~physics-quanta-maga | Bookmarks (15)

There once was a cosmic seed that sprouted the Milky Way galaxy. Astronomers have discovered its last surviving remnants. The post Astronomers Dig Up the Stars That Birthed the Milky Way first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Last fall, a team of physicists announced that they had teleported a qubit through a holographic wormhole in a quantum computer. Now another group suggests that’s not quite what happened. The post Wormhole Experiment Called Into Question first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Cosmologists are using secondary signatures from the cosmic microwave background to map the universe’s hidden matter. The post Shadows in the Big Bang Afterglow Reveal Invisible Cosmic Structures first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A paper in Nature reports the discovery of a superconductor that operates at room temperatures and near-room pressures. The claim has divided the research community. The post Room-Temperature Superconductor Discovery Meets With Resistance first appeared on Quanta Magazine

New calculations suggest that the event horizons around black holes will ‘decohere’ quantum possibilities — even those that are far away. The post Black Holes Will Eventually Destroy All Quantum States, Researchers Argue first appeared on Quanta Magazine

There appear to be too many gamma rays coming from the sun. New higher-energy measurements reveal that this excess continues for a bit, then disappears — a cutoff that could help clarify what’s going on. The post Strange Solar Gamma Rays Discovered at Even Higher Energies first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The quantum energy teleportation protocol was proposed in 2008 and largely ignored. Now two independent experiments have shown that it works. The post Physicists Use Quantum Mechanics to Pull Energy out of Nothing first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Big Freeze, Big Rip, Big Crunch, Bounce or vacuum decay? Steven Strogatz speaks with theoretical cosmologist Katie Mack about the five ways that scientists think the universe could come to an end. The post How Will the Universe End? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Two teams have made photons act as if time were simultaneously flowing in two directions. The experiments demonstrate a way to potentially boost the performance of quantum devices. The post How Quantum Physicists ‘Flipped Time’ (and How They Didn’t) first appeared on Quanta Magazine

In three-dimensional space, the surface of a black hole must be a sphere. But a new result shows that in higher dimensions, an infinite number of configurations are possible. The post Mathematicians Find an Infinity of Possible Black Hole Shapes first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Reports that the James Webb Space Telescope killed the reigning cosmological model turn out to have been exaggerated. But astronomers still have much to learn from distant galaxies glimpsed by Webb. The post Standard Model of Cosmology Survives a Telescope’s Surprising Finds first appeared on Quanta Magazine

A new radiation-based mechanism adds to the ways that amino acids could have been made in space and brought to the young Earth. The post Inside Ancient Asteroids, Gamma Rays Made Building Blocks of Life first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The buckminsterfullerene revolution never came, but some researchers are eagerly exploring the properties of newfound carbon crystals known as fullertubes. The post ‘Fullertubes’ Join the Family of Carbon Crystals first appeared on Quanta Magazine

By using fluids to model inaccessible realms of the cosmos, Silke Weinfurtner is “looking for a deeper truth beyond one system.” But what can such experiments teach us? The post She Turns Fluids Into ‘Black Holes’ and ‘Inflating Universes’ first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Two new studies suggest that certain tetrahedral arrangements of galaxies outnumber their mirror images, potentially reflecting details of the universe’s birth. But confirmation is needed. The post Asymmetry Detected in the Distribution of Galaxies first appeared on Quanta Magazine