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Category: physics – Page 6

Physicists Observe a Nuclear “Memory” Thought Impossible

UT researchers have made rare measurements of exotic nuclear decay that reshape how scientists think heavy elements form in extreme cosmic events.

You can’t have gold without the decay of an atomic nucleus, yet the details behind that transformation have long been difficult to confirm. Researchers in nuclear physics at UT have now reported three key findings in a single study that clarify important parts of this process. Their work offers new guidance for developing models that explain how stars create heavy elements and may improve predictions about the behavior of exotic, short-lived nuclei found across the universe.

The Physics of Bling.

Consciousness as the foundation: New theory addresses nature of reality

Consciousness is fundamental; only thereafter do time, space and matter arise. This is the starting point for a new theoretical model of the nature of reality, presented by Maria Strømme, Professor of Materials Science at Uppsala University, in AIP Advances. The article has been selected as the best paper of the issue and featured on the cover.

Strømme, who normally conducts research in nanotechnology, here takes a major leap from the smallest scales to the very largest—and proposes an entirely new theory of the origin of the universe. The article presents a framework in which consciousness is not viewed as a byproduct of brain activity, but as a fundamental field underlying everything we experience—matter, space, time, and life itself.

In defence of Stephen Wolfram

You like Stephen Wolfram, right?

I mean, if he’s to be believed, he has reinvented physics, not to mention philosophy.

How could you not like such a thinker?

Well… it turns out that there are plenty of people who don’t like Stephen Wolfram… or his physics… or his philosophy.

Here are four criticisms of Stephen Wolfram I regularly hear…

…and here’s why these criticisms, though they hint at uncomfortable truths, nonetheless miss the mark.

Continue reading “In defence of Stephen Wolfram” | >

Breakthrough Simulation Maps Every Star in The Milky Way in Scientific First

The Milky Way contains more than 100 billion stars, each following its own evolutionary path through birth, life, and sometimes violent death.

For decades, astrophysicists have dreamed of creating a complete simulation of our galaxy, a digital twin that could test theories about how galaxies form and evolve. That dream has always crashed against an impossible computational wall.

Until now.

Endings and beginnings: Atacama Cosmology Telescope releases its final data, shaping the future of cosmology

There’s always a touch of melancholy when a chapter that has absorbed years of work comes to an end. In the case of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), those years amount to nearly 20—and now the telescope has completed its mission. Yet some endings are also important beginnings, opening new paths for the entire scientific community.

The three papers published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics by the ACT Collaboration describe and contextualize in detail the sixth and final major ACT data release—perhaps the most important one—marking significant advances in our understanding of the universe’s evolution and its current state.

ACT’s data clarify several key points: the measurement of the Hubble constant (the number that indicates the current rate of cosmic expansion—the universe’s “speedometer”) obtained from observations at very large cosmological distances is confirmed, and it remains markedly different from the value derived from the nearby universe. This is both a problem and a remarkable discovery: it confirms the so-called “Hubble tension,” which challenges the model we use to describe the cosmos.

Final experimental result for the muon still challenges theorists

For experimental physicists, the latest measurement of the muon is the best of times. For theorists there’s still work to do.

Colliding 300 billion muons over four years at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in the U.S., the Muon g-2 Collaboration —a group of over 200 researchers—has measured the magnetic strength of the muon to unprecedented precision: accurate to 127 parts per billion.

These final results on the muon’s magnetic moment—measured by its frequency of the moment’s wobbling in an external magnetic field—are the end of a chain of experimental efforts going back 30 years and have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.

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