Physics Awards

Saturday, February 22, 2025

Neither electric nor gasoline – this proton engine was predicted by Einstein and defies the laws of physics

Science never stops and now it has made a surprising leap: the proton engine that Albert Einstein predicted decades ago has finally materialized. Imagine an engine that runs without gasoline or batteries, but instead uses a virtually inexhaustible source of energy and does not pollute. It seems like something out of a comic book, but this breakthrough challenges some fundamental principles of physics and promises to revolutionize mobility and energy.

A science fiction invention

The proton engine is based on nuclear fusion (the same process that occurs in the Sun). Unlike traditional nuclear energy based on fission (which splits atoms), fusion consists of joining atomic nuclei to release immense, clean and sustainable energy. Now, a company has managed to develop the first functional prototype and the best of all is that we would be talking about clean energy!

Einstein and his theory of the nuclear fusion engine

Since 1929, Einstein theorized about the possibility of creating an engine powered by proton fusion, capable of generating such high power that it could take spaceships to speeds close to that of light. The key to this technology lies in taking advantage of the enormous temperature reached during fusion to expel a jet of protons and generate thrust.

Technological advances that have allowed its development

For many years there have been attempts to create this type of fusion engine, but it was very complicated because the appropriate technology was not available at the time, but these last decades have produced such significant advances that have allowed this idea to go from being just that, a simple idea, to a real construction. There have been three key advances that have allowed this:New metals and advanced ceramics can withstand extreme temperatures without degrading, because this way the plasma can be contained and the engine structure can be prevented from being destroyed.

Another key factor has been the mathematical understanding of the behaviour of the plasma inside the reactor, which has allowed simulations to be made that predicted and corrected possible errors.
Finally, they have been able to use advanced magnetic fields to prevent the plasma from touching the reactor walls, keeping it stable at temperatures above 100 million degrees!! In addition, superconducting magnets have significantly reduced the energy consumption of the system.

RocketStar: the startup that made it possible

In 2021, the RocketStar company began developing the first nuclear fusion engine applicable to propulsion, and they sought to design a rocket engine that would revolutionize the sector. And so they have done. Its design is based on a funnel-shaped magnetic field, where protons are accelerated and compressed until they reach temperatures high enough to initiate fusion.

This engine does not need chemical propellants, since hydrogen fusion generates a plasma jet that provides thrust. The main advantage is that the fuel (hydrogen) is practically inexhaustible, making this system a viable alternative for space travel, much faster, cheaper and more sustainable!

Could we use it on Earth?

This technology is designed for the propulsion of spacecraft, but technology is advancing so quickly that no one closes the door to it being applied in the future to airplanes or trains because it is a great alternative to fossil fuels.

It may not seem like it, but the technology of the future is so close to us that it is dizzying to think about it. Will they be able to commercialize this type of energy? We will have to wait and see!

Website: International Conference on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

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Thursday, February 20, 2025

Quantum simulation breakthrough will lead to 'discoveries impossible in today's fastest supercomputers,' Google scientists claim

By combining digital and analog quantum simulation into a new hybrid approach, scientists have already started to make fresh scientific discoveries using quantum computers.

Scientists at Google have revealed a new method of "quantum simulation" that uses computing power to mimic the behavior of a powerful quantum system. This approach, they argue, could lead to quantum computers that can overtake supercomputers within five years and lead to breakthroughs in drug discovery and battery development.

Quantum simulation is a process in which computers simulate physical processes and large quantum systems, such as complex molecules. Essentially, engineers simulate physical processes that are dominated by the effects of quantum physics.

But this is difficult to do with classical computers because you have to model every particle's interaction with every other particle. Because subatomic particles have a probability of being in multiple states at once and can be entangled with each other, the complexity of these calculations skyrockets quickly as you scale the number of particles involved.

Instead, scientists are turning to quantum computers, whose behavior is already governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, to solve the problems. Because quantum physics is built into the way these systems work. If the qubits are entangled or linked together the right way, they can mimic bigger quantum systems without having to explicitly calculate every step in the evolution of the system.

