Newswise: Physics Sponsored By AIP

Major DOE study launched to drastically reduce data center energy consumption

The team, which includes Northern Arizona University physicist Ryan Behunin, is creating a low-power, low-cost solution to overcome power and bandwidth scaling limitations of the current technologies governing data center energy use, which is expected to use a fifth of the world's electricity by 2025.

Variations in Seafloor Create Freak Ocean Waves

Florida State University researchers have found that abrupt variations in the seafloor can cause dangerous ocean waves known as rogue or freak waves -- waves so catastrophic that they were once thought to be the figments of seafarers' imaginations.

The "Stuff" of the Universe Keeps Changing

The composition of the universe--the elements that are the building blocks for every bit of matter--is ever-changing and ever-evolving, thanks to the lives and deaths of stars.Jennifer Johnson, a professor of astronomy at The Ohio State University and the article's author.

Success after a three-year sprint

The first prototype detector for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment is taking data and producing extraordinary pictures of particle tracks.

Hubble Accidentally Discovers a New Galaxy in Cosmic Neighborhood

An international team of astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have uncovered an unusually isolated dwarf galaxy that was hidden behind a forest of foreground stars in the nearby globular star cluster NGC 6752. A fraction of the size of our Milky Way, the diminutive galaxy is a largely unchanged living fossil from the universe's early days.

Rensselaer professor available to discuss aerodynamics of football

Call For Entries: Awards For Science Communication

The American Institute of Physics and the Acoustical Society of America are both accepting submissions for their respective 2019 science communication awards.

Superinsulators to Become Scientists' Quark Playgrounds

Scientists widely accept the existence of quarks, the elusive fundamental particles that make up protons and neutrons. But information about their properties is still lacking.

Maestro's techniques

Rembrandt van Rijn's paintings are renowned for their masterful representations of light and shadow and a characteristic plasticity generated by a technique called impasto. Now, scientists have analyzed impasto layers in some of Rembrandt's paintings, and the study, which is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie

UD's 'Fighting Astrophysicist' Named a Ted Fellow

An astrophysicist, a pro boxer and a TED Fellow walk into a room. And it's Federica Bianco. Her outside-the-box approach to life, learning and interdisciplinary adventure has caught the imagination of the TED Fellows program, as she will be one of only 20 fellows worldwide in the 2019 class.

How does a quantum particle see the world?

Researchers at the University of Vienna study the relevance of quantum reference frames for the symmetries of the worldAccording to one of the most fundamental principles in physics, an observer on a moving train uses the same laws to describe a ball on the platform as an observer standing on the platform - physical laws are independent on the choice of a reference frame.

Fluid Dynamics Simulation Reveals the Underlying Physics of Liquid Jet Cleaning

Semiconductor manufacturing involve cleaning processes, and it's become highly desirable to use physical cleaning techniques such as liquid jets or underwater ultrasound instead of toxic chemicals. Now, mechanical engineers specializing in the mechanism of fluid motion at Keio University have unveiled the underlying physics of what happens when liquid jet collisions strike surfaces to be cleaned. They report their work in the journal Physics of Fluids.

How Do Fish & Birds Hang Together without Colliding? Researchers Find the Answer is a Wake with Purpose

Fish and birds are able to move in groups, without separating or colliding, due to a newly discovered dynamic: the followers interact with the wake left behind by the leaders. The finding offers new insights into animal locomotion and points to potential ways to harness energy from natural resources, such as rivers or wind.

TRIUMF Theory Helps Shed New Light on Thermonuclear Fusion of Deuterium and Tritium

Scientists at TRIUMF, the Institut de Physique Nucleaire, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have for the first time accurately predicted the properties of polarized deuterium-tritium thermonuclear fusion. Their findings, described in a Nature Communications publication released today, add to our current understanding of the dynamics of nuclear fusion and may enable more accurate predictions of other thermonuclear reactions critical to nuclear science applications.

Penn physicists find the limits of multitasking in biological networks

Many complex systems in biology can be conceptualized as networks. This perspective helps researchers understand how biological systems work on a fundamental level, and can be used to answer key questions in biology, medicine, and engineering.

Ken Dill to Receive National Award for Protein Folding Research

Ken A. Dill, PhD, Distinguished Professor and the Louis and Beatrice Laufer Endowed Chair of Physical and Quantitative Biology at Stony Brook University, has been named co-winner of the 2019 American Physical Society's (APS) Max Delbruck Prize in Biological Physics.

Berkeley Lab Researcher Wins Machine-Learning Competition With Code That Sorts Through Simulated Telescope Data

To help solve a big data program for a new telescope that will conduct a major sky survey of the from the high desert of Chile, a scientific collaboration launched a competition to find the best way to train computers to identify the many types of objects it will be imaging. A researcher at Berkeley Lab beat out more than 1,000 participating teams to win the first phase of the competition.

Fast action: A novel device may provide rapid control of plasma disruptions in a fusion facility

Feature describes prototype of new device that mitigates disruption of fusion plasmas faster than the most developed techniques today.

Hubble Sees Plunging Galaxy Losing Its Gas

Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope spotted galaxy D100 being stripped of its gas as the wayward spiral plunges towards the center of the giant Coma cluster containing more than 1,000 galaxies. Gas is the lifeblood of a galaxy, fueling the birth of new stars. Once it is stripped of all of its gas, D100 will enter retirement and shine only by the feeble glow of its aging, red stars (such as galaxy D99 -- just below and to the left of D100) in this image.

Where Is Earth's Submoon?

Pasadena, CA-- "Can moons have moons?" This simple question--asked by the four-year old son of Carnegie's Juna Kollmeier--started it all. Not long after this initial bedtime query, Kollmeier was coordinating a program at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP) on the Milky Way while her one-time college classmate Sean Raymond of Universite de Bordeaux was attending a parallel KITP program on the dynamics of Earth-like planets. After discussing this very simple question at a seminar, the two joined forces to solve it. Their findings are the basis of a paper published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

How to Escape a Black Hole: Simulations Provide New Clues to What's Driving Powerful Plasma Jets

New simulations led by researchers working at the Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley have combined decades-old theories to provide new insight about the driving mechanisms in plasma jets that allows them to steal energy from black holes' powerful gravitational fields and propel it far from their gaping mouths.

The question of how quickly the universe is expanding has been bugging astronomers for almost a century. Different studies keep coming up with different answers -- which has some researchers wondering if they've overlooked a key mechanism in the machinery that drives the cosmos

New water splitting catalyst could make it easier to generate solar fuel