Lifeboat Foundation

A particle physicist explains just what this keystone theory includes. After 50 years, it’s the best we’ve got to answer what everything in the universe is made of and how it all holds together.

Although Hurricane Patricia was one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, that didn’t stop the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) from flying a scientific aircraft right through it. Now, the researchers have reported their findings, including the detection of a beam of antimatter being blasted towards the ground, accompanied by flashes of x-rays and gamma rays.

Scientists discovered terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs) in 1994, when orbiting instruments designed to detect deep space gamma ray bursts noticed signals coming from Earth. These were later linked to storms, and after thousands of subsequent observations have come to be seen as normal parts of lightning strikes.

The mechanisms behind these emissions are still shrouded in mystery, but the basic story goes that, first, the strong electric fields in thunderstorms cause electrons to accelerate to almost the speed of light. As these high-energy electrons scatter off other atoms in the air, they accelerate other electrons, quickly creating an avalanche of what are known as “relativistic” electrons.

An Antares rocket launched from Virginia before sunrise this morning and is on its way to the International Space Station. Its 7,400 pounds of cargo include an experiment that will chill atoms to just about absolute zero—colder than the vacuum of space itself.

The Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL) is set to create Bose-Einstein condensates on board the ISS. But what’s a Bose-Einstein condensate? And why make it in space?

“Essentially, it’s going to allow us to do different kinds of things than we’d be able to do on Earth,” Gretchen Campbell, co-director of the University of Maryland’s Joint Quantum Institute, told Gizmodo.

Continue reading “How NASA Will Unlock the Secrets of Quantum Mechanics Aboard the ISS” »

New research gives insight into a recent experiment that was able to manipulate an unprecedented number of atoms through a quantum simulator. This new theory could provide another step on the path to creating the elusive quantum computers.

Realizing Majorana bound states (MBS) in condensed matter systems is a key challenge on the way toward topological quantum computing. As a promising platform, one-dimensional magnetic chains on conventional superconductors were theoretically predicted to host MBS at the chain ends. We demonstrate a novel approach to design of model-type atomic-scale systems for studying MBS using single-atom manipulation techniques. Our artificially constructed atomic Fe chains on a Re surface exhibit spin spiral states and a remarkable enhancement of the local density of states at zero energy being strongly localized at the chain ends. Moreover, the zero-energy modes at the chain ends are shown to emerge and become stabilized with increasing chain length. Tight-binding model calculations based on parameters obtained from ab initio calculations corroborate that the system resides in the topological phase. Our work opens new pathways to design MBS in atomic-scale hybrid structures as a basis for fault-tolerant topological quantum computing.

Majorana fermions —particles being their own antiparticles—have recently attracted renewed interest in various fields of physics. In condensed matter systems, Majorana bound states (MBS) with a non-Abelian quantum exchange statistics have been proposed as a key element for topological quantum computing (2–4). One of the most promising platforms to realize MBS are one-dimensional (1D) helical spin systems being proximity-coupled to a conventional s-wave superconductor (5–9). In such a surface-confined system, the MBS can directly be investigated by local probe techniques such as scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS). Previously reported experiments aiming at the direct visualization and probing of the MBS have focused on self-assembled magnetic chains on superconducting Pb substrates (10–15).

The US Department of Energy will fund the most sensitive search yet for theorized dark matter particles. It will sit over a mile underground, in a nickel mine near the Canadian city of Sudbury, according to a release.

The proposed Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search at SNOLAB, or SuperCDMS SNOLAB, would be a detector held at near absolute zero that would be sensitive enough to detect the elusive dark matter with silicon and germanium atoms. It joins a long line of other experiments hunting for “weakly interacting massive particles,” or WIMPs, the most popular dark matter particle candidate.

Throughout the universe, there exist hints of unaccounted-for mass. Galaxies rotate too quickly at their edges, and the seemingly empty regions beside clusters of colliding galaxies warp the shape of space around them as if there were stuff there. The most popular solution to solve this mystery are WIMPs, particles that interact too weakly with regular matter to be detected by our telescopes or any other observing equipment.

Continue reading “The US Will Fund Another Super-Sensitive and Expensive Dark Matter Experiment” »

One of the Unit Telescopes of ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) is producing an artificial star — a guide star — in the skies above the Atacama desert, above the flowing Milky Way.

The Four Laser Guide Star Facility (4LGSF) shines four 22-watt laser beams into the sky to create artificial guide stars by making sodium atoms in the upper atmosphere glow so that they look just like real stars. The artificial stars allow the adaptive optics systems to compensate for the blurring caused by the Earth’s atmosphere and so that the telescope can create sharp images.

Ironically, my more popular posts are ones furthest from my passion and core interests. They are larks—never intended to go viral. This is about one of them…

Apart from family, I typically steer clear of religious topics. I identify with a mainstream religion, but it is completely beside the purpose of Lifeboat Foundation, and it is a personal affair.^[1]

Yet, here we discuss a religious topic, after all. Let’s get started…

Question

Continue reading “Does Mystery of Quantum Physics Prove God Exists?” »

One of the greatest obstacles to producing energy via fusion on Eearth is the formation and growth of small magnetic field imperfections in the core of experimental fusion reactors. These reactors, called tokamaks, confine hot ionized gas, or plasma. If the imperfections persist, they let the energy stored in the confined plasma leak out; if allowed to grow, they can lead to sudden termination of the plasma discharge. Recent simulations of tokamak discharges with fast, energetic ions have shown that the structure of the magnetic field can either stabilize or destabilize these magnetic imperfections, or “tearing” instabilities. The result depends on the helical structure of the field as it winds around the tokamak.

Energetic ions, ubiquitous in fusion plasmas, can be a strong stabilizing or destabilizing force. The choice depends on the magnetic shear in the plasma. Understanding the physics driving the onset of the instabilities can lead to their avoidance, a “zero tolerance” approach, vital for ITER’s stable operation. ITER is a key step between today’s fusion research and tomorrow’s fusion power plants. Also, the results explain many experimental observations of tearing instabilities that limit the maximum heat energy that can be contained.

Advanced tokamaks achieve high-thermal-energy plasmas by injecting beams of hot ions that collide with, and thereby heat, the background plasma. Burning plasma experiments that create energy from fusion reactions, such as ITER, will also have a significant population of hot alpha particles, the byproduct of fusion. The effects that energetic ions have on the benign instabilities, such as the sawtooth instability, which causes the temperature near the plasma core to flatten, and the toroidal Alfvén eigenmode, which intuitively is a “vibration” (wobble) of the magnetic field lines, have been known for some time.

Continue reading “Eliminating small instabilities in tokamaks before they become disruptions” »