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Category: particle physics – Page 10

Metal fuel for carbon-free energy on Earth… and the Moon

One solution to the Eco, ‘Elephant in the Room’- of space launches.

Everything burns. Given the right environment, all matter can burn by adding oxygen, but finding the right mix and generating enough heat makes some materials combust more easily than others. Researchers interested in knowing more about a type of fire called discrete burning used ESA’s microgravity experiment facilities to investigate.

In a series of parabolic flights and on sounding rockets launched from Sweden, a team from Professor Jeffrey Bergthorson at McGill University in Canada and Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands investigated burning iron powder in zero gravity. Their research was pure physics, the scientists wanted to know more about discrete burning whereby flames do not burn through fuel continuously but jump from one fuel source to another. This form of fire hardly occurs naturally on Earth, but an example is a forest fire where one tree burns completely and the fire jumps to the next tree when the temperature increases enough for combustion.

Burning iron dust in experiments on zero-g aircraft and rocket flights allowed for the iron particles to float and ignite discreetly. High-speed cameras captured the spectacle and allowed the researchers to better understand the phenomenon, resulting in computer models that showed the ideal conditions to burn the fuel on Earth.

THOR AI solves a 100-year-old physics problem in seconds

A new AI framework called THOR is transforming how scientists calculate the behavior of atoms inside materials. Instead of relying on slow simulations that take weeks of supercomputer time, the system uses tensor network mathematics and machine-learning models to solve the problem directly. The approach can compute key thermodynamic properties hundreds of times faster while preserving accuracy. Researchers say this could accelerate discoveries in materials science, physics, and chemistry.

3 Questions: On the future of AI and the mathematical and physical sciences

Curiosity-driven research has long sparked technological transformations. A century ago, curiosity about atoms led to quantum mechanics, and eventually the transistor at the heart of modern computing. Conversely, the steam engine was a practical breakthrough, but it took fundamental research in thermodynamics to fully harness its power.

Today, artificial intelligence and science find themselves at a similar inflection point. The current AI revolution has been fueled by decades of research in the mathematical and physical sciences (MPS), which provided the challenging problems, datasets, and insights that made modern AI possible. The 2024 Nobel Prizes in physics and chemistry, recognizing foundational AI methods rooted in physics and AI applications for protein design, made this connection impossible to miss.

In 2025, MIT hosted a Workshop on the Future of AI+MPS, funded by the National Science Foundation with support from the MIT School of Science and the MIT departments of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics. The workshop brought together leading AI and science researchers to chart how the MPS domains can best capitalize on — and contribute to — the future of AI. Now a white paper, with recommendations for funding agencies, institutions, and researchers, has been published in Machine Learning: Science and Technology. In this interview, Jesse Thaler, MIT professor of physics and chair of the workshop, describes key themes and how MIT is positioning itself to lead in AI and science.

Physicists observe rare nuclear isomer in ytterbium-150 for first time

Nuclear isomers are crucial probes for studying the structure of nuclei. Unlike chemical isomers—which have the same chemical formula but different arrangements of atoms—nuclear isomers are nuclei that exist in a long-lived and relatively stable excited state.

Normally, an atomic nucleus resides in its lowest-energy state, known as the ground state. Under external perturbations, such as nucleus-nucleus collisions, however, a nucleus can be excited to a higher-energy state.

While most excited nuclear states are extremely short-lived and rapidly decay back to the ground state, some nuclei remain “trapped” in an excited state for a remarkably long time. Such isomeric states help reveal the structure of the nucleus due to its high sensitivity to the underlying shell structure as well as to changes in single-particle levels.

Emergent topological semimetal from quantum criticality

Consider a material that doesn’t just “have” a certain property, but spontaneously creates it out of total chaos. That is the essence of what researchers found in a recent study on a specific metal called CeRu4Sn6.

This isn’t just a lab curiosity. By proving that quantum fluctuations (the tiny, frantic jitters of atoms) can work together with a material’s symmetry to create new phases, the researchers have provided a new “treasure map.”

Key Takeaway: You don’t always need solid building blocks (quasiparticles) to build a structure; sometimes, the “jitter” of quantum physics is enough to weave a new reality.

Examples of materials with non-trivial band topology in the presence of strong electron correlations are rare. Now it is shown that quantum fluctuations near a quantum phase transition can promote topological phases in a heavy-fermion compound.

