High Energy Physics and Computational Science

For the first time, researchers have seen how light behaves during a mysterious phenomenon called 'imaginary time '. When you shine light through almost any transparent material, the gridlock of electromagnetic fields that make up the atomic alleys and side streets will add a significant amount of time to each photon's commute. This delay can tell physicists a lot about how light scatters, revealing details about the matrix of material the photons must navigate. Yet until now, one trick up the theorist's sleeve for measuring light's journey invoking imaginary time has not been fully understood in practical terms. An experiment conducted by University of Maryland physicists Isabella Giovannelli and Steven Anlage has now revealed precisely what pulses of microwave radiation (a type of light that exists outside the visible spectrum) do while experiencing imaginary time inside a roundabout of cables. Their work also demonstrates how imaginary numbers can describe a ver...

Astronomers have uncovered a vast cloud of energetic particles a "mini halo" surrounding one of the most distant galaxy clusters ever observed, marking a major step forward in understanding the hidden forces that shape the cosmos. The mini-halo is at a distance so great that it takes light 10 billion years to reach Earth, making it the most distant ever found, doubling the previous distance known to science. The discovery demonstrates that entire galaxy clusters, among the largest structures in the universe, have been immersed in high-energy particles for most of their existence. Such a mini-halo consists of highly energetic, charged particles in the vacuum between galaxies in a cluster, which together emanate radio waves which can be detected from Earth. The researchers analyzed data from the Low Frequency Array (LOFAR) radio telescope, a vast network of over 100,000 small antennas spanning eight European countries. While studying a galaxy cluster named SpARCS1049, the res...

The first spectacular images from the Vera C Rubin Observatory have been released today showing millions of galaxies and Milky Way stars and thousands of asteroids in exquisite detail. Based in Cerro Pachón in the Andes, the Vera C Rubin Observatory contains the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) the largest camera ever built. Taking almost two decades to build, the 3200 megapixel instrument forms the heart of the observatory’s 8.4 m Simonyi Survey Telescope. The image above is of the Trifid and Lagoon nebulas. This picture combines 678 separate images taken by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in just over seven hours of observing time. It reveals otherwise faint or invisible details, such as the clouds of gas and dust that comprise the Trifid nebula (top right) and the Lagoon nebula, which are several thousand light-years away from Earth. The image below is of the Virgo cluster. It shows a small section of the Virgo cluster, featuring two spiral galaxies (lower right), three mer...

For over 100 years, two theories have shaped our understanding of the universe: quantum mechanics and Einstein’s general relativity. For over 100 years, two theories have shaped our understanding of the universe: quantum mechanics and Einstein’s general relativity . One explains the tiny world of particles; the other describes gravity and the fabric of space. But despite their individual success, bringing them together has remained one of science’s greatest unsolved problems. Now, a team of researchers at University College London has introduced a bold new idea. Rather than tweaking Einstein’s theory to fit into quantum rules, they suggest flipping the script. Their model, called a “ postquantum theory of classical gravity ,” aims to rethink the deep link between gravity and the quantum world. Quantum mechanics thrives on probabilities, uncertainty, and the strange behavior of subatomic particles. It’s helped explain the structure of atoms and power modern technology. Meanwhile, genera...

How light struggled to break free from the dense early universe, marking the beginning of the cosmos we know today. Did light shine in the universe’s earliest moments, or was it hidden from view? While this question may seem simple at first, a recent article by Live Science reveals that the reality is far more intricate. Photons, the particles that make up light, existed from the very beginning of the universe, immediately after the Big Bang. However, they were initially trapped in a dense and hot environment. It would take hundreds of thousands of years for these photons to break free from their cosmic confinement. The journey of light through the universe’s early stages is a compelling story of rapid expansion, cooling, and cosmic evolution, ultimately shaping the vast and structured universe we observe today. After the Big Bang, space itself expanded rapidly, carrying energy and matter across the cosmos. Andrew Layden, chair of physics and astronomy at Bowling Green State Universit...

"It would be amazing if a simple rotation of the universe was the origin of dark energy." The universe seems to be rotating, and if that is the case, then this could have major ramifications for some of the biggest questions in science, including those above. That's according to Polish theoretical physicist Nikodem Poplawski of the University of New Haven, who is well-known for his theory that black holes act as doorways to other universes. "Dark energy is one of the most intriguing mysteries of the universe. Many researchers have tried to explain it by modifying equations of general relativity or suggesting the existence of new fields that could accelerate the universe's expansion," Poplawski told Space.com. "It would be amazing if a simple rotation of the universe was the origin of dark energy, especially that it predicts its weakening." Evidence that the universe is rotating was recently delivered by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), whic...