That is where "quantum simulation" comes into play. There are two types of quantum simulation. Digital simulation lets researchers selectively pivot between quantum states by entangling and disentangling different qubit pairings (two entangled qubits) in series. Analog simulation, meanwhile, is much faster. This involves entangling all the qubits across a system at once but since qubits can be error-prone, this raises the risk that the output of the simulation becomes meaningless noise.

Simulation theory

This "hybrid" approach begins with a digital simulation layer, where scientists use the flexibility of the system to prepare the initial quantum states of each qubit pair choosing the most pertinent position to start from. Next, the process switches to analog simulation, which can evolve toward the specific quantum states the scientists want to study.

Finally, the process switches back to a digital simulation to fine-tune and probe the quantum states to solve the most interesting problems in the physics being simulated.

The new research means that quantum computers will likely outperform conventional supercomputers in practical settings within the next five years, Hartmut Neven, the founder and lead of Google Quantum AI, said in an emailed statement. The time estimates vary greatly, with some suggesting this may be as far away as 20 years or achievable in the next couple.

Scientists have already demonstrated that Google's quantum computing chips, including Sycamore and the newly released Willow, can outperform the most powerful supercomputers but so far only in benchmarking. To achieve supremacy in a practical scenario, the scientists said they must make further improvements in calibration and control accuracy, as well as improving the hardware. They also need to identify problems that both can be solved by quantum simulation and are too complex to address using classical computers.

However, the new hybrid research enables today's quantum computers to boost the capabilities of the fastest supercomputers. And this hybrid approach is already being harnessed to make new scientific discoveries, which the Google scientists achieved in testing their new approach. For example, in the behavior of magnets, the Google scientists addressed questions on how a magnet behaves when it's cooled to extremely low temperatures, and how energy flows from a hot to a cold part.

The hybrid approach was also used to show that the Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM) a widely regarded model that predicts where defects form in a material did not always hold true. Instead, the new hybrid simulation revealed entirely new physics. This is an example of the kind of discoveries that the hybrid approach quantum simulation can address, the scientists said.

Website: International Conference on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

‘Unconventional’ nickel superconductor excites physicists

Compounds called nickelates can conduct electricity without resistance well above absolute zero and at ambient pressure.

A new family of superconductors is exciting physicists. Compounds containing nickel have been shown to carry electricity without resistance at the relatively high temperature of 45 kelvin (–228 °C) and without being squeezed under pressure.

Physicists at the Southern University of Science and Technology (Sustech) in Shenzhen, China, observed the major hallmarks of superconductivity in a thin film of crystals of nickel oxide, which they grew in the laboratory. They published their work in Nature on 17 February.

“There’s a huge hope that we could eventually raise the critical temperature and make [such materials] more useful for applications,” says Dafeng Li, a physicist at the City University of Hong Kong.

Nickelates now join two groups of ceramics copper-based cuprates and iron-based pnictides as ‘unconventional superconductors’ that operate at room pressure and temperatures as high as 150K (–123 °C). This new data point could help physicists to finally explain how high-temperature superconductors work, and ultimately to design materials that operate under ambient conditions. This would make technologies, such as magnetic resonance imaging, radically cheaper and more efficient.

How unconventional superconductors operate at warmer temperatures remains largely a mystery, whereas the mechanism behind how some metals can carry electricity without resistance at colder temperatures, or extreme pressures, has been understood since 1957.

The ability of the Sustech researchers to precisely engineer the material’s properties is huge boon in trying to use nickelates to unravel the theory behind unconventional superconductivity, says Lilia Boeri, a physicist at the Sapienza University of Rome. “The idea that you have a system that you can sort of tune experimentally, is something quite exciting.”

Raising temperatures

Excitement in nickelates has been growing since 2019 when Li and his colleagues found hints that compounds containing nickel behaved as superconductors, albeit at cold temperatures. These materials’ structural similarity to cuprates raised hopes that nickelates could be coaxed to conduct at higher temperatures. A separate group demonstrated this in 2023, but the materials were under high pressure.

In December, researchers at Stanford University in California saw the first signs of nickelate superconductivity under ambient pressure. The researchers went further in latest study, showing that the nickelate crystals lost resistance at a critical temperature and expelled magnetic fields.

Nickelates have a way to go before their critical temperature at which superconductivity kicks in matches the cuprates. Raising this is “a priority”, says Zhuoyu Chen, a physicist at Sustech and study co-author. The team is trying various tricks to tweak the way the material is grown and its precise composition, he says.

Website: International Conference on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Physicists Just Mapped the Hidden Quantum World of Electrons

A new method finally reveals the full quantum identity of electrons, offering insights that could transform material science and quantum applications.

For the first time, scientists have successfully measured the quantum state of electrons released from atoms after absorbing high-energy light pulses. This breakthrough was made possible by a new measurement technique developed by researchers at Lund University in Sweden. Their findings offer deeper insights into how light interacts with matter.

Unlocking the Secrets of Electrons with High-Energy Light

When high-energy light in the extreme ultraviolet or X-ray range interacts with an atom or molecule, it can knock an electron loose in a process known as the photoelectric effect. By measuring the ejected electron and its kinetic energy, scientists can gather valuable information about the atom that was exposed to the light. This principle forms the foundation of photoelectron spectroscopy.

The emitted electron, called a photoelectron, is often treated as a simple particle. However, it is actually a quantum object that must be described using the principles of quantum mechanics. At such a small scale, electrons don’t behave like everyday objects they exhibit both particle and wave-like properties, requiring special quantum rules to fully describe their behavior.

Reconstructing the Quantum State of Electrons

“By measuring the quantum state of the photoelectron, our technique can precisely address the question of ‘how quantum is the electron’. It is the same idea used in CT scans used in medicine to image the brain: we reconstruct a complex 3D object by taking several 2D pictures of that object from many different angles,” says David Busto, associate senior lecturer in atomic physics and one of the authors of the study now published in Nature Photonics.

This is done by producing the photoelectron quantum state, which is the equivalent of the 3D object to be measured, by ionizing atoms with ultrashort, high-energy light pulses, and then using a pair of laser pulses with different colors to take the 2D pictures and reconstructing the quantum state slice by slice.

“The technique allows us to measure for the first time the quantum state of electrons emitted from helium and argon atoms, demonstrating that the photoelectron quantum state depends on the type of material from which it is emitted,” says David Busto.

Why Are These Findings So Exciting?

“The photoelectric effect was explained over a century ago by Einstein, laying the foundations for the development of quantum mechanics. This same phenomenon was then exploited by Kai Siegbahn to study how electrons are arranged inside atoms, molecules and solids.”

Paradoxically, this technique relies solely on measuring the classical properties of the photoelectron, such as its speed. Now, more than 40 years after Kai Siegbahn was awarded the Nobel Prize for photoelectron spectroscopy in 1981, there is finally a method that allows full characterization of the quantum properties of the emitted photoelectrons, expanding the potential of photoelectron spectroscopy. In particular, the new measurement technique provides access to quantum information that would otherwise not be available.

How These Results Can Be Applied

“We applied our technique to simple atoms, helium, and argon, which are relatively well known. In the future, it could be used to study molecular gases, liquids, and solids, where the quantum properties of the photoelectrons can provide a lot of information about how the ionized target reacts after the sudden loss of an electron. Understanding this process at the fundamental level could have a long-term impact on various fields of research. Examples include atmospheric photochemistry or in the study of light-harvesting systems, which are systems that collect and utilize light energy, such as solar cells or photosynthesis in plants.”

Another interesting aspect of this work is that it bridges two different areas of science: attosecond science and spectroscopy (the kind of research that Nobel Prize laureate Anne L’Huillier is conducting) on the one hand, and quantum information and quantum technology on the other hand.

The Bigger Picture: How This Study Impacts the Public

“This work is connected to the ongoing second quantum revolution, which aims to manipulate individual quantum objects (in this case photoelectrons) to harness the full potential of their quantum properties for various applications. Our quantum state tomography technique will not lead to the construction of new quantum computers, but by providing access to knowledge about the quantum state of the photoelectrons, it will allow physicists to fully exploit their quantum properties for future applications.”

Pushing the Boundaries of Material Analysis

“By measuring the speed and emission direction of the photoelectron, we can learn a lot about the structure of the material. This is essential, for example, to study the properties of new materials. Our technique allows us to go beyond previous methods by measuring the complete quantum state of the photoelectron. This means that we can gather more information about the target than what is possible with traditional photoelectron spectroscopy. It is hoped that our technique can help unravel the processes that occur in the material after the electron has been ejected.”

Unexpected Discoveries Along the Way

“The most surprising aspect is that our technique worked so well! Physicists had already tried to measure the quantum state of photoelectrons using a different method, and those experiments showed that it is very difficult. Everything has to be very stable over a long period of time, but we finally managed to achieve these very stable conditions.”

Key Quantum Concepts at Play

At the microscopic scale, electrons, atoms and molecules are described quantum mechanically, while on a macroscopic scale, the objects we experience in everyday life follow the laws of classical physics. Atoms and other microsystems do not behave like everyday objects. With a deliberate exaggeration, it could be said that they do not exist in the usual sense with a well-defined point and with well-defined speed. The only thing that is known is the output of the laboratories’ instruments. Since all macroscopic objects are made up of atoms and molecules that obey the laws of quantum mechanics, we might ask why we do not see quantum effects at the macroscopic scale.

In short, the reason is that when we put many quantum objects close to each other, they start to affect each other in an uncontrolled way, effectively canceling out their individual quantum properties. This process is referred to as decoherence and is one of the key challenges that must be overcome to develop quantum technologies, such as quantum computers.

The electrons emitted during the photoelectric effect contain a lot of information about the irradiated material. By measuring the quantum state of the photoelectron, our technique can precisely address the question of “how quantum is the electron.” In the future, we hope that our technique will allow us to follow how the quantum properties of electrons evolve over time from quantum to classical.

Website: International Conference on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

Monday, February 17, 2025

Record-breaking, ultra-high energy "ghost particle" found underwater

Scientists recently shared news of a particle event that has sparked excitement in the physics community. One of the most energetic neutrinos ever recorded was observed in the Mediterranean Sea by the ARCA detector of the KM3NeT project. The astounding neutrino, named KM3-230213A, has caught global attention. Researchers estimate its energy at about 220 million billion.

“KM3NeT has begun to probe a range of energy and sensitivity where detected neutrinos may originate from extreme astrophysical phenomena,“ said Paschal Coyle, a researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). “This first ever detection of a neutrino of hundreds of PeV opens a new chapter in neutrino astronomy and a new observational window on the Universe.”

Mysterious elementary particles

Neutrinos travel across the universe, slipping through stars and planets without much disturbance. For decades, scientists have aimed to spot ultra-high-energy neutrinos to shed light on cosmic accelerators. The KM3NeT Collaboration unites more than 360 experts from 68 institutions in 21 countries.

“Neutrinos are one of the most mysterious of elementary particles. They have no electric charge, almost no mass and interact only weakly with matter. They are special cosmic messengers,” said Rosa Coniglione, a researcher at the INFN National Institute for Nuclear Physics.

How deep-sea sensors detect neutrinos

KM3NeT is a sprawling setup resting on the seabed, composed of two detectors called ARCA and ORCA. ARCA is located about 50 miles from Portopalo di Capo Passero, Sicily, at a depth of 11,319 feet. ORCA is positioned near Toulon, France, at a depth of 8,038 feet.

Each site serves a distinct goal, with ARCA tuned for high-energy neutrinos and ORCA for lower-energy neutrinos. The detectors depend on photomultipliers nestled within glass spheres. When a cosmic neutrino collides with water molecules, faint bluish light appears. The sensors collect that light, letting researchers map the neutrino’s journey.

Remarkable single muon

ARCA picked up a single muon, which signaled a neutrino interaction close by. Its path across the detector left a trail that triggered a large number of active sensors. This confirmed the neutrino was cosmic in origin rather than coming from local backgrounds.

“To determine the direction and energy of this neutrino required a precise calibration of the telescope and sophisticated track reconstruction algorithms,” said Aart Heijboer, KM3NeT Physics and Software Manager.

Origins of high-energy neutrinos

Scientists suggest that such high-energy neutrinos could come from cataclysmic sources like supernova remnants or supermassive black holes.

Interactions between cosmic rays and other matter or photons can also create these neutrinos. Some of the most energetic cosmic rays in the universe may bump into the cosmic microwave background, producing what researchers call “cosmogenic” neutrinos.

