Physics & Astronomy News

<p>Regime of a single 1D wire subband filled</p>

<p>Credit: Dr Maria Moreno</p>

Quantum Effects Observed in ‘One-Dimensional’ Wires
Researchers have observed quantum effects in electrons by squeezing them into one-dimensional ‘quantum wires’ and observing the interactions between them.

<p>This illustration shows a glowing stream of material from a star as it is being devoured by a supermassive black hole in a tidal disruption flare.</p>

<p>When a star passes within a certain distance of a black hole -- close enough to be gravitationally disrupted -- the stellar material gets stretched and compressed as it falls into the black hole. In the process of being accreted, the gas heats up and creates a lot of optical and ultraviolet light, which destroys nearby dust but merely heats dust further out. The farther dust that is heated emits a large amount of infrared light. In recent years, a few dozen such flares have been discovered, but they are not well understood.</p>

<p>Astronomers gained new insights into tidal disruption flares thanks to data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Studies using WISE data characterized tidal disruption flares by studying how surrounding dust absorbs and re-emits their light, like echoes. This approach allowed scientists to measure the energy of flares from stellar tidal disruption events more precisely than ever before.</p>

<p>JPL manages and operates WISE for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The spacecraft was put into hibernation mode in 2011, after it scanned the entire sky twice, thereby completing its main objectives. In September 2013, WISE was reactivated, renamed NEOWISE and assigned a new mission to assist NASA's efforts to identify potentially hazardous near-Earth objects.</p>

<p>Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech</p>

Echoes of Black Holes Eating Stars Found
Astronomers now have new insights into tidal disruption flares, thanks to data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE).

<p>“Learning from this model, we can understand what’s really going on in these superconductors, and what one should do to make higher-temperature superconductors, approaching hopefully room temperature,” says Martin Zwierlein, professor of physics and principal investigator in MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics.</p>

<p>Illustration: Sampson Wilcox</p>

Individual Atoms Behavior Observed
For first time, researchers see individual atoms keep away from each other or bunch up as pairs.

<p>Gaia’s first sky map</p>

<p>Image credit: ESA</p>

Gaia’s First Sky Map
The first catalogue of more than a billion stars from ESA’s Gaia satellite was published – the largest all-sky survey of celestial objects to date.

Attosecond Science opens new Avenues in Femtochemistry
Attosecond Science is a new exciting frontier in contemporary physics, aimed at time-resolving the motion of electrons in atoms, molecules and solids on their natural timescale.

Physicists Confirm Possible Discovery of Fifth Force of Nature
Recent findings indicating the possible discovery of a previously unknown subatomic particle may be evidence of a fifth fundamental force of nature.

Vortex Laser Offers Hope For Moore’s Law
The optics advancement may solve an approaching data bottleneck by helping to boost computing power and information transfer rates tenfold

Science Facts

How Fast is Mach 1?

by Anton Skorucak and ScienceIQ.com

Mach 1: Fast planes and Ernst Mach:

A Mach number is a common ratio unit of speed when one is talking about aircrafts. By definition, the Mach number is a ratio of the speed of a body (aircraft) to the speed of sound in the undisturbed medium through which the body is traveling.

It is said that the aircraft is flying at Mach 1 if its speed is equal to the speed of sound in air (which is 332 m/s or 1195 km/hr or 717 miles/hour.) An aircraft flying at Mach 2 is flying at twice the speed of sound in air, etc. Mach numbers are named after Ernst Mach (1838-1916), an Austrian philosopher and physicist. The term Mach number came into use in 1929.

A Giant X-Ray Machine

The first clear detection of X-rays from the giant, gaseous planet Saturn has been made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Chandra's image shows that the X-rays are concentrated near Saturn's equa ...
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What Is An Atom?

Atoms are the extremely small particles of which we, and everything around us, are made. A single element, such as oxygen, is made up of similar atoms. Different elements, such as oxygen, carbon, and ...
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Jupiter's Great Red Spot - A Super Storm

The most prominent and well-known feature of the planet Jupiter is the Great Red Spot. It is not a surface feature, as the hard core of Jupiter lies at the bottom of an atmosphere that is thousands of ...
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Science Quote

'All of us, are truly and literally a little bit of stardust.'

William Fowler
(1911-1995)