Researchers at TU Wien and FU Berlin have, for the first time, measured what happens when quantum information is lost, shedding new light on the deep links between quantum physics, thermodynamics, and information theory. At first glance, heat and information seem like completely unrelated ideas. Heat and energy are cornerstones of thermodynamics, one of the most important areas in physics. Information theory, by contrast, is a mathematical field that explores how data is stored and communicated. But in the 1960s, physicist Rolf Landauer made a bold claim: deleting information always comes with a cost in energy. In fact, every time you erase data from a storage device, a small amount of heat is released into the environment. This idea, known as the Landauer Principle, revealed a deep connection between thermodynamics and information science. Now, scientists at TU Wien have taken this one step further. For the first time, they have measured this effect in complex quantum systems made up...

"We still don't have an explanation for what those anomalies are." A cosmic particle detector has spotted a burst of strange radio signals from the ice of Antarctica that currently defy explanation. The results could hint at the existence of new particles, or interactions between particles currently unknown to physics, scientists say. The mystery radio pulses were picked up about 25 miles (40 kilometers) above Earth by the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment. ANITA is a series of instruments that float over Antarctica, carried by balloons with the aim of detecting ultra-high-energy (UHE) cosmic neutrinos and other cosmic rays as they pelt Earth from space. ANITA usually picks up signals when they are reflected off the ice of Antarctica, but these pulses were different, coming from below the horizon at an orientation that currently can't be explained by particle physics. "It's an interesting problem, because we still don't actually ha...

Every action in physics is governed by some kind of push or pull. As far as we know, these all fall into one of just four categories; electromagnetism, gravity, and two kinds of nuclear force . Yet there could well be forces hidden deep within the tiny storms of particle dynamics that have been simply too subtle to easily detect. Physicists from Germany, Switzerland, and Australia have now placed new restrictions on where one example of a 'fifth' force may be hiding in the hearts of atoms, exchanging whispers between electrons and neutrons. As handy as our Standard Model of physics is at explaining cosmic and quantum phenomena, there are glaring gaps that leave physicists scratching their heads. Dark matter remains elusive, for example. Nobody knows why one kind of matter came to dominate after the Big Bang . And gravity is the most questionable member of the force family, lacking a quantum theory to explain its behavior. Introducing new fields and particles could go a long wa...

The unusual radio pulses were detected by the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, a range of instruments flown on balloons high above Antarctica that are designed to detect radio waves from cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere. Credit: Stephanie Wissel / Penn State A cosmic particle detector in Antarctica has emitted a series of bizarre signals that defy the current understanding of particle physics, according to an international research group that includes scientists from Penn State. The unusual radio pulses were detected by the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, a range of instruments flown on balloons high above Antarctica that are designed to detect radio waves from cosmic rays hitting the atmosphere. The goal of the experiment is to gain insight into distant cosmic events by analyzing signals that reach the Earth. Rather than reflecting off the ice, the signals a form of radio waves appeared to be coming from below the horizon, an orie...

The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is the faint afterglow of the Big Bang that still bathes the sky in microwave light. For decades, scientists have combed this signal for tiny twists called polarization that carry clues to the universe’s earliest chapters. Tobias Marriage of Johns Hopkins University and his team now report that the ground-based Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) in Chile has read those twists all the way back to the Cosmic Dawn  the era when the first stars switched on. Observing the Cosmic Dawn Newborn suns pumped high-energy radiation into surrounding gas and knocked electrons loose, a phase known as reionization. The efficiency of that scattering is described by an “optical depth” (τ). A bigger τ means more electrons and a longer or earlier reionization period, so nailing down its value helps pin the timeline of early star formation. Spacecraft such as the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) first measured τ at about 0.089, but later an...

New findings from the University of Bonn challenge the assumptions of the standard cosmological model. The faint “afterglow” that fills the universe has long been one of the most important clues supporting the Big Bang theory . Known as cosmic microwave background radiation, this ancient light not only serves as a snapshot of the early universe, but also helps scientists understand how the very first galaxies came to be. Now, a team of researchers from the Universities of Bonn, Prague, and Nanjing is challenging what we thought we knew. Their new calculations suggest that the strength of this background radiation may have been significantly overestimated. If their findings are confirmed, it could force scientists to rethink some of the most fundamental ideas in modern cosmology. According to the standard model of cosmology , the universe began 13.8 billion years ago with the Big Bang. In the moments that followed, space, time, and matter burst into existence and the universe expanded r...

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has captured a striking image of a distant quasar from the "cosmic noon," including a giant energy jet "being illuminated by the leftover glow from the Big Bang itself." Astronomers have captured a ghostly image of an ancient supermassive black hole shooting a giant energy jet into the early universe. The ethereal structure is only visible thanks to the "afterglow" of the Big Bang and a crucial NASA space telescope that could soon be prematurely switched off forever. The striking image shows the light of quasar J1610+1811, shining from around 11.6 billion light-years from Earth, during the " cosmic noon "  a period of the universe between 2 billion and 3 billion years after the Big Bang. Quasars are supermassive black holes that shoot out giant, lightsaber-like beams of energy perpendicular to their swirling accretion disks. However, until now, researchers have not had a proper look at J1610+1811's energy...