http://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have clocked the fastest wind yet discovered blowing off a disk around a stellar-mass black hole. This result has important implications for understanding how this type of black hole behaves. http://phys.org/news249061581.html Space & Earth Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:46:30 EST news249061581 Accelerating subatomic particles to almost the speed of light and then crashing them together reveals much about the nature of the matter. Nuclear physicists need to fully understand these complex collisions if they are to make sense of the large volume of experimental data the world’s particle accelerators generate every year. RIKEN scientists Zhong-Bo Kang and Feng Yuan, and their colleague Bo-Wen Xiao from Penn State University, USA, have presented a new theoretical framework that should accurately model one important type of interaction in particular: proton collisions.  http://phys.org/news248692199.html Physics Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:40:03 EST news248692199 "Humanity's adventurous, stubborn, mad and glorious aspiration to reach the stars" is the subject of Physics World's lead feature in January. http://phys.org/news244893215.html Space & Earth Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:53:49 EST news244893215 (PhysOrg.com) -- The Large Hadron Collider at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland has generated a lot of news of late, e.g. the announcement that a team had found what it believes to be a particle that traveled faster than he speed of light, an actual new particle, and of course the seemingly never-ending storyline associated with the hopeful discovery of the elusive Higgs Boson, now a physicist not associated with the project, has built a scale model replica of the ATLAS experiment; a particle detector that will likely serve as ground zero should the so-called “god particle” ever be observed. http://phys.org/news244456625.html Physics Fri, 30 Dec 2011 08:37:23 EST news244456625 Oh Albert. Did you get it wrong? In 2011, physics was shaken by an experiment which said the Universe's speed limit, enshrined by Einstein in his 1905 theory of special relativity, could be broken. http://phys.org/news242622174.html Physics Fri, 09 Dec 2011 03:03:15 EST news242622174 (PhysOrg.com) -- ESA's Cluster satellites have discovered that cosmic particle accelerators are more efficient than previously thought. The discovery has revealed the initial stages of acceleration for the first time, a process that could apply across the Universe. http://phys.org/news240733899.html Space & Earth Thu, 17 Nov 2011 06:31:58 EST news240733899 Electrons moving in graphene behave in an unusual way, as demonstrated by 2010 Nobel Prize laureates for physics Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, who performed transport experiments on this one-carbon-atom-thick material. A review article, just published in EPJ B, explores the theoretical and experimental results to date of electrons tunneling through energy barriers in graphene. http://phys.org/news239893597.html Physics Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:06:44 EST news239893597 Scientists who threw down the gauntlet to physics by reporting particles that broke the Universe's speed limit said on Friday they were revisiting their contested experiment. http://phys.org/news239009787.html Physics Fri, 28 Oct 2011 08:36:39 EST news239009787 Help to unravel the mysteries of the Universe! With the SixTrack project developed by EPFL, your computer can provide CERN with additional computing power. http://phys.org/news238666297.html Physics Mon, 24 Oct 2011 09:12:05 EST news238666297 Oh, yeah. Moving faster than the speed of light has been the hot topic in the news and OPERA has been the key player. In case you didn’t know, the experiment unleashed some particles at CERN, close to Geneva. It wasn’t the production that caused the buzz, it was the revelation they arrived at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy around 60 nanoseconds sooner than they should have. Sooner than the speed of light allows! http://phys.org/news238050664.html Physics Mon, 17 Oct 2011 06:11:24 EST news238050664 Findings that showed faster-than-light travel were released to the public too soon. http://phys.org/news237470243.html Physics Mon, 10 Oct 2011 14:30:01 EST news237470243 (PhysOrg.com) -- It's been just two weeks since the Oscillation Project with Emulsion-tRacking Apparatus (OPERA) team released its announcement claiming that they have been measuring muon neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light, causing an uproar in the physics community. Since that time, many papers (perhaps as many as 30 to the preprint server arXiv alone) have been published seeking ways to discredit the findings. Thus far though, only two seem credible. http://phys.org/news237106952.html Physics Thu, 06 Oct 2011 08:10:11 EST news237106952 The news media were abuzz this week with reports of experiments conducted at the Gran Sasso particle detector complex in Italy, apparently showing subatomic particles called neutrinos had traveled from the giant particle accelerator at CERN, outside Geneva, to the Italian detector at a speed just slightly faster than the speed of light -- a result that, if correct, would overturn more than a century of accepted physics theory. Professor of Physics Peter Fisher, head of MIT's Particle and Nuclear Experimental Physics division, answered some questions about these new findings. http://phys.org/news236236993.html Physics Mon, 26 Sep 2011 06:23:33 EST news236236993 Some questions and answers about the experiment that appeared to show particles speeding faster than light. http://phys.org/news236017754.html Physics Fri, 23 Sep 2011 17:29:45 EST news236017754 (AP) -- Physicists on the team that measured particles traveling faster than light said Friday they were as surprised as their skeptics about the results, which appear to violate the laws of nature as we know them. http://phys.org/news235993189.html Physics Fri, 23 Sep 2011 10:40:11 EST news235993189 Physicists around the world expressed astonishment and scepticism in equal measure Friday after European scientists reported particles