A Huge Beam of Antimatter Has Been Caught Streaming From This Runaway Pulsar

A runaway dead star zooming through space at breakneck speeds has left behind a huge trail of matter and antimatter particles. The star is a pulsar called PSR J2030+4415 or J2030 for short; it’s around 20 kilometers (12 miles) in diameter, and it’s speeding through space at a breakneck velocity of around 450 kilometers per … Read more

Massive eruption on dead star pushes particles to cosmic speed limit

A burned-out stellar core produced a shockwave that pushed particles to their theoretical speed limit, scientists have reported. Astronomers used a gamma-ray observatory in Namibia called the High Energy Stereoscopic System (HESS) to show how an eruption creates a shock wave that accelerates material around it super-fast speeds. The research focused on RS Ophiuchi, a … Read more

What’s Inside a Black Hole? Quantum Computers May Be Able to Simulate It

Both quantum computing and machine learning have been touted as the next big computer revolution for a fair while now. However, experts have pointed out that these techniques aren’t generalized tools – they will only be the great leap forward in computer power for very specialized algorithms, and even more rarely will they be able … Read more

Nanotechnology: Particles can translate chemical signals from bacteria to yeast

Particles that facilitate communication from one type of cell to another could have applications in medicine and agriculture Life 28 February 2022 By Jason Arunn Murugesu Electron microscope image of an E. coli cell dividing CNRI/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY Specially designed nanoparticles have been used to let bacteria communicate with yeast cells by “translating” chemical messages … Read more

Indoor air pollution: Cleaning products cause high levels of pollutant particles

Fragrant chemicals in scented surface cleaners react with ozone to produce pollutant particles that may be harmful to the respiratory system Health 25 February 2022 By Carissa Wong A man mopping the floor SolStock/Getty Images Scented surface cleaning products can expose you to a similar amount of pollutant particles as a busy urban road used … Read more

Strange Quantum Object Successfully Created in The Lab For The First Time

Quantum mechanics – the behavior of the Universe at the smallest of scales – continues to surprise us, with scientists now having been able to successfully create a quantum object called a domain wall in laboratory settings.   For the first time, these walls can now be generated in the lab on demand, occurring when … Read more

Physicists Just Achieved a New Smallest Measurement of a Ghost Particle’s Mass

Decaying isotopes of hydrogen have just given us the smallest measurement yet of the mass of a neutrino. By measuring the energy distribution of electrons released during the beta decay of tritium, physicists have determined that the upper limit for the mass of the electron antineutrino is just 0.8 electronvolts. That’s 1.6 × 10–36 kilograms … Read more

Enigmatic High-Energy X-Rays Have Been Spied Coming From Jupiter

Jupiter has finally been observed spitting out X-rays in high-energy wavelengths. Emanating from the giant planet’s permanent auroras, and detected by NASA’s space-based X-ray telescope NuSTAR, the emissions are the most energetic light seen coming from any planet in the Solar System (aside from Earth).   The detection could shed light on the most powerful … Read more

Mind-Bending New Multiverse Scenario Could Explain a Strange Higgs Boson Feature

When researchers at the Large Hadron Collider discovered the elusive Higgs particle in 2012, it was a landmark for particle physics. It solved a very thorny problem, validating and allowing the Standard Model of particle physics to hold.   But, as is often the case with new discoveries, while some questions were neatly answered, others … Read more