Characterizing Behavior of Individual Electrons During Chemical Reactions

"The researchers, eight of whom are from MIT’s Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), describe a technique that should be able to produce bursts of laser light that last only attoseconds, or billionths of a billionth of a second. The electron in a hydrogen atom takes about 151 attoseconds to orbit the nucleus, so catching it in the act during a chemical reaction would require attosecond pulses."

Searching For Gravitational Waves

Searching for gravitational waves

Colliding neutron stars and black holes, supernova events, rotating neutron stars and other cataclysmic cosmic events… Einstein predicted they would all have something in common – oscillations in the fabric of space-time. This summer European scientists have joined forces to prove Einstein was right and capture evidence of the existence of gravitational waves.

Fundamental Matter-Antimatter Symmetry is Confirmed

Who would have thought that scientists could work and measure antimatter in our non-antimatter world!

Fundamental matter-antimatter symmetry confirmed

International collaboration including MPQ scientists sets a new value for the antiproton mass relative to the electron with unprecedented precision.

Experiments narrow allowed mass range for Higgs boson

ScienceDaily (2010-07-26) -- "New constraints on the elusive Higgs particle are more stringent than ever before. Scientists of the CDF and DZero collider experiments at the US Department of Energy's Fermilab have revealed their latest Higgs search results, which rule out a significant fraction of the allowed mass range established by earlier experiments."

It will be refreshing to find the Higgs. It will answer many questions like what is mass, something that I wrongly defined in my classes for 45 years!

What about quarks?

Hunting the unseen

A better knowledge about the composition of sub-atomic particles such as protons and neutrons has sparked conjecture about, as yet, unseen particles. A tool based on theoretical calculations that could aid the search for these particles has been developed by a team of researchers in Japan called the HAL QCD Collaboration.

On the Road to Quantum Computing

U.Va.'s Pfister accomplishes breakthrough toward quantum computing

A sort of Holy Grail for physicists and information scientists is the quantum computer. Such a computer, operating on the highly complex principles of quantum mechanics, would be capable of performing specific calculations with capabilities far beyond even the most advanced modern supercomputers. It could be used for breaking computer security codes as well as for incredibly detailed, data-heavy simulations of quantum systems.

History Channel's The Universe--Light Speed

This is a 44-minute show, without commercials, that covers the speed of light, slowing light to zero m/s, and the possibility of faster than light speeds. It is well done.

Nanoscientists build antenna for light

University of Toronto researchers have derived inspiration from the photosynthetic apparatus in plants to engineer a new generation of nanomaterials that control and direct the energy absorbed from light.