Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: particle physics

These limits have kept solar tech stuck on rooftops and in fields. But a new type of cell, almost invisible to the eye, may soon change that. Transparent solar cells could turn windows, cars, and even skin into energy-harvesting surfaces.

Unlike the old models, these next-gen cells don’t clash with their surroundings. They blend in while still capturing sunlight. Some are so clear they reach up to 79% transparency. On average, most hover above 70%, allowing them to function without being noticed.

A major reason for this leap forward lies in materials only a few atoms thick. Known as 2D materials, they’re helping reshape what solar panels can do. One group, called transition metal dichalcogenides, absorbs light well and has band gaps that can be tuned.

Read more | >

Europe’s CERN laboratory said on Monday that a detailed analysis revealed no technical obstacles to building the world’s biggest particle collider, even as critics took issue with the “pharaonic” $17-billion project.

The Future Circular Collider (FCC) project is essential for ensuring that Europe maintains its global leadership in , CERN chief Fabiola Gianotti told AFP.

“There is real competition” from China in particular, she cautioned, hailing that the giant FCC “project is absolutely on the good track” and urging states to release the funding needed to move forward.

Read more | >

A recent study published in Physical Review Letters

<em> Physical Review Letters (PRL)</em> is a prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Physical Society. Launched in 1958, it is renowned for its swift publication of short reports on significant fundamental research in all fields of physics. PRL serves as a venue for researchers to quickly share groundbreaking and innovative findings that can potentially shift or enhance understanding in areas such as particle physics, quantum mechanics, relativity, and condensed matter physics. The journal is highly regarded in the scientific community for its rigorous peer review process and its focus on high-impact papers that often provide foundational insights within the field of physics.

Read more | >

An international team led by Rutgers University-New Brunswick researchers has merged two lab-synthesized materials into a synthetic quantum structure once thought impossible to exist and produced an exotic structure expected to provide insights that could lead to new materials at the core of quantum computing.

The work, described in a cover story in the journal Nano Letters, explains how four years of continuous experimentation led to a novel method to design and build a unique, tiny sandwich composed of distinct atomic layers.

One slice of the microscopic structure is made of dysprosium titanate, an inorganic compound used in nuclear reactors to trap and contain elusive magnetic monopole particles, while the other is composed of pyrochlore iridate, a new magnetic semimetal mainly used in today’s experimental research due to its distinctive electronic, topological and magnetic properties.

Read more | >

Faster isn’t always better when it comes to high-speed materials science, according to new Cornell research showing that tiny metal particles bond best at a precise supersonic speed.

In industrial processes like cold spray coating and , tiny metal particles travel at extreme speeds and slam into a surface with such force that they fuse together, forming strong metallic bonds. This rapid, high-energy collision builds up layers of material, creating durable, high-performance components. Understanding how and why these bonds form, and sometimes fail, can help optimize manufacturing techniques and lead to stronger materials.

In a study published March 31 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Cornell scientists launched , each about 20 micrometers in diameter, onto an aluminum surface at speeds of up to 1,337 meters per second—well beyond the speed of sound—and used high-speed cameras to record the impacts.

Read more | >

While the threat that microplastics pose to human and ecological health has been richly documented and is well known, nanoplastics, which are smaller than one micrometer (1/50th the thickness of an average human hair), are far more reactive, far more mobile and vastly more capable of crossing biological membranes. Yet, because they are so tiny and so mobile, researchers don’t yet have an accurate understanding of just how toxic these particles are.

The first step to understanding the toxicology of nanoplastics is to build a reliable, efficient and flexible tool that can not only quantify their concentration in a given sample, but also analyze which specific plastics that sample contains.

An international team of scientists led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst reports in Nature Water on the development of a new tool, known as the OM-SERS setup, which can do all of these things and can furthermore be used to detect particular nanoplastic concentrations and polymer types in solid samples, such as soils, body tissues and plants.

Read more | >

Europe’s physics lab CERN is planning to build a particle-smasher even bigger than its Large Hadron Collider to continue searching for answers to some of the universe’s tiniest yet most profound mysteries.

The Future Circular Collider (FCC) has not yet received a political green light or funding. Even if approved, the vast project would not start operations until the 2040s—or be completed until the end of the century.

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which famously discovered the “God particle” Higgs boson and is currently the world’s powerful particle accelerator, is expected to have run its course by the 2040s.

Read more | >

A newly developed framework for quantifying uncertainties enhances the predictive power of analog quantum simulations. Simulating quantum many-body systems is a major objective in nuclear and high-energy physics. These systems involve large numbers of interacting particles governed by the laws of

Read more | >

Why matter dominates over antimatter in our universe has long been a major cosmic mystery to physicists. A new finding by the world’s largest particle collider has revealed a clue.

Read more | >