Physics News Source

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Professor Étienne Ghys, Permanent Secretary of the French Academy of Sciences and Emeritus Research Director at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), delivered a thought-provoking HKIAS Distinguished Lecture on "Soccer Balls: Their History, Geometries, and Aerodynamics" on 30 October 2024 at City University of Hong Kong. The event, facilitated by Professor Neil Chada from the Department of Mathematics, attracted a diverse audience of academics and students. Notably, Ms Camélia Aissat, Deputy Consul of Education and Culture and Mr Louis Doucet, Head of Press and Communication from the Consulate General of France in Hong Kong & Macau, also showed keen interest and attended the lecture.

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Argonne scientists are contributing to the success of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time through advanced simulation, analysis and collaborative partnership.

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Quantum technologies promise breakthroughs in communication, computing, sensors and much more. However, quantum states are fragile, and their effects are difficult to grasp, making research into real-world applications challenging. Empa researchers and their partners have now achieved a breakthrough: Using a kind of “quantum Lego”, they have been able to accurately realize a well-known theoretical quantum physics model in a synthetic material.

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The search for dark matter includes expertise in radio frequency signal detection, quantum sensing, and high-energy physics at PNNL.

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Science isn’t scary, but it can be spooky! For Halloween, we’re highlighting some “spooky” research that the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science supports. In fact, the physics community celebrates Dark Matter Day on Halloween! We hope that this roundup puts you in the mood to dig a little deeper into the wonders that surround you.

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Professor Sir John Pendry, an HKIAS Senior Fellow and a distinguished figure in physics known for his pioneering work on metamaterials, visited City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) from October 20 to October 26, 2024. His visit featured a series of engaging sessions and lectures.

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Most stars form in collections, called clusters or associations, that include very massive stars. These giant stars send out large amounts of high-energy radiation, which can disrupt relatively fragile disks of dust and gas that are in the process of coalescing to form new planets. A team of astronomers used NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, in combination with ultraviolet, optical, and infrared data, to show where some of the most treacherous places in a star cluster may be, where planets’ chances to form are diminished.

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Thin, stretchy skin — like that of a pig or human — lessens the underlying damage that occurs when it’s punctured. Pig skin even outperforms synthetic materials designed to mimic skin, a study led by the University of Illinois finds. Its qualities, in particular its ability to dissipate the energy of a puncturing object, greatly reduce the damage to deeper tissues.

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Laura Reina, FSU Distinguished Research Professor and Joseph F. Owens Endowed Professor in the Department of Physics, is the recipient of the 2024 Jesse W. Beams Award from the Southeastern Section of the American Physical Society (SESAPS).

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Researchers from the University of Washington, Seattle, or UW, and Los Alamos National Laboratory used the Summit supercomputer at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to answer one of fission’s biggest questions: What exactly happens during the nucleus’s “neck rupture” as it splits in two?

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Patience and complexity are the hallmarks of fundamental scientific research. It takes time to do what we do at the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science. Case in point: Technical staff at the DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have built a prototype of a superconducting cryomodule for the Proton Improvement Plan II (PIP-II) project.

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Plasmas for fusion research can be heated using neutral beam injection (NBI). With NBI, fast neutral particles from a beam source are injected into the plasma then ionized so that the particles can transfer energy to existing plasma electrons and ions. This transfers the ions’ energy and heats the plasma.

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Jefferson Lab’s Experimental Physics Software and Computing Infrastructure (EPSCI) group develops centralized computing software that can be shared by any of the lab’s experimental halls and used for future projects.

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The International Symposium on Physics in Collision, initiated in 1981, is a prominent conference series focused on particle physics. It features invited plenary talks, parallel sessions, and poster presentations, with a strong emphasis on recent experimental results and theoretical developments.

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Disc golf is a sport growing in popularity, but there hasn’t been much research into the best techniques – until now. Researchers and disc golf enthusiasts have determined the best thumb position on a disc to maximize angular and translational speeds.

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Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities College of Science and Engineering have developed a new technique that reconstructs two dimensional (2D) radio images–visual representations created from radio waves–into three dimensional (3D) "Pseudo3D cubes" to help better understand objects in the Universe.

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A world-leading University of Bristol astrophysicist has won a prestigious national accolade to help further unravel the mysterious world of exoplanets.

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Just like we use photos to reflect on memories of our past, astrophysicists want to use images of far-off galaxies to understand what the universe was like in its juvenile years. But current imaging technology can only reach so far back in history -- 90 to 95 percent of the volume of our 14-billion-year-old universe remains unseen.

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The Acoustical Society of America will host a virtual conference from Nov. 18-22.