Exotic Atoms Shed Light on Physics Puzzle from Dawn of Universe
An international team of physicists has found the first direct evidence of pear shaped nuclei in exotic atoms.
The findings could advance the search for a new fundamental force in nature that could explain why the Big Bang created more matter than antimatter—a pivotal imbalance in the history of everything.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/exotic-atoms-shed-light-physics-puzzle-dawn-universe
Universe May be ‘Designed’ to Make Black Holes
The math underpinning Darwin’s theory of natural selection could explain how the universe may be “designed” to make black holes.
New Oxford Univ. research builds on the “cosmological natural selection hypothesis” – an idea first put forward in the 1990s to explain the apparent “fine-tuning” of the universe’s basic parameters to allow for the existence of atoms, galaxies and life itself.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/universe-may-be-designed-make-black-holes
Herschel’s Last Images Show Early Galaxies Were Cooler
Physicists analyzing observations from the Herschel Space Observatory have shown that galaxies in the early Universe were cooler than those we see around us today. The study draws on the star survey work of the HerMES projectled by Prof. Seb Oliver at the Univ. of Sussex and indicates that early galaxies were more bloated, contained more dust and were distributed over larger regions than previously thought.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/herschels-last-images-show-early-galaxies-were-cooler
Scientists at the world’s biggest atom smasher have found further reasons for the apparent lack of antimatter in the universe.
A team working with data from CERN’s Large Hadron Collider says it has discovered a particle that decays unevenly into matter and antimatter.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/cern-finds-asymmetry-clue-particle-decay
Black Holes Can Measure Universe’s Rate of Expansion
Radiation emitted in the vicinity of black holes could be used to measure distances of billions of light years, says a Tel Aviv Univ. researcher.
A few years ago, researchers revealed that the universe is expanding at a much faster rate than originally believed — a discovery that earned a Nobel Prize in 2011. But measuring the rate of this acceleration over large distances is still challenging and problematic, says Hagai Netzer of Tel Aviv Univ.’s School of Physics and Astronomy.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/black-holes-can-measure-universes-rate-expansion
As the universe expands, it is continually subjected to energy shifts, or “quantum fluctuations,” that send out little pulses of “sound” into the fabric of spacetime. In fact, the universe is thought to have sprung from just such an energy shift.
A recent paper in the journal Physical Review Letters reports a new mathematical tool that should allow one to use these sounds to help reveal the shape of the universe. The authors reconsider an old question in spectral geometry that asks, roughly, to what extent can the shape of a thing be known from the sound of its acoustic vibrations? The researchers approached this problem by breaking it down into small workable pieces, according to author Tejal Bhamre, a Princeton Univ. graduate student.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/sound-reveals-shape-universe
Cosmic Ray Detector May Have Found Dark Matter
A $2 billion cosmic ray detector on the International Space Station has found the footprint of something that could be dark matter, the mysterious substance that is believed to hold the cosmos together but has never been directly observed, scientists say.
But the first results from the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, known by its acronym AMS, are almost as enigmatic as dark matter itself. They show evidence of new physics phenomena that could be the strange and unknown dark matter or could be energy that originates from pulsars, scientists at the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva announced.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/04/cosmic-ray-detector-may-have-found-dark-matter
Detailed All-Sky Map Shows Oldest Light in Universe
The Planck collaboration presented its first all-sky map of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which impressively confirms the standard model of cosmology and determines its parameters more accurately than ever before. At the same time, the researchers also found significant anomalies and inhomogeneities indicating that some aspects of the “standard model” are not yet understood.
The all-sky map released now is based on the first 15.5 months of observations with the Planck space telescope, a mission of the European Space Agency (ESA), and shows the oldest light in the universe. This was emitted when the universe was only 380,000 years old and became transparent for the first time after the Big Bang. The “primordial soup” of protons, electrons and photons cooled gradually, allowing neutral hydrogen atoms to form and the light to escape. As the universe continued to expand and to cool, this radiation was shifted to longer wavelengths, so that it is received today as the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at a temperature of about 2.7 K.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/03/detailed-all-sky-map-shows-oldest-light-universe
Famous Supernova Answers Questions about Cosmic Distance Markers
A new study using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory points to the origin of a famous supernova. This supernova, discovered in 1604 by Johannes Kepler, belongs to an important class of objects that are used to measure the rate of expansion of the Universe.