apparently travelling faster than light. http://phys.org/news235986693.html Physics Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:52:08 EST news235986693 Boosting up microprocessors -the heart of modern computers- at the speed of light, reducing consumptions and costs, may now be a reality thanks to the development of a new high-performance chip, the results of which have been published in Nature Photonics. http://phys.org/news235910800.html Physics Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:46:56 EST news235910800 (PhysOrg.com) -- A galaxy with a combination of characteristics never seen before is giving astronomers a tantalizing peek at processes they believe played key roles in the growth of galaxies and clusters of galaxies early in the history of the Universe. http://phys.org/news233497709.html Space & Earth Thu, 25 Aug 2011 13:28:39 EST news233497709 The elusive Higgs Boson, known as the "God particle", is -- if it exists -- running out of places to hide, the head of the mammoth experiment designed to find it said on Thursday. http://phys.org/news233481121.html Physics Thu, 25 Aug 2011 08:52:22 EST news233481121 The physics world was abuzz with some tantalizing news a couple of weeks ago. At a meeting of the European Physical Society in Grenoble, France, physicists -- including some from Caltech -- announced that the latest data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) might hint at the existence of the ever-elusive Higgs boson. http://phys.org/news232683569.html Physics Tue, 16 Aug 2011 03:20:19 EST news232683569 (PhysOrg.com) -- Hong Kong physicists say they have proved that a single photon obeys Einstein's theory that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light -- demonstrating that outside science fiction, time travel is impossible. http://phys.org/news230700526.html Physics Sun, 24 Jul 2011 04:29:39 EST news230700526 The electromagnetic force has gotten a little stronger, gravity a little weaker, and the size of the smallest "quantum" of energy is now known a little better. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has posted the latest internationally recommended values of the fundamental constants of nature. http://phys.org/news230358458.html Physics Wed, 20 Jul 2011 05:28:25 EST news230358458 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at the University of Glasgow have, for the first time, been able to drag light by slowing it down to the speed of sound and sending it through a rotating crystal. http://phys.org/news229161241.html Physics Wed, 06 Jul 2011 08:59:51 EST news229161241 (PhysOrg.com) -- The rule that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, c, is one of the most fundamental laws of nature. But since this speed limit has only been experimentally demonstrated for information carried by large groups of photons, physicists have recently speculated as to whether single photons and the information carried by them may be able to exceed the speed of light. In a new study, physicists have performed the difficult task of producing single photons with controllable waveforms, and have shown that single photons also obey the speed limit c. http://phys.org/news228111392.html Physics Fri, 24 Jun 2011 08:50:01 EST news228111392 Cosmic rays are really sub-atomic particles, being mainly protons (hydrogen nuclei) and occasionally helium or heavier atomic nuclei and very occasionally electrons. Cosmic ray particles are very energetic as a result of them having a substantial velocity and hence a substantial momentum. http://phys.org/news227180112.html Space & Earth Mon, 13 Jun 2011 10:40:01 EST news227180112 (PhysOrg.com) -- A group of physicists working out of Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, have succeeded in proving what was until now, just theory; and that is, that visible photons could be produced from the virtual particles that have been thought to exist in a quantum vacuum. In a paper published on arXiv, the team describes how they used a specially created circuit called a superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) to modulate a bit of wire length at a roughly five percent of the speed of light, to produce visible "sparks" from the nothingness of a vacuum. http://phys.org/news226574542.html Physics Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:23:04 EST news226574542 The world's biggest particle collider set a new record early Monday, a feat that should accelerate the quest to pinpoint the elusive particle known as the Higgs Boson, a senior physicist said. http://phys.org/news225386176.html Physics Mon, 23 May 2011 16:16:36 EST news225386176 Light does not travel at the same speed in all directions under the effect of an electromagnetic field. Although predicted by theory, this counter-intuitive effect has for the first time been demonstrated experimentally in a gas by a French team from the Laboratoire 'Collisions Agregats Reactivite' at CNRS. The researchers measured with extreme precision, of around one billionth m/s, the difference between the light propagation speeds in one direction and in the opposite direction. These results open the way to more in-depth research aimed at improving the model that describes elementary particle interactions. Published on the 11 May 2011 in the journal Physical Review Letters, they point to novel applications in optics. http://phys.org/news224503136.html Physics Fri, 13 May 2011 11:00:14 EST news224503136 (PhysOrg.com) -- While most people know that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, this concept is proving even truer in the world of stock trading. In a world where buying low and selling high means all the difference, racing the speed of light between to different financial markets can mean greater profit. http://phys.org/news220201080.html Physics Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:58:37 EST news220201080 ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory has spotted extremely hot matter just a millisecond before it plunges into the oblivion of a black hole. But is it really doomed? These unique observations suggest that some of the matter may be making a great escape. http://phys.org/news220198643.html Space & Earth Thu, 24 Mar 2011 15:17:45 EST news220198643