Lifeboat Foundation

R. Abbott ¹, T. D. Abbott ², S. Abraham ³, F. Acernese ^4,5, K. Ackley ⁶, C. Adams ⁷, R. X. Adhikari ¹, V. B. Adya ⁸, C. Affeldt ^9,10, M. Agathos ^11,12, K. Agatsuma¹³, N. Aggarwal ¹⁴, O. D. Aguiar ¹⁵, A. Aich ¹⁶, L. Aiello ^17,18, A. Ain ³, P. Ajith ¹⁹, S. Akcay ^11,20, G. Allen ²¹, A. Allocca ²², P. A. Altin ⁸, A. Amato ²³, S. Anand ¹, A. Ananyeva ¹, S. B. Anderson ¹, W. G. Anderson ²⁴, S. V. Angelova ²⁵, S. Ansoldi ^26,27, S. Antier ²⁸, S.

An element that could hold the key to the long-standing mystery around why there is much more matter than antimatter in our universe has been discovered in Physics research involving the University of Strathclyde.

The study has discovered that an isotope of the element thorium possesses the most pear-shaped nucleus yet to be discovered.

Nuclei similar to thorium-228 may now be able to be used to perform new tests to try find the answer to the mystery surrounding matter and antimatter.

Continue reading “At Long Last: An Answer to the Mystery Surrounding Matter and Antimatter” »

Magnetic materials have been a mainstay in computing technology due to their ability to permanently store information in their magnetic state. Current technologies are based on ferromagnets, whose states can be flipped readily by magnetic fields. Faster, denser, and more robust next-generation devices would be made possible by using a different class of materials, known as antiferromagnets. Their magnetic state, however, is notoriously difficult to control.

Now, a research team from the MPSD and the University of Oxford has managed to drive a prototypical antiferromagnet into a new magnetic state using terahertz frequency light. Their groundbreaking method produced an effect orders of magnitude larger than previously achieved, and on ultrafast time scales. The team’s work has just been published in Nature Physics.

The strength and direction of a magnet’s ‘north pole’ is denoted by its so-called magnetization. In ferromagnets, this easily reversible magnetization can represent a ‘bit’ of information, which has made them the materials of choice for magnet-based technologies. But ferromagnets are slow to operate and react to stray magnetic fields, which means they are prone to errors and cannot be packed very closely together.

Massive object cannot be explained without changing our understanding of what we know about astrophysics, researchers say.

Every year, 2 million black hole mergers are missed — Australian scientists work out how to detect them, revealing a lost 8 billion light-years of Universe evolution.

Last year, the Advanced LIGO –VIRGO gravitational-wave detector network recorded data from 35 merging black holes and neutron stars. A great result — but what did they miss? According to Dr. Rory Smith from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Gravitational Wave Discovery at Monash University in Australia — it’s likely there are another 2 million gravitational wave events from merging black holes, “a pair of merging black holes every 200 seconds and a pair of merging neutron stars every 15 seconds” that scientists are not picking up.

Dr. Smith and his colleagues, also at Monash University, have developed a method to detect the presence of these weak or “background” events that to date have gone unnoticed, without having to detect each one individually. The method — which is currently being test driven by the LIGO community — “means that we may be able to look more than 8 billion light-years further than we are currently observing,” Dr. Smith said.

Continue reading “Lost 8 Billion Light Years of Universe Evolution Revealed by Gravitational Waves” »

Surrogate models supported by neural networks can perform as well, and in some ways better, than computationally expensive simulators and could lead to new insights in complicated physics problems such as inertial confinement fusion (ICF), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists reported.

In a paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), LLNL researchers describe the development of a deep learning-driven Manifold & Cyclically Consistent (MaCC) surrogate model incorporating a multi-modal neural network capable of quickly and accurately emulating complex scientific processes, including the high-energy density physics involved in ICF.

The research team applied the model to ICF implosions performed at the National Ignition Facility (NIF), in which a computationally expensive numerical simulator is used to predict the energy yield of a target imploded by shock waves produced by the facility’s high-energy laser. Comparing the results of the neural network-backed surrogate to the existing simulator, the researchers found the surrogate could adequately replicate the simulator, and significantly outperformed the current state-of-the-art in surrogate models across a wide range of metrics.

Continue reading “Deep learning-based surrogate models outperform simulators and could hasten scientific discoveries” »

Last year, the Advanced LIGO-VIRGO gravitational-wave detector network recorded data from 35 merging black holes and neutron stars. A great result—but what did they miss? According to Dr. Rory Smith from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Gravitational Wave Discovery at Monash University in Australia—it’s likely there are another 2 million gravitational wave events from merging black holes, “a pair of merging black holes every 200 seconds and a pair of merging neutron stars every 15 seconds” that scientists are not picking up.

Dr. Smith and his colleagues, also at Monash University, have developed a method to detect the presence of these weak or “background” events that to date have gone unnoticed, without having to detect each one individually. The method—which is currently being test driven by the LIGO community—” means that we may be able to look more than 8 billion light years further than we are currently observing,” Dr. Smith said.

“This will give us a snapshot of what the early universe looked like while providing insights into the evolution of the universe.”

Results from the XENON experiment in Italy hint at the possible discovery of long-sought axions.

This mouth-full of a boat uses simple physics to create a cushion of air that allows it to effortlessly fly along the tops of ocean waves with near inexhaustible solar energy. The researchers say that this sleek, solar vessel could act as a mobile charging station for drones in the deep ocean or could conduct oceanic search and rescue missions.

Researchers in Russia have designed a solar-powered, and AI piloted, boat that can walk on water and serve as a mid-ocean fuel-up station for drones.