https://medicalxpress.com/ en-us provides the latest news from American Physical Society A new Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) report has been released by the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) to the High Energy Physics program of the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation's Division of Physics, which outlines particle physicists' recommendations for research priorities in a field whose projects—such as building new accelerator facilities—can take years or decades, contributions from thousands of scientists, and billions of dollars. https://phys.org/news/2023-12-advisory-panel-issues-field-defining-investments.html Mon, 11 Dec 2023 13:43:00 EST news621524575 In new studies published in Physical Review Letters and a special issue of Classical and Quantum Gravity on September 14, a team of researchers present the most precise test yet of the Weak Equivalence Principle, a key component of the theory of general relativity. The report describes the final results from the MICROSCOPE mission, which tested the principle by measuring accelerations of free-falling objects in a satellite orbiting Earth. The team found that the accelerations of pairs of objects differed by no more than about one part in 1015 ruling out any violations of the Weak Equivalence Principle or deviations from the current understanding of general relativity at that level. https://phys.org/news/2022-09-microscope-mission-precise-relativity-weak.html Wed, 14 Sep 2022 10:00:02 EDT news582364653 Physicists have become keenly interested in the first billion years of the universe—the stretch between the Big Bang and the formation of the first stars during which galaxies began to form. During the last 600 million years or so of this period, the neutral interstellar galactic medium–and even pre-galactic medium–became ionized with ultraviolet radiation emitted by the first stars glowing in the earliest, growing galaxies. An understanding of the physics of this stretch, called the "Epoch of Reionization," or EoR, would connect the physics of the modern universe to the Big Bang.  https://phys.org/news/2022-04-cosmic-dawn-iii-recreates-epoch.html Mon, 11 Apr 2022 11:08:18 EDT news568894089 It's difficult to predict with certainty what will happen when giant stars collide, but new, first-of-their-kind hydrodynamic simulations by the DEMOBLACK team at the University of Padova in Italy point to a range of exotic outcomes. Those include building up massive black holes in stellar nurseries, where big stars reside close together. https://phys.org/news/2022-04-simulation-star-collisions-fuel-massive.html Fri, 08 Apr 2022 10:55:06 EDT news568634102 In the last seven years, scientists at the LIGO-Virgo Collaboration (LVC) have detected 90 gravitational waves signals. Gravitational waves are perturbations in the fabric of spacetime that race outwards from cataclysmic events like the merger of binary black holes (BBH). In observations from the first half of the most recent experimental run, which continued for six months in 2019, the collaboration reported signals from 44 BBH events. https://phys.org/news/2022-04-ten-gravitational-ligo-virgo-o3a.html Fri, 08 Apr 2022 10:54:56 EDT news568634093 With each new SARS-CoV-2 variant that has emerged, global panic ensues to determine its level of threat. But a group of quantum biologists, engineers, and virus physicists think we already have the tools to more easily detect—and stop—dangerous coronaviruses and their variants. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-quantum-vibrations-nanodiamonds-unusual-toolbox.html Wed, 09 Mar 2022 13:12:10 EST news566053924 When Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020, their CRISPR gene editor had revolutionized medicine, agriculture, and genetics in just a few short years. But already, plans were in the works to move beyond CRISPR's simple scissors, which snip genes out of a DNA sequence. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-crispr-dna-tools-rewrite-genes.html Wed, 09 Mar 2022 11:00:59 EST news566046056 By some measures, climate change is in the past. https://phys.org/news/2022-03-climate-extreme-events.html Wed, 09 Mar 2022 11:00:30 EST news566046007 The US federal government's current approach to research security concerns is causing a significant number of researchers to feel unwelcome in the United States, leading them to consider taking their talents to other countries, thereby jeopardizing the nation's security, according to a new report by the American Physical Society (APS). https://phys.org/news/2021-12-approach-threatens-scientific-enterprise.html Mon, 20 Dec 2021 15:37:53 EST news559237063 On April 28, 2021, at 0933 UT (3:33 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time), NASA's Parker Solar Probe reached the sun's extended solar atmosphere, known as the corona, and spent five hours there. The spacecraft is the first to enter the outer boundaries of our sun. https://phys.org/news/2021-12-parker-solar-probe-spacecraft-sun.html Tue, 14 Dec 2021 13:05:18 EST news558709509 Ocean currents, propelled by kinetic energy from the wind, are the great moderators of our climate. By transferring heat from the equator to polar regions, they help make our planet habitable. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-impact-ocean-eddy.html Thu, 11 Nov 2021 16:08:57 EST news555869333 When you're staring petrified at the new Resident Evil movie, or breathlessly following along to a vintage Jane Fonda aerobics video, what happens to your blood flow? https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-11-cardiovascular.html Wed, 10 Nov 2021 16:13:04 EST news555783181 In the Namib desert—one of the driest places in the world—a tiny species of beetle climbs the dunes, leans its body toward the wind, and catches the only source of water it can: passing droplets of fog. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-fog-fresh.html Wed, 10 Nov 2021 16:12:40 EST news555783158 Tempura, schnitzel, samosas, french fries, a deep-fried stick of butter at the county fair—who doesn't love food crisped up in sizzling oil? https://phys.org/news/2021-11-deep-frying-reveal-oil-temperature-path.html Wed, 10 Nov 2021 16:12:33 EST news555783149 Nature documentaries have long exploited the elegant swerves of massive schools of fish. Fish team up to more easily cut through the water and protect themselves from predators. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-uncovering-optimization-secrets-fish-schools.html Wed, 10 Nov 2021 13:30:09 EST news555773406 Over the past decade, several extreme heat waves and heat domes have had a catastrophic impact on society and the biosphere. In 2021, all regions of the northern hemisphere have been affected. In late June and July, we saw simultaneous extreme heat waves in the Pacific Northwest, persistent heat waves in Siberia that fueled massive wildfires, and temperatures and humidity in Pakistan, northern India, and the Middle East that were at the limit of what the human body can withstand. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-ways-dynamical-extreme.html Wed, 10 Nov 2021 13:25:57 EST news555773155 Building better air filters could help head off the next pandemic. At the 74th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, scientists will present the latest results on how future face masks may work, what happens when masks get wet, and why improper mask usage can sometimes be worse than no mask at all. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-future-masks.html Wed, 10 Nov 2021 13:25:45 EST news555773141 Despite effective vaccines, it has become clear that SARS-CoV-2 will not fully disappear anytime soon. At the 74th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Fluid Dynamics, physicists and engineers will present innovative ways to avoid clouds of coronavirus whether waiting in line, going to class, listening to the opera, or encountering people elsewhere. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-covid-proof-grocery-line-classroom-orchestra.html Wed, 10 Nov 2021 13:25:21 EST news555773114 In the race toward practical fusion energy, tokamaks (donut-shaped plasma devices) are the leading concept—they have achieved better confinement and higher plasma temperatures than any other configuration. Two major magnetic fields are used to contain the plasma: a toroidal field (along the axes of the donut) produced by external coils and the field from a ring current flowing in the plasma itself. The performance of a tokamak, however, comes with an Achilles heel—the possibility of disruptions, a sudden termination of the plasma driven by instabilities in the plasma current. Since the plasma current provides the equilibrium and confinement for the tokamak, the challenge of taming disruptions must be addressed and solved. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-passive-aggressive-ready-runaway-electrons.html Mon, 08 Nov 2021 07:04:08 EST news555577442 Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and Los Alamos National Laboratory have uncovered a key process behind a major challenge called thermal quenches, the rapid heat loss in hot plasmas that can occur in doughnut-shaped tokamak fusion devices. Such quenches are sudden drops of electron heat in the plasma that fuels fusion reactions, drops that can create damaging disruptions inside the tokamak. Understanding the physics behind these quenches, caused by powerful perturbations in the magnetic fields that confine the plasma in tokamaks, could lead to methods to mitigate or prevent them. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-code-reveals-source-fusion-disruptions.html Mon, 08 Nov 2021 07:03:03 EST news555577379 Charged particle accelerators have been a central tool of basic physics research for almost a hundred years, perhaps most famously as "atom smashers" for understanding the elementary constituents of the universe. As accelerators have progressed to ever higher energies to probe ever smaller constituents, they have grown to enormous size: the Large Hadron Collider is a remarkable 27 kilometers in circumference. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-meter-scale-plasma-waveguides-particle-envelope.html Mon, 08 Nov 2021 07:02:21 EST news555577321 The Parker Solar Probe spacecraft, NASA's newest and most ambitious effort to study the sun, has broken a lot of records: it has gotten closer to the sun than any other spacecraft to date, its instruments have operated at the hottest temperatures, and the probe is the fastest human-made object ever. But those records come at a cost: The spacecraft is moving so fast that running into even a tiny grain of dust can lead to serious damage. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-tiny-grains-severe-hypervelocity-impacts.html Mon, 08 Nov 2021 07:00:09 EST news555577204 For decades, scientists have been working to harness clean, renewable fusion energy, which occurs naturally in stars like our sun. Using strong magnetic fields to confine hot plasmas within a donut-shaped device called a tokamak, researchers can generate conditions necessary to induce fusion reactions. