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. In September 2012 an experiment at the TRIUMF accelerator complex reached a milestone. The FrPNC collaboration —-short hand for Francium Parity Non-conservation—-succeeded in trapping several kinds of francium, including the isotope Fr-207, which had never before been trapped. There is less than a gram of Fr at any given time in the whole earth. With a halflife of mere seconds, and existing only briefly at particle accelerators, francium is the rarest species in the periodic table of elements up to uranium. http://phys.org/news270726216.html Physics Mon, 29 Oct 2012 11:00:02 EST news270726216 (Phys.org)—Researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology have developed on-chip optomechanical sensors for atomic force microscopy (AFM) that extend the range of mechanical properties found in commercial AFM cantilevers, potentially enabling the use of this technology to study a wide variety of physical systems. AFM is an important tool for surface metrology that measures local tip-surface interactions by scanning a flexible cantilever probe over a surface, but the bulky free-space optical system commonly used to sense the motion of the probe imposes limits on the tool's sensitivity and versatility. http://phys.org/news270377045.html Nanotechnology Thu, 25 Oct 2012 10:00:01 EST news270377045 All of the atoms in our bodies are made of electrons, protons and neutrons, and the protons and neutrons can be further broken down into quarks. Fundamentally, then, we are made of only two types of particles: electrons and quarks. But what do these labels mean? Why do we even say that electrons and quarks are different from each other? http://phys.org/news270109856.html Physics Mon, 22 Oct 2012 07:31:34 EST news270109856 (PhysOrg.com) -- The SuperB factory, a particle-accelerator to be built in Rome and approved last May by the Italian government was officially launched this past Friday with construction set to begin sometime in the near future. The accelerator, which is expected to take six years to build, will be constructed on the University of Rome Tor Vergata campus and will be named for the late Nicola Cabibbo, the Italian physicist best known for his work with weak force interactions. http://phys.org/news237636186.html Physics Wed, 12 Oct 2011 11:03:22 EST news237636186 (PhysOrg.com) -- The nucleus of an atom, like most everything else, is more complicated than we first thought. Just how much more complicated is the subject of a Petascale Early Science project led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory's David Dean. http://phys.org/news229749340.html Physics Wed, 13 Jul 2011 04:17:58 EST news229749340 The force that governs some of the reactions that keep our sun shining is not quite as weak as scientists had previously thought. As a consequence, our estimation of how energetic the sun actually is just went up by a tiny amount. http://phys.org/news214122781.html Physics Thu, 13 Jan 2011 07:20:01 EST news214122781 First results from the LHC at CERN are being revealed at ICHEP, the world's largest international conference on particle physics, which has attracted more than 1000 participants to its venue in Paris. The spokespersons of the four major experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb - are today presenting measurements from the first three months of successful LHC operation at 3.5 TeV per beam, an energy three and a half times higher than previously achieved at a particle accelerator. http://phys.org/news199363469.html Physics Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:20:01 EST news199363469 The "exceptionally simple theory of everything," proposed by a surfing physicist in 2007, does not hold water, says Emory University mathematician Skip Garibaldi. http://phys.org/news188827214.html Physics Fri, 26 Mar 2010 13:00:32 EST news188827214 (PhysOrg.com) -- For a brief instant, it appears, scientists at Brook­haven National Laboratory on Long Island recently discovered a law of nature had been broken. http://phys.org/news188211977.html Physics Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:06:51 EST news188211977 (PhysOrg.com) -- A Harvard theoretical physicist has discussed with scientists at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland the possibility that they may discover a theorized "stau" particle, with a lifetime of a minute or so, that could provide the first experimental confirmation of string theory. http://phys.org/news177262216.html Physics Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:34:37 EST news177262216 The Large Hadron Collider is an enormous particle accelerator whose 17-mile tunnel straddles the borders of France and Switzerland. A group of physicists at the University of Nevada, Reno has analyzed data from the accelerator that could ultimately prove or disprove the possibility of a fifth force of nature. http://phys.org/news160128782.html Physics Tue, 28 Apr 2009 09:13:26 EST news160128782