Jupiter’s Galilean moons may have gained life’s building blocks at birth

Southwest Research Institute was part of an international team that demonstrated how complex organic molecules (COMs), key chemical precursors to life, could have been incorporated into Jupiter’s Galilean moons during their formation. The team’s findings have resulted in complementary studies published in The Planetary Science Journal and Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, offering new insights into the potential for life in the Jovian system.

How complex organics can form Carbon-rich compounds containing oxygen, nitrogen and other elements are necessary for living matter to form. Laboratory experiments have shown that COMs can form when icy grains containing methanol or mixtures of carbondioxide and ammonia are exposed to either ultraviolet radiation or moderate heating under conditions found in protoplanetary disks. These disks of gas and dust surround newly formed stars that eventually form planets.

“By combining disk evolution with particle transport models, we could precisely quantify the radiation and thermal conditions the icy grains experienced,” said Dr. Olivier Mousis of SwRI’s solar system science and exploration division, who is lead author of one of the two studies. “Then we directly compared our simulations with other laboratory experiments that produce COMs under realistic astrophysical conditions. The results showed that COM formation is possible in both the protosolar nebula environment and Jupiter’s circumplanetary disk.”

Asymmetric spin torque unlocks deterministic control of antiferromagnetic memory

A research team led by Prof. Shao Dingfu from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, has proposed a universal mechanism that enables deterministic electrical control of collinear antiferromagnets—overcoming a long-standing bottleneck in antiferromagnetic spintronics. The study is published in Physical Review Letters.

Palm-sized superconducting magnet achieves 42 tesla, rivaling the world’s biggest

When we think of powerful magnets used in particle accelerators or for NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance), we often envision bulky machines, sometimes the size of buildings. But in an extraordinary breakthrough for physics, scientists at ETH Zurich have created magnets that are small enough to fit in the palm of your hand yet powerful enough to rival some of the world’s most powerful magnets.

Atom-thin material could help solve chip manufacturing problem

Making computer chips smaller is not just about better design. It also depends on a critical step in manufacturing called patterning, where nanoscale structures are carved into materials to form the circuits inside everything from smartphones to advanced sensors.

To create these patterns, engineers use a hard mask, a thin, durable material layer that protects selected regions while the exposed areas are etched away.

“As chips get smaller, the manufacturing process becomes much more demanding,” said Saptarshi Das, Penn State Ackley Professor of Engineering Science and professor of engineering science and mechanics. “The mask used to define these patterns must survive extremely harsh processing conditions. If the mask degrades, the patterns cannot be transferred reliably.”

Cosmic microwave background

(CMB, CMBR), or relic radiation, is microwave radiation that fills all space in the observable universe. With a standard optical telescope, the background space between stars and galaxies is almost completely dark. However, a sufficiently sensitive radio telescope detects a faint background glow that is almost uniform and is not associated with any star, galaxy, or other object. This glow is strongest in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Its energy density exceeds that of all the photons emitted by all the stars in the history of the universe. The accidental discovery of the CMB in 1964 by American radio astronomers Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson was the culmination of work initiated in the 1940s.

The CMB is the key experimental evidence of the Big Bang theory for the origin of the universe. In the Big Bang cosmological models, during the earliest periods, the universe was filled with an opaque fog of dense, hot plasma of sub-atomic particles. As the universe expanded, this plasma cooled to the point where protons and electrons combined to form neutral atoms of mostly hydrogen. Unlike the plasma, these atoms could not scatter thermal radiation by Thomson scattering, and so the universe became transparent. Known as the recombination epoch, this decoupling event released photons to travel freely through space. However, the photons have grown less energetic due to the cosmological redshift associated with the expansion of the universe. The surface of last scattering refers to a shell at the right distance in space so photons are now received that were originally emitted at the time of decoupling.

The CMB is very smooth and uniform, but maps by sensitive detectors detect small but important temperature variations. Ground and space-based experiments such as COBE, WMAP and Planck have been used to measure these temperature inhomogeneities. The anisotropy structure is influenced by various interactions of matter and photons up to the point of decoupling, which results in a characteristic pattern of tiny ripples that varies with angular scale. The distribution of the anisotropy across the sky has frequency components that can be represented by a power spectrum displaying a sequence of peaks and valleys. The peak values of this spectrum hold important information about the physical properties of the early universe: the first peak determines the overall curvature of the universe, while the second and third peak detail the density of normal matter and so-called dark matter, respectively.

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