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UCLA researchers and their colleagues have discovered a new physics principle governing how heat transfers through materials, and the finding contradicts the conventional wisdom that heat always moves faster as pressure increases.

Up until now, the common belief has held true in recorded observations and scientific experiments involving different materials such as gases, liquids and solids.

The researchers detailed their discovery in a study published last week by Nature. They have found that boron arsenide, which has already been viewed as a highly promising material for heat management and advanced electronics, also has a unique property. After reaching an extremely high pressure that is hundreds of times greater than the pressure found at the bottom of the ocean, boron arsenide’s thermal conductivity actually begins to decrease.

Work, conducted at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and featured in Nature Physics, shows that ions behave differently in fusion reactions than previously expected. Credit: John Jett and Jake Long/LLNL

Ions behave differently in fusion reactions than previously expected, according to new findings by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). This discovery provides crucial insights for the future design of a laser–fusion energy source.

The findings, entitled “Evidence for suprathermal ion distribution in burning plasmas,” were featured in a new paper published in the November 14 issue of Nature Physics.

Someone else posted about this, but this is from LLNL. I love what they do, and Twitter reminded me of the many Photonics shares I have. This is cool, and Ill post more links.

November 7, 2022

A record high-laser-energy NIF target shot on Sept. 19 produced about 1.2 million joules of fusion energy yield. Compared with the groundbreaking 1.35-megajoule (MJ) experiment of Aug. 8, 2021, this experiment used higher laser energy and a modified experimental design.

Continue reading “High-Laser-Energy Shot Puts NIF Back on Track Toward Ignition” »

The merging of two neutron stars emits both light and gravitational waves at the same time, so if gravity and light have the same speed, they should be detected on Earth at the same time. Given the distance of the galaxy that housed these two neutron stars, we know that the two types of waves had traveled for about 130 million years and arrived within two seconds of one another.

So, that’s the answer. Gravity and light travel at the same speed, determined by a precise measurement. It validates Einstein once again, and it hints at something profound about the nature of space. Scientists hope one day to fully understand why these two very different phenomena have identical speeds.

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Continue reading “The REAL Possibility of Mapping Alien Planets!” »

Workshop supported by the Imperial College Physics of Life Network of Excellence.

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/physics-of-life.

Continue reading “Physics of Emergent Behaviour III: from origin of life to multicellularity, 2nd July 2021 (part 1)” »

If wormholes in space exist, they look a lot like black holes from a particular angle, physicists claim, raising the possibility we’ve seen examples of this long-sought phenomenon without knowing it.

Blazars are some of the brightest objects in the cosmos. They are composed of a supermassive black hole.

A black hole is a place in space where the gravitational field is so strong that not even light can escape it. Astronomers classify black holes into three categories by size: miniature, stellar, and supermassive black holes. Miniature black holes could have a mass smaller than our Sun and supermassive black holes could have a mass equivalent to billions of our Sun.

Greer and Ivanov agree that existing, albeit limited, data on tetrataenite’s magnetic properties suggest that it may not match high-performance neodymium-based magnets. But the researchers maintain that optimization of the tetrataenite casting process could improve its magnetic properties and thus make it a worthwhile option. “It is good to have a wider range of permanent magnet materials, because that allows better balancing of such factors as magnetic performance and environmental impact,” Greer says. “A one-for-one swap with rare-earth magnets is not necessarily the goal.”

For now, the team has demonstrated how to make a piece of tetrataenite, but they say that future work will focus on how to consolidate many pieces into a bulk magnet. “The analogy here would be that we have shown we can make a brick—a piece of tetrataenite—but not yet a house—a magnet,” Greer says.

Beyond materials science, the researchers hint that this work may even impact astrophysics research as scientists reconsider how long it takes for tetrataenite to develop in a meteorite and how fast the cooling rate is in that space environment.