A quantum “mini universe” made from ultracold atoms revealed that time can emerge from entropy changes inside a system, offering experimental insight into one of physics’ deepest mysteries.
Category: particle physics – Page 2
Reversible chirality switching in MoS₂ generates spin currents without magnets
A newly developed method allows researchers to dynamically switch chirality—a particular lack of mirror symmetry—to generate spin currents in semiconductors, researchers from Science Tokyo report. Their approach relies on the reversible insertion and removal of small chiral molecules from the interlayer gaps of a layered, nonchiral semiconductor material using electrochemistry.
The findings could pave the way for the development of novel chiral spintronic materials and technologies that do not rely on magnets or magnetic fields.
AI-driven optical tweezers sort hundreds of particles per hour without humans
Just as self-driving cars navigate traffic without a human behind the wheel, laboratory instruments are now being developed that can design, carry out and repeat experiments independently, 24 hours a day.
Researchers at the University of Gothenburg and other institutions have now developed an AI system capable of speeding up the operation of optical tweezers, dubbed SmartTrap. The work has been published in Nature Methods.
New plasma trick could unlock smaller, more powerful computer chips
Under carefully controlled conditions, particles within a plasma can strike the surface of a TMD material and knock atoms loose. The challenge is achieving enough energy to remove sulfur atoms from the top layer without harming the molybdenum layer beneath. Because the difference between success and damage is so small, developing a reliable process has proven difficult.
Using computer simulations, researchers found that treating molybdenum disulfide with oxygen or fluorine before plasma exposure can make the process much more controlled. Their findings were published in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.
Quantum sensor overcomes major obstacle in search for dark matter and gravitational waves
A prototype quantum sensor developed by researchers at Imperial has demonstrated for the first time that a key principle behind next-generation quantum detectors can work under realistic conditions.
The study shows how comparing two long-baseline atom interferometers, instruments that use lasers to precisely measure the behavior of atoms, allows experimental noise to be effectively canceled.
This enables signals to be recovered even when individual measurements are overwhelmed and opens the door to searches for gravitational waves from the early universe and signatures of exotic forms of dark matter.
How Many Elementary Particles Are There, Really?
Plausible answers range from 17 to — in all seriousness — 995.5.
Quantum Computers Just Proved The Simulation Theory Is Terrifying
Time is something we experience every day, yet scientists still struggle to fully understand what it really is. Now, advances in quantum computing are allowing researchers to explore some of the deepest mysteries of physics—and the results are raising extraordinary questions about the nature of time itself.
By simulating complex quantum systems that were previously impossible to study, quantum computers are helping scientists test theories about causality, time reversal, and the strange behavior of particles at the quantum level. Some findings appear to challenge our most basic assumptions about how time works.
Researchers are investigating whether time is truly fundamental to the universe or whether it emerges from deeper physical processes we have yet to understand. These ideas may sound like science fiction, but they are being explored by some of the world’s leading physicists.
The implications are profound. If our understanding of time is incomplete, it could affect everything from cosmology and black holes to the future of computing and our understanding of reality itself.
In this video, we examine the groundbreaking quantum experiments, the theories they are testing, and why some scientists believe these discoveries could transform our view of the universe.
Watch until the end to uncover the most mind-bending implications of this research. Don’t forget to LIKE, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE for more cutting-edge science, quantum mysteries, and incredible discoveries. Comment below: What do you think time really is?
Particle-Simulated Foam In Custom C++ Coastal System
Leonard Saalfrank, also known as OMYOG, has showcased a custom C++ coastal renderer created as a one-week rendering challenge, exploring real-time shoreline rendering, shallow-water simulation, and GPU-driven visual effects.
The project builds on his earlier water-rendering work for Ferocious and expands it with shallow-water waves, GPU-driven breaking waves, and particle-based foam supporting up to 300K GPU particles.
Above is a render handling over 6 million triangles across all passes, using 8K textures at 2K resolution, running at around 250 FPS on an RTX 4,090 Laptop GPU with GPU profiling enabled. Without capture and profiling overhead, performance reportedly increases to around 300 FPS.
World-first spintronic p-bit on silicon chip points toward larger AI-ready p-computers
A Japan–U.S. collaborative research team has demonstrated the world’s first integrated spintronic probabilistic bit, or p-bit, fabricated on a silicon chip using semiconductor manufacturing processes. The team, consisting of researchers from Tohoku University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, experimentally verified the operation of the p-bit, a key building block for probabilistic, or p-, computers. The achievement provides a pathway toward large-scale spintronic p-computers for applications such as AI and machine learning.
Many emerging computational problems require efficient exploration of enormous numbers of possible states. Conventional computers, which process binary information, 0 or 1, sequentially, are not always well suited to such highly parallel tasks. Probabilistic computers instead use probabilistic bits, or p-bits, which fluctuate stochastically between 0 and 1 by using intrinsic physical randomness.
Because p-computers can quickly take many states, they are attracting attention as a next-generation computing platform. Among several candidate technologies, spintronics is considered especially promising because nanoscale magnetic devices can naturally generate probabilistic behavior through magnetic fluctuations.