Tag

Physics

All articles tagged with #physics

science11 days ago•4 min saved

Water's Hidden Critical Point Revealed: Evidence of a Dual-Liquid Phase in Supercooled Water

Scientists report new evidence for a hidden critical point in supercooled water, supporting a liquid-liquid transition between high- and low-density forms and revealing a slowed, critical region near -63°C at around 1000 atm. Using rapid heating and ultra-fast X-ray snapshots, researchers observed the transition before freezing, narrowing the boundary of this mysterious state and enhancing our understanding of water’s peculiar behavior and its broader implications.

via ScienceAlert|

#critical-point #liquid-liquid-transition #physics

science16 days ago•40 min saved

Death as Reorganization: Physics Says You Don’t Vanish

Physics says when you die, your atoms don’t vanish; they disperse into soil, air and other living systems, while the pattern that defined you—the brain’s arrangement of those atoms—unravels as energy flow ceases. Memories and personality are tied to this arrangement, not to any single atom, so personal identity ends even as matter persists and recycles throughout the universe.

via Yahoo|

#atoms #consciousness #death

physics20 days ago•5 min saved

Researchers Reveal Rich 48-Dimensional Topology Inside Entangled Photons

Researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand and collaborators demonstrated that entangled photons carry a hidden, high-dimensional topology—up to 48 dimensions—with over 17,000 distinct signatures. This topology arises from a single property of light, its orbital angular momentum, enabling a new high-dimensional encoding scheme for quantum information. Because OAM spans many values, the resulting topology can be very rich, and the effect can be observed using standard SPDC lab setups, potentially improving the robustness of future quantum technologies.

via ScienceDaily|

#high-dimensional-states #orbital-angular-momentum #photonics

science25 days ago•3 min saved

Consciousness as the Hidden Ground of Physics

Harald A. Wiltsche argues that physics cannot escape phenomenology: objectivity in physics is not detachment from observers but invariance across frames, achieved through transformation rules; perceptual objectivity shows how our experiences and anticipations about objects from different perspectives ground physical knowledge, meaning the subject–object correlation has always underpinned physics and must be embraced to advance science.

via IAI TV|

#consciousness #objectivity #observer

science1 month ago•3 min saved

Lightning in a Box Could Shrink Thunderstorms to Tabletop Size

Penn State researchers propose a tiny, deck-of-cards-sized solid block that could replicate the electrical conditions of a thunderstorm, triggering lightning‑like radiation via a relativistic runaway electron avalanche. The “lightning‑in‑a‑box” is theoretical for now and would require experimental confirmation with common insulating materials; if proven feasible, it could let scientists study lightning at desktop scale, reducing the cost and scale of traditional field experiments.

via Gizmodo|

#atmospheric-science #high-energy #laboratory-research

science1 month ago•2 min saved

Behind the Tape Screech: Supersonic Cracks Rip Across a Roll

High-speed footage and synchronized audio reveal that Scotch tape peels via narrow transverse cracks racing across the tape at 250–600 m/s (roughly 560–1340 mph). The rapid cracks leave a temporary vacuum that travels with the crack to the tape edge, collapsing and producing a final sound pulse—the familiar screech is essentially a tiny sonic boom.

via Gizmodo|

#crack-propagation #physics #science

science1 month ago•6 min saved

Tape Screech Demystified: Tiny Sonic Booms From Adhesive Cracks

Physicists explain Scotch tape’s open‑air screech as a sequence of tiny, sideways cracks in the adhesive that form as you peel. These cracks open nanoscopic gaps between tape and surface; air can’t rush in fast enough to fill them, so a pressure pulse travels with each crack to the tape’s edge and collapses into the surrounding air, producing the audible screech. High‑speed cameras and synchronized microphones linked each pulse to a crack reaching the edge. The same team noted earlier vacuum experiments can emit X‑rays with tape flown in a perfect vacuum, but the in‑air screech comes from the crack‑driven pressure pulses.

via Boing Boing|

#acoustics #crack-propagation #physics

science1 month ago•5 min saved

Cosmic Fate Rewritten: Could the Universe End in a Big Crunch

A Cornell-led analysis proposes the expansion of the universe could be temporary and eventually reverse if the cosmological constant is negative, driven by an ultralight axion field. The model places the universe’s total lifespan at about 33.3 billion years, with a slow crunch starting in roughly 11 billion years and final collapse about 8 billion years later (around 19–20 billion years from now). If dark energy’s behavior continues to deviate from a true constant, this Big Crunch scenario could hold; upcoming surveys and missions (Euclid, Rubin Observatory, SPHEREx) are expected to refine measurements and test the idea.