Studying these events may unmask fresh secrets of the universe, offering a direct clue about the places and processes that fling particles to unimaginable energies. As these neutrinos fly mostly unimpeded from their source, they can deliver information that light or charged particles cannot.

Advancing neutrino astronomy

The ARCA site will eventually include 230 detection units, while the ORCA site will have 115. Each unit features 18 high-tech optical modules, and altogether, KM3NeT will span over a cubic kilometer of water. Miles Lindsey Clark is the KM3NeT Technical Project Manager and research engineer at the CNRS – Astroparticle and Cosmology laboratory in France.

“The scale of KM3NeT, eventually encompassing a volume of about one cubic kilometer with a total of about 200,000 photomultipliers, along with its extreme location in the abyss of the Mediterranean Sea, demonstrates the extraordinary efforts required to advance neutrino astronomy and particle physics,” said Clark.

Capturing a rare event

Though the installation is incomplete, ARCA was able to catch one of the rarest events in nature. With advanced calibration and data analysis, teams extracted the trajectory and energy details of this neutrino. Since it most likely entered the water with more than 220 PeV of energy, that single neutrino opens the door to more surprises as KM3NeT continues to grow. Such an event supports the existence of even higher-energy cosmic neutrinos. Different from lower-energy detections, these ultra-high-energy signals hint that distinct astrophysical engines could drive them.

Future research directions

Teams worldwide aim to see if this was a “cosmogenic” neutrino or if it sprang from an active celestial powerhouse. Eventually, a bigger fleet of detection units will allow more frequent captures of such signals, improving the odds of pinpointing their origin and clarifying the forces that shape our universe.

“We stand at a frontier where new data will sharpen our understanding of the cosmos,” said a KM3NeT representative. Each new detection offers a chance to spot patterns and compare them with signals from gamma-ray telescopes and other observatories.

Website: International Conference on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

Saturday, February 15, 2025

New Strategy in the Hunt for Quantum Gravity

Predictions of theories that combine quantum mechanics with gravity could be observed using highly sensitive photon detection in a tabletop experiment.

Quantum-gravity theories attempt to unite gravity and quantum mechanics. A proposed tabletop experiment called Gravity from the Quantum Entanglement of Space Time (GQuEST) would search for a predicted effect of such theories using a new type of interferometer one that counts photons rather than measuring interference patterns. The GQuEST team has now calculated the sensitivity of their design and shown that it can recover the predicted signal 100 times faster than traditional interferometer setups.

Quantizing gravity implies that spacetime is not continuous it becomes “pixelated” when you look at scales as small as 10−35 m, far too small to be probed in any experiment. However, certain quantum-gravity models predict that spacetime can fluctuate a kind of spontaneous stretching and squeezing in the spacetime fabric that might produce observable effects. “You couldn't detect a single pixel, but you could detect the coherent fluctuations of many pixels,” says Caltech theorist Kathryn Zurek. She has formulated a “pixellon” model, which predicts that collective fluctuations inside an interferometer can cause a detectable frequency change, or modulation, in the interferometer’s output light.

This prediction is what Zurek and her colleagues plan to test using GQuEST, a preliminary version of which is currently being built at Caltech. The basic layout of the experiment is that of a classic Michelson interferometer, in which light is split into two paths and then recombined to produce an interference pattern. Experiments such as LIGO monitor such patterns, looking for variations caused by gravitational waves. However, this measurement strategy is not practical for detecting pixellon-induced modulations, says Lee McCuller of Caltech, the GQuEST team leader. “In LIGO, the power is constantly fluctuating up and down due to the shot noise, so it’s very difficult to resolve a little bit of extra fluctuations, as expected from the pixellon model,” he says.

To search for a quantum-gravity signal, McCuller and his colleagues are developing a photon-counting interferometer. The idea is to measure the output of the interferometer at a “sideband” frequency—one offset from the 200-THz laser frequency by 17 MHz. Sideband frequencies are familiar from AM radio signals, as they correspond to modulations in the carrier wave amplitude. Interferometers respond similarly to noise and other environmental effects, but the amount of sideband light generated is typically negligible at an offset as large as 17 MHz. However, a laser photon could have its frequency changed significantly by an interaction with a pixellon fluctuation. “Rather than getting zero light leaking out, you get a little bit,” McCuller says.

