Trinity’s Prof. Stefan Sint, along with collaborators from Germany, Spain and Italy, has published the most precise determination to date of the strong coupling constant. This parameter governs the interactions between quarks and gluons, the fundamental components of nuclear matter. The new result halves the error of all previous experimental measurements combined, setting a new benchmark for the Standard Model, which summarizes our current knowledge of elementary particle physics.
This advance will improve our understanding of how quarks and gluons behave inside protons and enable high-precision measurements of the Higgs boson and its properties. More generally, improved quantitative control of the strong interactions increases the likelihood of discovering effects of yet unknown physics at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Prof. Sint from Trinity’s School of Mathematics was one of the researchers whose landmark results were published in Nature.
A team of researchers has leveraged a supercomputer at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory to reveal the internal structure of a pion in unprecedented detail. The findings are published in the Journal of High Energy Physics.
Pions are subatomic particles that help bind matter at some of the smallest scales in nature. They are closely connected to the strong nuclear force, the fundamental force that holds protons and neutrons together inside atomic nuclei. Understanding how pions work can help scientists explain how matter forms at its most fundamental level.
“Pions mediate the strong force that binds nucleons—that is, the protons and neutrons that account for an atom’s mass,” said Yong Zhao, an Argonne physicist and principal investigator on the project.
In the next few decades, many physicists are hopeful that nuclear fusion could become a realistic source of practically limitless energy. But before this can happen, it will be critical to ensure that reactors cannot be covertly misused to produce materials for nuclear weapons.
Through new analysis published in Physical Review Applied, a team led by Patrick Huber at Virginia Tech has shown that an existing type of particle detector could be used to flag any such misuse.
What is matter, really? Is matter an independent substance, or is reality fundamentally relational? In this episode, we explore some of the deepest questions in philosophy, metaphysics, and modern science, including Quantum Physics, Relativity, Quantum Field Theory, Dark Matter, Consciousness, Space, Time, Cosmology, and the Nature of Reality itself.
From atoms and particles to galaxies and the Universe, modern science increasingly points toward a world of processes, relationships, and dynamic structures rather than isolated objects. Could Matter and Consciousness be different expressions of the same underlying Reality? What can Systems Thinking, Complexity Theory, Nonduality, Taoism, Buddhism, and Vedanta contribute to our understanding of existence?
Let us examine the Nature of Matter, the mystery of Dark Matter, the meaning of Space-Time, and the interconnected fabric of the cosmos. This exploration may challenge the way you think about Reality, Existence, Consciousness, and your place within the Universe.
0:00 Intro. 0:55 A Necessary Correction of Attitude. 4:39 What is Matter? 8:09 Rethinking Properties. 10:34 An Important Question. 14:11 Redefining Matter. 17:43 Outro.
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Researchers boosted the sensitivity for measurements of the motion of a levitated nanoparticle, with potential uses in dark matter searches.
Researchers have a bold plan to detect unknown fundamental particles: Levitate a nanoscale object in a vacuum and watch for a microscopic recoil caused by a collision with an exotic particle. Precision measurements of macroscopic objects have been a challenge, but now a research team has demonstrated a significant sensitivity improvement with a levitated object some 6 orders of magnitude larger than in previous experiments [1]. The team hopes the method will find use in experimental searches in the next few years.
Searching for particles not accounted for by the standard model of particle physics requires experiments with unprecedented sensitivity. One method is to use laser light to levitate a small object in a vacuum, isolating it from surrounding noise. Researchers can monitor its motion and potentially detect minuscule recoils caused by rare collisions with exotic particles, such as those of dark matter.
A University of Birmingham scientist has built a “mini-universe” that takes a step toward answering one of science’s biggest questions: “What is time?” Publishing his findings in Physical Review Research, Professor Giovanni Barontini shows how it is possible to measure the flow of time without using a clock at all. The new findings provide a scientific model in which a version of time emerges from the experiment itself.
Some theories of physics, such as the Wheeler–DeWitt equation, suggest that, at its deepest level, the universe has no built-in time but exists as a single, unchanging quantum state in which particles exhibit both wave-like and particle-like properties. It treats the universe as a whole with no external clock, and any sense of time must emerge from internal relationships between parts.
Two independent research teams have achieved a longstanding goal in physics: building a working nuclear clock. The devices, developed by Beichen Huang and colleagues at Tsinghua University and by Luca Toscani De Col and colleagues at the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology in Austria, exploit the nucleus of a thorium-229 atom to keep time with extraordinary precision—possibly surpassing even the best atomic clocks available today.
The Chinese and European studies have both been published in preprint on arXiv.
A research team in Bochum, Germany has unexpectedly found that light can slow down movements in the nanoworld. This is due to quantum friction, a phenomenon that has been poorly understood until now. The findings are published in the journal Nature.
Light is expected to heat particles up or set them in motion. However, the interdisciplinary team at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, has now proven the opposite. In aqueous solution, fluorescent carbon nanotubes move much slower once they are irradiated with light. During this process, the diffusion constant decreases with light intensity, an effect linked to direct coupling between electrons in the solid and the molecules of the liquid.
“This discovery of light-induced quantum friction fundamentally changes our understanding of interfacial processes,” says researcher Sebastian Kruss, who led the work with Marialore Sulpizi and Martina Havenith.