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-neutral-particles-disruptive-plasma-blobs.html Mon, 08 Nov 2021 07:00:04 EST news555576698 After decades of inertial confinement fusion research, a record yield of more than 1.3 megajoules (MJ) from fusion reactions was achieved in the laboratory for the first time during an experiment at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF) on Aug. 8, 2021. These results mark an 8-fold improvement over experiments conducted in spring 2021 and a 25-fold increase over NIF's 2018 record yield (Figure 1). https://phys.org/news/2021-11-brink-fusion-ignition-national-facility.html Mon, 08 Nov 2021 07:00:03 EST news555576611 Spacecraft have long used heat shields for protection during entry into planetary atmospheres. Future missions to the outer solar system will need more sophisticated materials than currently exist. The extreme heating conditions needed to study new shield materials are, however, very difficult to achieve experimentally on Earth. Scientists working at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility at General Atomics (GA) recently developed an innovative approach that uses the conditions inside a fusion reactor for testing heat shield materials. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-fusion-reactors-spacecraft-shields.html Mon, 08 Nov 2021 07:00:02 EST news555576884 In controlled nuclear fusion, heavy isotopes of hydrogen fuse into helium, releasing a huge amount of energy in the process. A large portion of the energy released by a laboratory fusion reaction goes into hot helium ash (an impurity in the plasma that bears no resemblance to ash from a fire). This ash is around 30 billion degrees Celsius, compared to 200 million degrees for the bulk plasma. For context, the temperature at the core of the sun is 15 million C. The ash energy may be captured by a plasma wave, via wave-particle interaction known as alpha channeling. The energy in the wave can then be absorbed by fuel ions, powering the fusion reaction. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-harnessing-hot-helium-ash-rotation.html Mon, 08 Nov 2021 07:00:02 EST news555575892 The march towards fusion energy gain, required for commercial fusion energy, is not always visible. Progress occurs in fits and starts through experiments in national laboratories, universities, and more recently at private companies. Sam Wurzel, a Technology-to-Market Advisor at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), details and highlights this progress over the last 60 years by extracting and cataloging the performance of over 70 fusion experiments in this time span. The work illustrates the history and development of different approaches including magnetic-fusion devices such as tokamaks, stellarators and other "alternate concepts," laser-driven devices such as inertial confinement fusion (ICF), and hybrid approaches including liner-imploded and z-pinch concepts. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-unveiling-steady-fusion-energy-gain.html Mon, 08 Nov 2021 07:00:02 EST news555576491 Future fusion reactors have a conundrum: maintain a plasma core that is hotter than the surface of the sun without melting the walls that contain the plasma. Fusion scientists refer to this challenge as "core-edge integration." Researchers working at the DIII-D National Fusion Facility at General Atomics have recently tackled this problem in two ways: the first aims to make the fusion core even hotter, while the second focuses on cooling the material that reaches the wall. Protecting the plasma facing components could make them last longer, making future fusion power plants more cost-effective.  https://phys.org/news/2021-11-hot-cores-cool-edges-fusion.html Mon, 08 Nov 2021 07:00:02 EST news555576547 The U.S. scientific community is currently conceptualizing the first nuclear fusion power plants, which will revolutionize energy production. Like the sun and stars, a fusion power plant will produce energy by fusing light elements, like hydrogen, into heavier ones, like helium, at temperatures higher than 25 million F. Fusing hydrogen to produce helium releases about 4 million times more energy than a chemical reaction, such as the burning of coal, oil, or gas. Yet, the fusion reaction neither releases carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, nor results in radioactive biproducts, which makes it one of the most promising ways to produce clean energy on Earth. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-visualizing-microscopic-world-fast-ions.html Mon, 08 Nov 2021 07:00:01 EST news555576748 While movies show Earth as existing in a calm, pristine corner of the universe, in reality the near-Earth space environment is dangerous and dynamic. On any given day, hot charged particles and blobs of plasma, called the solar wind, travel from the sun and are deflected by the Earth's magnetic field, causing beautiful aurora around north and south poles. During solar storms, however, the solar wind can compress the Earth's magnetic field, causing the magnetic field lines to rearrange and reconnect (also known as magnetic reconnection), shooting hot, dense plasma back toward the Earth. Processes like these are commonly referred to as space weather. Because of the effect that these space-based disruptions can have on key elements of our modern society, such as telecommunication systems and power grids, obtaining a good understanding of these processes is just as essential as understanding ground-based weather. https://phys.org/news/2021-11-micro-scale-current-sheets-unleash-macro-scale.html Mon, 08 Nov 2021 07:00:01 EST news555576061