Physics Buzz

Where did we come from? Where are we going? Why do we exist?

Giant "atom smashers" like CERN and SLAC are famous for their ability to accelerate matter to very nearly the speed of light. By slamming together particles like protons and electrons at extremely high speeds, physicists can gain a better understanding of their fundamental nature—and even uncover new particles, like the now-famous  Higgs boson . Their wide range of applications and their place in the spotlight mean that an ever-increasing amount of effort is being devoted to making proton and electron accelerators cheaper and more accessible to scientists.

In our last post , we introduced the pond —the surface of a body of water serving as an intriguing analogy for spacetime—with waves as a transient expression of energy, much like photons or gravitational waves, and eddies representing charged particles like protons and electrons. We found that two whirlpools spinning the same direction will repel one another, much like two particles of the same charge—but what about ones spinning opposite directions?

In 2008, the European satellite PAMELA detected a surprisingly large concentration of high energy positrons above our atmosphere. The presence of so many positrons, the anti-matter counterpart of electrons, goes against theoretical predictions but has been verified by other detectors. In new research published earlier this month by the AAAS journal Science , a team of researchers from Germany, Mexico, Poland, and the United States now cast doubt on one of the leading explanations for the mysterious excess—leaving its origin still unknown.

If you’re in need of some charming news and a break from weather-related disaster coverage, this is your story. Today, in the American Physical Society’s journal Physical Review Letters , a several-hundred-member team of CERN researchers announced the first unambiguous sighting of a baryon with two heavy quarks.

A vacuum is a space absolutely devoid of matter, at least according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. But if you talk to a physicist you may get a different answer. According to quantum physics, even vacuums are not completely empty. Constant fluctuations in energy can spontaneously create mass not just out of thin air, but out of absolutely nothing at all.

Antimatter doesn’t just fuel science fiction, it fuels cutting-edge physics research into the heart of our very existence. In a paper published today in the journal Nature , a 54-member team of researchers from the ALPHA experiment at CERN announced an exciting achievement in antimatter research. For the first time, scientists have measured the spectrum of light given off by a particle of antimatter.

A curious reader wrote in today with an odd and ominous inquiry—how much would it cost to power the laser of the Death Star? We're by no means the first ones to turn an analytical eye to everyone's favorite space opera, but outlandish questions like this are always a good opportunity to bring a bit of fun to mathematics.

Last week, we reported on a new theory by Dr. Jonathan Feng and collaborators, slated to appear in Physical Review Letters , which postulated a fifth fundamental force of nature. Exciting as this work is, our piece contained some errors and gave altogether the wrong impression, suggesting that the experimental work that served as the basis for this new theory might not be reliable. PhysicsCentral would like to apologize to our readers for this miscommunication, and in particular to Dr. Feng, as well as to the Atomki research group whose discovery of unusual features in the decay of Beryllium-8 atoms laid the groundwork for the new theory.

It’s practically the most famous formula in history. Every student knows it by heart, and nearly anyone can tell you who came up with it—with good reason: it’s as profound as it is widely known, communicating a fundamental truth of the universe in a mere five characters. Everyone say it with me, it’s: