Nature, made its way through the centuries, as evidenced by the antique concept of the atom.

Research is showing that among superconducting materials in high magnetic fields, the phenomenon of electronic symmetry breaking is common. "These heavy fermion materials have a different hierarchy of energy scales than is found in transition metal and organic materials, but they often have similar complex and intertwined physics coupling spin, charge and lattice degrees of freedom." Common phenomenon could be key to understanding mechanism of unconventional superconductivity LOS ALAMOS, N.M. Aug.

Astronomers using Caltech's Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) have found evidence for a bizarre lensing system in space, in which a large assemblage of stars is magnifying a much more distant galaxy containing a jet-spewing supermassive black hole. The discovery provides the best view yet of blobs of hot gas that shoot out from supermassive black holes.

Battery researchers agree that one of the most promising possibilities for future battery technology is the lithium-air (or lithium-oxygen) battery, which could provide three times as much power for a given weight as today's leading technology, lithium-ion batteries. But tests of various approaches to creating such batteries have produced conflicting and confusing results, as well as controversies over how to explain them.

Famously described as 'the deepest problem in solid state physics' by Nobel Laureate, Philip Andersen, the glass transition, by which a liquid transforms into a solid without freezing, is shedding its mystique. Until now, researchers' understanding has been splintered at best, with mutually incompatible interpretations of the physical processes underlying the emergence of amorphous solids (glasses).

In quantum mechanics particles can behave as waves and take many paths through an experiment, even when a classical marble could only take one of them at any time. However, it requires only combinations of pairs of paths, rather than three or more, to determine the probability for a particle to arrive somewhere.

Today almost all information stored on hard disc drives or cloud servers is recorded in magnetic media, because it is non-volatile (i.e. it retains the information when power is switched off) and cheap. For portable devices such as mobile phones and tablets, other forms of non-magnetic memory are used because the technology based on magnetism is impractical and is not energy efficient.

Physicists at the University of Pennsylvania have invented a new type of graphene-based sensor that could one day be used as a low-cost diagnostic system able to test for biomarker molecules, which are indicative of disease states. In collaboration with Penn chemists, the researchers published a paper in Chemical Science in which they use this sensor, for the first time, to directly answer a basic scientific question in nanotechnology about whether a particular protein maintains its structure when it assembles around an inorganic nanoparticle.

There are 34 other blood groups with more than 300 known variants. Knowing what antigens we have in our blood is crucial in case of a transfusion, writes Associate Professor Robert Flower. There are many molecules on the surface of red blood cells that vary between individuals, and these form the basis of blood groups.

The rotation rate of the Sun's core has been accurately measured for the first time. The Sun, which has been remarkably stable for the past 4.6 billion years, is held together by the almost perfect equilibrium between the force of gravity, which tends to cause it to collapse, and the pressure of the thermonuclear reactions in its core.

New results show a difference in the way neutrinos and antineutrinos behave, which could help explain why there is so much matter in the universe. The results, announced today by the international team of scientists including large group from Imperial College London, suggest there could be a difference between the behaviour of matter and antimatter.

Lancaster physicists working on a major international experiment are a step closer to understanding conditions after the 'Big Bang' and mysteries of why there is so much matter in the universe. Researchers at the T2K (Tokai to Kamioka - which involves sending neutrinos 295 km through the earth across Japan) experiment have discovered that the symmetry between matter and antimatter may be violated for neutrino oscillations.