Lifeboat Foundation

The cosmos can be considered as a collider for human to access the results of particle physics experiments at ultimate high energies. Credit: Department of Physics, HKUST

You are very lucky that you ended up about the size that you are today, somewhere between one and ten feet tall and weighing somewhere between one and one thousand pounds. This is a very good size. Not to body shame, but if you were, say, a quadrillion times shorter and weighed a nonillion times less (that’s one followed by 30 zeros), that would be very inconvenient for you. Everything would be very inconvenient for you.

One thing you take for granted as a human-sized thing, for example, is that when you push things, they move forward. But a team of researchers realized that this is not necessarily the case if you zoom into the quantum world, where particles might decide to go backwards, no matter what kind of outside force you put on them.

A new nano printing technique using graphene creates integrated circuits that are just atoms thick, and could lead to huge advances in speed and power.

Scientists aren’t yet certain that electrons and their relatives are violating the Standard Model of particle physics, but the evidence is mounting.

• By Jesse Dunietz on July 17, 2017

Humanity is advancing rapidly towards a place where the news sounds an awful lot like science fiction. In fact, yesterday, Chinese scientists reported that they “teleported” a photon over hundreds of miles using a “quantum satellite.” But this isn’t Star Trek. It’s the real world.

Which happens to mean it’s a lot less exciting than Star Trek-style teleportation, unfortunately. But it’s still really cool, I promise!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=NbY8KnnCeh4

– Tri Alpha Energy (TAE), the world’s largest private fusion company ($500 million in funding), has achieved first plasma on its newest generator, Norman, formerly known as C-2W and now named after the company’s late co-founder, Dr. Norman Rostoker.

The $100 million plasma generator, the fifth in a series of devices built over the last 20 years, will continue validation of the company’s underlying technology and enable commercialization efforts toward delivering utility-scale fusion energy. With Norman now operational, the company will continue to move quickly down its developmental path, expanding temperature ranges and sustaining plasma for longer periods towards perfecting the essential operating characteristics required to sustain fusion reactions. Over the coming months, the company will be accelerating Norman’s levels of performance to further validate the fundamental confinement requirements that will ultimately be necessary for commercial operations.

Continue reading “Tri-alpha Energy Fusion achieves first plasma on upgraded 13MW 8 beam fusion device” »

In contrast to other particles of this type, in which the three quarks perform an elaborate dance around each other, a particle with two heavy quarks is expected to act like a planetary system, where the heavy quarks are like two stars orbiting one around the other, with the lighter quark orbiting around this binary system.

Scientists have detected a new particle at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern.

The discovery will help researchers learn more about the so-called “strong force” which holds the centres of atoms together.

Continue reading “LHC double heavy particle to shine light on strong force” »

Plasma, an extremely hot gas with electrically charged particles, is found all throughout the universe and is influenced by environmental forces, such as magnetic fields.

The complex behaviours observed in space and in the lab suggest plasma can generate the magnetic field in the opposite direction to the one applied, according to the researchers from Tohoku University.

This causes the field lines to diverge, much like magnets with their North poles facing toward each other.

Continue reading “Plasma rocket engine breakthrough as researchers solve key issue” »

IBM scientists have made carbon nanotube transistors smaller and faster silicon transistors. Carbon nanotube transistors have long had the potential to be better than silicon, but this is the first time when that promise has been realized. Now IBM and others will have to scale up superior carbon nanotube devices.

IBM scientists have been experimenting with carbon nanotubes, rolled-up sheets of carbon atoms just 1 nanometer, or a billionth of a meter, in diameter. But difficulties working with the material have meant that, for optimal performance, nanotube transistors have to be even larger than current silicon transistors, which are about 100 nanometers across. To cut that number down, a team of scientists used a new technique to build the contacts that draw current into and out of the carbon nanotube transistor. They constructed the contacts out of molybdenum, which can bond directly to the ends of the nanotubes, making them smaller. They also added cobalt so the bonding could take place at a lower temperature, allowing them to shrink the gap between the contacts. Another advance allowed for practical transistors. Carrying enough electrical current from one contact to another requires several nanotube “wires.