via Indian Defence Review|

#big-crunch #cosmology #dark-energy

space1 month ago•58 min saved

Thirty Cosmos Facts That Will Blow Your Mind

BuzzFeed’s list of 30 mind-blowing space facts spans the cosmos—from the observable universe’s staggering scale (about one septillion stars) and a universe dominated by dark energy and dark matter to eye-opening specifics like Venus’s day lasting longer than its year, Saturn’s ultra-low density (it would float in water), Olympus Mons dwarfing Earth’s tallest mountain, and the Moon’s regolith preserving footprints for up to 100 million years. It also covers neutron stars’ immense density, interstellar visitors like Oumuamua and Borisov, a giant reservoir of water 12 billion light-years away, blue sunsets on Mars, and even the Sun’s hypothetical roar in space.

via BuzzFeed|

#astronomy #cosmology #physics

science1 month ago•5 min saved

Scientists Photograph Light in Motion, Revealing Terrell Rotation at Near-Light Speeds

Researchers from the University of Vienna used pulsed lasers and ultrafast cameras to photograph light moving at near-light speeds, recreating the Terrell–Penrose rotation and showing how objects would appear rotated rather than squashed; by capturing slices of light and stitching them, they slowed light to about 2 m/s to visualize the motion, with implications for relativity studies, particle physics, and astrophysics.

via The Daily Galaxy|

#high-speed-imaging #light-speed-photography #physics

physics2 months ago•9 min saved

Decoding Quantum Chaos with a Single Scramblon

A combined experiment/theory study using solid-state NMR on a powder of adamantane demonstrates that quantum chaos in a many-body system can be captured by a single scramblon mode. By applying scramblon theory to disentangle intrinsic chaotic scrambling from imperfections in time reversal, researchers extract a quantum Lyapunov exponent and a universal decay parameter, supporting a universal, simple description of chaotic dynamics that could bridge tabletop quantum experiments with holographic gravity concepts.

via American Physical Society|

#lyapunov-exponent #nmr #otoc

physics2 months ago•83 min saved

Graphene bilayers reveal a reversible superfluid-to-supersolid transition in excitons

Physicists using two closely spaced graphene layers, a strong magnetic field, and ultracold temperatures observed bilayer excitons transition from a superfluid to an insulating, lattice-like state (interpreted as a supersolid) and then revert back to a superfluid, marking the first reported reversible superfluid-to-supersolid transition in this system in a Nature study led by Cory Dean and colleagues.

via Live Science|

#bilayer-graphene #excitons #physics

science2 months ago•11 min saved

Could Our Cosmos Be a Giant Computer Simulation?

The article surveys the simulation hypothesis—the idea that our universe might be a highly realistic computer simulation—by tracing Nick Bostrom’s argument that advanced beings could run trillions of simulations. It notes that, while the logic remains compelling for some (and figures like Neil deGrasse Tyson have called the odds roughly 50-50), there is no empirical proof, and critics argue that computing such vast simulations may be infeasible or that apparent glitches don’t prove we’re in a simulation. The discussion also connects physics and cosmology to the idea, including limits like the finite observable horizon and the idea of reality as potentially ‘pixelated’ at small scales."}{

via The Conversation|

#cosmology #philosophy #physics

technology2 months ago•12 min saved

Masers Rise Again: From Microwave Marvel to Room-Temperature Quantum Possibility

Masers are the microwave cousins of lasers that power cryogenic amplifiers for deep-space signals, provide precise timekeeping with hydrogen and cesium clocks, and appear in natural astrophysical sources; advances in new materials could enable room-temperature masers and even chip-scale devices for quantum computing, signaling a potential revival beyond their historical role.

via Hackaday|

#maser #microwave #physics

science2 months ago•33 min saved

Memories in the vacuum: are we living as Boltzmann Brains?

Physicists propose the Boltzmann Brain hypothesis: given enough time, random fluctuations could create a brain with all your memories, making our recollections potentially illusory. In a paper in Entropy, lead author David Wolpert and co-authors Carlo Rovelli and Jordan Scharnhorst argue this is a plausible consequence of physics, though there’s no rigorous way to prove or disprove it. They connect the idea to thermodynamics and argue that grounding our sense of time still rests on the Big Bang, concluding we shouldn’t panic, but the notion challenges the reliability of memory as a reflection of past reality.

via Daily Mail|

#big-bang #boltzmann-brain #entropy