Lifeboat Foundation

The particle, which has been called X(2900), was detected by analyzing all the data LHCb has recorded so far from collisions at CERNs Large Hadron Collider.

The LHCb experiment at CERN has developed a penchant for finding exotic combinations of quarks, the elementary particles that come together to give us composite particles such as the more familiar proton and neutron. In particular, LHCb has observed several tetraquarks, which, as the name suggests, are made of four quarks (or rather two quarks and two antiquarks). Observing these unusual particles helps scientists advance our knowledge of the strong force, one of the four known fundamental forces in the universe. At a CERN seminar held virtually on August 12, LHCb announced the first signs of an entirely new kind of tetraquark with a mass of 2.9 GeV/c²: the first such particle with only one charm quark.

First predicted to exist in 1964, scientists have observed six kinds of quarks (and their antiquark counterparts) in the laboratory: up, down, charm, strange, top and bottom. Since quarks cannot exist freely, they group to form composite particles: three quarks or three antiquarks form “baryons” like the proton, while a quark and an antiquark form “mesons.”

University of Central Florida researchers are making the cutting-edge field of attosecond science more accessible to researchers from all disciplines.

Their method to help open up the field is detailed in a new study published today in the journal Science Advances.

An attosecond is one billionth of a billionth of a second, and the ability to make measurements with attosecond precision allows researchers to study the fast motion of electrons inside atoms and molecules at their natural time scale.

While axions are not currently a proposed direct explanation for dark matter, they could’ve set the stage for the creation of dark matter in the early stages of our universe.

Scientists are undeniably excited by this third possibility, though they’re also urging restraint due to the other potential explanations.

“I’m trying to be calm here, but it’s hard not to be hyperbolic,” Neal Weiner, a particle theorist at New York University, who was not involved in the research, told The New York Times. “If this is real, calling it a game changer would be an understatement.”

Another potential explanation is that the heartbeat is illuminated by more diffuse and unstructured outflows of gas and particles generated by the disk’s precession. These outflows are not as concentrated and luminous as the jets, but they could potentially ripple out to Fermi J1913+0515 and light it up in this unique way.

The team is in the midst of collecting follow-up observations with the IRAM 30m millimeter radio telescope in Spain that might constrain the origins of the strange gamma ray heartbeat.

“We discovered the source, and discovered its periodicity, but we do not know what it means or how it is produced, so we need more observations to continue the study,” Li said.

Circa 2016

By using heat and temperature to modify the orientation of atoms, scientists have created a spongy, ultrastrong material that is lighter than a zip-close bag.

What if I were to tell you that passwords could be replaced by 1,000 trillion atoms to create an unclonable ID tag? Yeah, that.

NASA is actively monitoring a strange anomaly in Earth’s magnetic field: a giant region of lower magnetic intensity in the skies above the planet, stretching out between South America and southwest Africa.

This vast, developing phenomenon, called the South Atlantic Anomaly, has intrigued and concerned scientists for years, and perhaps none more so than NASA researchers. The space agency’s satellites and spacecraft are particularly vulnerable to the weakened magnetic field strength within the anomaly, and the resulting exposure to charged particles from the Sun.

Continue reading “NASA Is Tracking a Vast, Growing Anomaly in Earth’s Magnetic Field” »

Have you ever spilled your coffee on your desk? You may then have observed one of the most puzzling phenomena of fluid mechanics—the coffee ring effect. This effect has hindered the industrial deployment of functional inks with graphene, 2-D materials, and nanoparticles because it makes printed electronic devices behave irregularly.

Now, after studying this process for years, a team of researchers have created a new family of inks that overcomes this problem, enabling the fabrication of new electronics such as sensors, light detectors, batteries and solar cells.

Coffee rings form because the liquid evaporates quicker at the edges, causing an accumulation of solid particles that results in the characteristic dark ring. Inks behave like coffee—particles in the ink accumulate around the edges creating irregular shapes and uneven surfaces, especially when printing on hard surfaces like silicon wafers or plastics.

The universe may have started with a Big Bang, but it will most likely end in an utterly anticlimactic way, slowly fading to black over trillions and trillions of years. Now, a theoretical physicist at Illinois State University has calculated what might just be the last interesting event that will ever happen – the explosions of stars called black dwarfs, which don’t even exist yet.

The ultimate fate of the universe is still up for debate, but one of the leading hypotheses is that it will undergo a “heat death.” Basically, all the stars will cool down and fizzle out, black holes will evaporate, and the never-ending expansion of the universe will stretch the fabric of reality so far that the remaining subatomic particles will rarely have the chance to whiz within a parsec of each other.

And now, thanks to theoretical physicist Matt Caplan, we have an idea of what might be one of the last things that will ever happen – black dwarf supernovae.