The team chose this particular sideband frequency to align with an expected peak in the pixellon fluctuations, explains Caltech’s Sander Vermeulen. To be sure that any detected light is from pixellon effects, the researchers will use optical cavities to filter out all nearby frequencies. If successful, the amount of light leakage should be extremely small the team estimates about one modulated photon every 12 minutes, or a rate of 10−3 Hz. To detect such a weak signal, the researchers will install a superconducting-nanowire sensor, which can detect single photons with a very small dark-count (false-signal) rate.

There are other effects that might cause photons to leak out of the system, such as thermal noise in the mirrors. The researchers have computed the expected level of noise for their experimental design. They found that their photon-counting interferometer design can detect whether a signal is present 100 times faster than a traditional interferometer setup that detects shifts in the interference signal.

The researchers are currently building a 1-m-scale demonstration experiment. If it goes well, they plan to construct the full-scale experiment, which would be 7 m on a side. They also project building two interferometers next to each other, which could provide a further check against background noise.

“The conversion from an interferometric readout to a single-photon detector is really an ingenious idea,” says Stefan Ballmer, a gravitational-wave specialist from Syracuse University, New York. He says the design avoids some quantum uncertainty limits that affect traditional measurement approaches, but the GQuEST researchers will face challenges in filtering their output sufficiently.

The GQuEST strategy “will result in significant improvements in sensitivity to small signals,” says quantum-metrology expert Aaron Chou from the University of Chicago. The photon-counting method benefits from the improved dark-count rates of 10−5 Hz in the best superconducting-nanowire detectors. “This low measurement noise allows the experimenters to focus on reducing other sources of noise in their apparatus,” Chou says. Both he and Ballmer imagine this photon-counting design being applied to the search for other signals, such as gravitational waves from the early Universe.

Website: International Conference on High Energy Physics and Computational Science.

Friday, February 14, 2025

Scientists discover ‘ghost particle’ with highest energy yet in Mediterranean Sea

Scientists have discovered the most powerful ghost particle, 30 times more energetic than any detected on Earth, using a neutrino detector in Mediterranean sea.

The KM3NeT Digital Optical Module (DOM) attached to Vertical Electro-Optical Cable (VEOC), which supplies power and enables data transmission via fiber connection, part of research to detect neutrinos, is seen during a recovery operation in the Mediterranean Sea in this undated handout image released on February 12, 2025.(REUTERS)

In a remarkable discovery, one which takes humanity closer to understanding neutrinos, scientists have discovered the most powerful ghost particle yet on Wednesday through a neutrino detector, which is still under construction at the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea.

The newly detected particle is said to be thirty times more active and energetic than any such particle detected on Earth yet, the Associated Press reported.

While the scientists anticipate that the particle came from outside the Milky Way galaxy, its exact source still remains to be detected, the report added.

The discovery was made using Cubic Kilometre Neutrino Telescope, also called KM3NeT, comprising two large neutrino detectors, Reuters reported.

Physicist Paschal Coyle of France’s Marseille Particle Physics Centre (CPPM) said in the research published in Nature journal that "it's in a completely unexplored region of energy," while another scientist, Aart Heijboer of Netherlands’ Nikhef National Institute for Subatomic Physics called the energy of this neutrino “exceptional."

The discovery points to many possibilities, including the presence of more such powerful ghost particles on Earth.

“It's a sign that we're on the right track, and it's also a hint that maybe there might be a surprise,” said Syracuse University’s physicist Denver Whittington, who was not involved with the new research, said the AP report.

What are ghost particles

Neutrinos are emitted through stars and are known as ‘ghost particles’ because of their negligible mass and ability to go undetected. According to an AFP report, they are the second most abundant particle in the universe. They also don’t carry any electric charge and can pass through in huge quantities, sometimes even trillions, through our body.

Italian researcher Rosa Coniglione said in a statement that neutrinos serve as "special cosmic messengers" when they arrive at Earth. They offer a glimpse into the far reaches of the universe, she added.