Astronomers have used a very long Chandra observation of the remnant of Kepler’s supernova to deduce that the supernova was triggered by an interaction between a white dwarf and a red giant star. This is significant because another study has already shown that a so-called Type Ia supernova caused the Kepler supernova remnant.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/03/famous-supernova-answers-questions-about-cosmic-distance-markers
Study Furthers Einstein’s ‘Theory of Everything’
Sussex Univ. physicists have taken a small step towards fulfilling Einstein’s dream of proving there is only one fundamental force in nature.
Following last year’s discovery of the Higgs boson particle – the so-called “God particle” that answers how the particles have masses – Xavier Calmet and PhD student Michael Atkins looked at how the Higgs field interacts with gravity. Besides giving masses to all known particles, it’s possible that the Higgs boson played a significant role in the expansion of the Universe after the Big Bang.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/02/study-furthers-einstein%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98theory-everything%E2%80%99
Universe’s Temperature Confirms Big Bang’s Prediction
Using the CSIRO Australia Telescope Compact Array near Narrabri, NSW, an international team from Sweden, France, Germany and Australia has measured how warm the Universe was when it was half its current age.
“This is the most precise measurement ever made of how the Universe has cooled down during its 13.77 billion year history,” says Robert Braun, Chief Scientist at CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science. Because light takes time to travel, when we look out into space we see the Universe as it was in the past — as it was when light left the galaxies we are looking at. So to look back half-way into the Universe’s history, we need to look half-way across the Universe.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/universes-temperature-confirms-big-bang%E2%80%99s-prediction
Physicists Wonder Where the Antimatter Went
Studying the tiny and almost massless fundamental particles called neutrinos might turn out to have huge consequences for our understanding of what the universe is made of. The universe as astronomers observe is almost entirely made of matter with very little hints of antimatter in it. Scientists studying neutrinos in China may be able to tell us the reason behind this.
“Physicists have put their last hope on the neutrino to explain the absence of antimatter in the universe,” says Karsten Heeger a professor of physics at UW-Madison.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/physicists-wonder-where-antimatter-went
Astronomers Use Distant Supernova to Study Cosmic History
What if you had a “Wayback Television Set” and could watch an entire month of ancient prehistory unfold before your eyes in real time? David Rubin of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) presented just such a scenario to the American Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting in Long Beach, CA, when he announced the discovery of a striking astronomical object: a Type Ia supernova with a redshift of 1.71 that dates back 10 billion years in time. Labeled SN SCP-0401, the supernova is exceptional for its detailed spectrum and precision color measurement, unprecedented in a supernova so distant.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/astronomers-use-distant-supernova-study-cosmic-history
Small Galaxies Do Strange Dance Around Larger System
A newly discovered form of circle dancing is perplexing astronomers; not due to its complex choreography, but because it’s unclear why the dancers – dwarf galaxies – are dancing in a ring around the much larger Andromeda Galaxy.
The international group of astronomers who discovered the curious cosmic choreography are surprised at the circle around Andromeda that the small orbiting galaxies have formed. The astronomers include Prof. Geraint Lewis from the Univ. of Sydney’s School of Physics, and Anthony Conn, a PhD student at Macquarie Univ., and Dougal Mackey from the Australian National Univ.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/small-galaxies-do-strange-dance-around-larger-system
Magnetic Fields Created Before the First Stars
Magnets have practically become everyday objects. Earlier on, however, the universe consisted only of nonmagnetic elements and particles. Just how the magnetic forces came into existence has been researched by Prof. Reinhard Schlickeiser at the Institute of Theoretical Physics of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. In the journal Physical Review Letters, he describes a new mechanism for the magnetization of the universe even before the emergence of the first stars.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/01/magnetic-fields-created-first-stars
