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The standard model of the universe relies on just six numbers. Using a new approach powered by artificial intelligence, researchers at the Flatiron Institute and their colleagues extracted information hidden in the distribution of galaxies to estimate the values of five of these so-called cosmological parameters with incredible precision.

A collaborative research team has identified the world’s first multiple Majorana zero modes (MZMs) in a single vortex of the superconducting topological crystalline insulator SnTe and exploited crystal symmetry to control the coupling between the MZMs.

The results were a significant improvement over the values produced by previous methods.

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When Saha and Sinha took a closer look at the resulting equations, they realized that they could express the number pi in this way, as well as the zeta function, which is the heart of the Riemann conjecture, one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in mathematics.

Continue reading “String Theorists Accidentally Find a New Formula for Pi” »

In a paper published recently in the Journal of Applied Physics, an international team of scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Argonne National Laboratory and Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron have developed a new sample configuration that improves the reliability of equation of state measurements in a pressure regime not previously achievable in the diamond anvil cell.

From afar, the Sun looks calm and peaceful in our daytime skies. But up close, it’s an erupting, chaotic display of solar activity the likes of which astrophysicists didn’t expect until the last year or so.

“We didn’t think the Sun was going to be as active this particular cycle, but the observations are completely opposite,” Andrew Gerrard, the department chair and director of the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research at New Jersey Institute of Technology, told Business Insider.

Solar cycles typically occur every 11 years. Within that time, the Sun oscillates from minimum to maximum solar activity, with maximum activity peaking in the middle of the cycle when the Sun’s magnetic fields flip.

Materials that exhibit superconducting properties at high temperatures, known as high-temperature superconductors, have been the focus of numerous recent studies, as they can be used to develop new technologies that perform well at higher temperatures. Although high-temperature superconductivity has been widely investigated, its underlying physics is not yet fully understood.

Via testing with a skin stand-in, a trio of physicists at Technical University of Denmark has ranked the types of paper that are the most likely to cause a paper cut. In an article published in Physical Review E, Sif Fink Arnbjerg-Nielsen, Matthew Biviano and Kaare Jensen tested the cutting ability and circumstances involved in paper cuts to compile their rankings.

Scientists may have found a new way to unlock the vast secrets of the Big Bang—the cosmic event thought to have kicked off the expansion of the universe billions of years ago. The revelation came in 2023, when scientists found nearly imperceptible ripples within the very fabric of space and time as we know it.

The ripples appear to be associated directly with rapidly spinning neutrons that we call pulsar timing arrays. Researchers believe that studying gravitational waves—more specifically, the low-frequency background hum they emit—may allow us to learn more about the Big Bang and the universe’s very beginning.

For a long time, researchers have believed that the low-frequency background hum of gravitational waves in our universe was part of a “phase transition” that occurred just after the Big Bang. However, a new bit of research could further unlock the secrets of the Big Bang and suggests that this might not be the case at all.