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Category: particle physics

First-ever collisions of oxygen at the Large Hadron Collider

“The current operating mode, in which a beam of protons collides with a beam of oxygen ions, is the most challenging,” points out Roderik Bruce, an LHC ion specialist. “This is because the inside the accelerator affects protons and oxygen ions differently, due to their different charge-to-mass ratios. In other words, without corrections the two beams would collide in different places at each turn.”

To overcome this problem, the engineers are carefully adjusting the frequency of revolution and the momentum of each beam, so that the collisions take place right at the heart of the LHC’s four main experiments: ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb.

But these four experiments are not the only ones to be involved in this special campaign. Last week, the LHCf experiment, which studies cosmic rays using the small-angle particles created during collisions, installed a detector along the LHC beamline, 140 meters from the ATLAS experiment’s point, which it will use for proton–oxygen run. This detector will later be removed and replaced by a calorimeter, which will provide additional data during the oxygen–oxygen and neon–neon collisions.

Physicists Unlock New Path to Weighing the Universe’s “Ghost Particle”

Silver-110’s decay reveals a promising path to measure antineutrino mass. New data could reshape future neutrino studies. Neutrinos and antineutrinos are fundamental particles that possess mass, although their exact value remains unknown. Recent high-precision atomic mass measurements carried out

Satyendra Nath Bose

Satyendra Nath Bose FRS, MP [ 1 ] (/ ˈ b oʊ s / ; [ 4 ] [ a ] 1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974) was an Indian theoretical physicist and mathematician. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, in developing the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics, and the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he was awarded India’s second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, in 1954 by the Government of India. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ]

The eponymous particles class described by Bose’s statistics, bosons, were named by Paul Dirac. [ 8 ] [ 9 ]

A polymath, he had a wide range of interests in varied fields, including physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, mineralogy, philosophy, arts, literature, and music. He served on many research and development committees in India, after independence. [ 10 ] .

New superheavy isotope reveals complex relationship between quantum effects and fission

In a study published in Physical Review Letters, scientists at GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung have discovered a new superheavy isotope, 257 Sg (seaborgium), whose properties are providing new insights into nuclear stability and fission in the heaviest elements.

Superheavy elements exist in a delicate balance between the attractive nuclear force that holds protons and neutrons together and the repulsive electromagnetic force that pushes positively charged protons apart.

Without quantum shell effects, analogous to electron shells in atoms, these massive nuclei would split apart in less than a trillionth of a second.

Quantum Entanglement: The “Spooky” Glue Uniting Qubits and Beyond

From enabling quantum supercomputers to securing communications and teleporting quantum states, entanglement is the thread weaving through all of quantum technology. What once struck Einstein as a paradox is today routinely observed and harnessed in labs – the “spooky action” has become a practical tool. We have learned that entanglement is not some esoteric fringe effect; it’s a concrete physical resource, much like energy or information, that can be exploited to do tasks that are otherwise impossible. Its special correlations allow quantum computers to perform massively parallel computations in a single wavefunction, allow cryptographers to detect eavesdroppers with absolute certainty, and allow quantum states to be transmitted without moving a physical carrier.

Yet, there is still much to master. Entangling a handful of qubits is easy; doing so with thousands or millions – while keeping them error-corrected – remains a grand challenge. As we push the number of entangled particles higher, we are essentially scaling up new forms of matter (entangled states) that have no counterpart in classical physics. In 2022, a 12-qubit entangled state might be a small quantum circuit; by 2035, we could be operating machines where 1,000 qubits are all entangled in complex ways, delivering computational feats far beyond today’s reach. On the communications front, nascent quantum networks are entangling nodes over city-scale distances, working toward a future quantum internet that could interconnect quantum computers or enable clock synchronization and sensing with unprecedented precision. Each improvement in generating high-quality entanglement over distance inches us closer to unhackable global communication links.

Entanglement also raises philosophical questions about the nature of reality – it blurs the boundary between “separate” objects and challenges our intuitions of locality. But from an engineer’s perspective, entanglement is also just another phenomenon to be tamed and utilized. The narrative of quantum technology is one of turning quantum quirks into quantum capabilities. Where classical engineers use wires and signals, quantum engineers use entanglement and superposition. It’s telling that entanglement is often called the “essence” or “cornerstone” of quantum mechanics – crack it, and you unlock a whole new paradigm of information processing.

Discovery of ‘mini halo’ points to how the early universe was formed

The researchers analyzed data from the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope, a vast network of over 100,000 small antennas spanning eight European countries.

While studying a galaxy cluster named SpARCS1049, the researchers detected a faint, widespread radio signal. They found that it did not emanate from individual galaxies, but from a vast region of space filled with high-energy particles and magnetic fields.

Stretching over a million light-years, this diffuse glow is a telltale sign of a mini-halo, a structure astronomers have only been able to observe in the nearby universe up until now.