Cheaper, More Compact Particle Accelerators Are A Step Closer. Scientists working on an experiment at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in the US have taken a step forward in developing a technology which could significantly reduce the size of particle accelerators.
The technology is able to accelerate particles more rapidly than conventional accelerators at a much smaller size. One of the most impressive aspects of particle accelerators used for research such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is its physical size. Yet, even with a circumference of 27km, the LHC would be smaller than most of the next generation of proposed colliders. For example the International Linear Collider (ILC), a possible future collider of electrons and positrons (anti-electrons) could be 31km long, and there is even a proposal for a circular accelerator with an 80km circumference that could be built at CERN as part of the Future Circular Colliders (FCC) project.
This matters because particle accelerators are not just for particle physicists. New Theory Suggests Parallel Universes Interact With And Affect Our Own Universe. The concept of parallel universes has been depicted frequently in science fiction, without any real evidence that they actually exist.
Howard Wiseman of Griffith University in Australia led a team that believes quantum theory allows for multiple versions of our universe to exist and overlap, and even interact with one another on the quantum level. Michael Hall is the lead author of the paper, which was published in the journal Physical Review X. Studying the nuances of quantum theory can get tricky, as things behave contrary to what would be expected from ordinary matter.
Quantum states of a system are believed to simultaneously exist in all possible configurations until an observer forces it to adopt one state. In the mid-20th century, the ‘Many Worlds’ theory first speculated that multiple versions of reality branch out from one another as distinct entities existing in discrete locations, without any interaction. Response from the physics community has been varied. In Quantum Breakthrough, Scientists Get Two Photons To Interact. Two photons hanging out in free space want nothing to do with each other: Waves of light simply pass through each other without either one having an effect on the other.
Now, researchers have found a way to spark a strong interaction between two single photons by using an ultra tiny fiber of glass. The findings were published in Nature Photonics this week. For many applications in quantum technology, the interaction between photons is a crucial prerequisite: from transmitting information through tap-proof quantum channels to building light-transistors for quantum computing, maybe even quantum teleportation. “In order to have light interact with light, one usually uses so-called nonlinear media,” says Arno Rauschenbeutel of TU Wien, the Vienna University of Technology. Light affects certain properties of these materials, which in turn influences the light, leading to an indirect coupling between photons. Images: TU Wien Read this next: How Notorious HIV Is Being Hijacked To Tackle Cancer.
Watch A Bowling Ball And Feather Falling In A Vacuum. You probably know that two objects dropped in a vacuum fall at the same rate, no matter the mass of each item.
If you’ve never seen a demonstration of this, then you really should, because it’s incredible to watch. Here is perhaps the perfect example, brought to us by physicist Brian Cox. He checked out NASA’s Space Simulation Chamber located at the Space Power Facility in Ohio. With a volume of 22,653 cubic meters, it’s the largest vacuum chamber in the world. In this hypnotizing clip from the BBC, Cox drops a bowling ball and a feather together, first in normal conditions, and then after virtually all the air has been sucked out of the chamber.
[Hat tip: io9] Read this next: Thousands Of Relics Recovered From Ancient Mexican City. Scientists Edge Closer To Stem Cell Therapy For Parkinson's. The Journey To The Other Side Of Absolute Zero. Absolute zero is the temperature (-273.15C) at which all motion in matter stops and is thought to be unreachable.
But recent experiments using ultracold atoms have measured temperatures that are, in fact, negative in absolute temperature scale. The journey there, however, is quite the opposite to what you might expect. Simply removing heat from the equation to make things colder and colder is not the answer. Instead, you need to heat things hotter than infinitely hot! Understanding temperature The concept of temperature is intimately connected to the concept of disorder. Ice crystals are more ordered than boiling water and, as intuition tells us, ice is indeed colder than hot water.
But under certain very special circumstances, a system may become more ordered when more energy is added beyond a critical value which corresponds to an infinite temperature. Such a system is then characterised by negative absolute temperature. Sounds impossible? Into the maelstrom Jupiter’s Great Red Spot.