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Here is your customized Phys.org Newsletter for week 32:
The Sun's magnetic field is about to flip
(Phys.org) �Something big is about to happen on the sun. According to measurements from NASA-supported observatories, the sun's vast magnetic field is about to flip.
Following Higgs discovery, physicists offer vision to unravel mysteries of universe
After nine days of intensive discussions, nearly 700 particle physicists from about 100 universities and laboratories concluded nine months of work with a unified framework for unmasking the hidden secrets of matter, energy, space and time during the next two decades.
Physicists propose Higgs boson 'portal' as the source of this elusive entity
One of the biggest mysteries in contemporary particle physics and cosmology is why dark energy, which is observed to dominate energy density of the universe, has a remarkably small (but not zero) value. This value is so small, it is perhaps 120 orders of magnitude less than would be expected based on fundamental physics.
An infallible quantum measurement
Entanglement is a key resource for upcoming quantum computers and simulators. Now, physicists in Innsbruck and Geneva realized a new, reliable method to verify entanglement in the laboratory using a minimal number of assumptions about the system and measuring devices. Hence, this method witnesses the presence of useful entanglement.
New evidence that cosmic impact caused Younger Dryas extinctions
(Phys.org) �A period of rapid, intense cooling, known as the Younger Dryas, took place about 13,000 years ago. Scientists think this sudden change in climate caused the extinction of many large mammals, such as the mammoth, and was the reason for the disappearance of North America's Clovis people. According to one hypothesis, a cosmic impact caused the climate to cool. Using data from the Greenland ice core, Michail Petaev and his colleagues at Harvard University have found what appears to be evidence of this impact. Their research appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Explosion illuminates invisible galaxy in the dark ages
(Phys.org) �More than 12 billion years ago a star exploded, ripping itself apart and blasting its remains outward in twin jets at nearly the speed of light. At its death it glowed so brightly that it outshone its entire galaxy by a million times. This brilliant flash traveled across space for 12.7 billion years to a planet that hadn't even existed at the time of the explosion - our Earth. By analyzing this light, astronomers learned about a galaxy that was otherwise too small, faint and far away for even the Hubble Space Telescope to see.
Researchers speed up transistors by embedding tunneling field-effect transistor
(Phys.org) �Researchers at Fudan University in China have discovered a way to speed up traditional computer transistors by embedding tunneling field-effect transistors (TFETs) in them. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes how embedding TFETs in such transistors allows for them to be run with less power, which in turn causes them to run faster.
University of California adopts open-access policy for research papers
The University of California (UC)�the biggest public research university in the world, has decided to adopt a university wide open-access policy for research papers produced by its faculty. The move marks a major victory for open-access proponents and a blow to professional journals who publish research papers behind a pay wall.
Ice ages only thanks to feedback
Ice ages and warm periods have alternated fairly regularly in the Earth's history: the Earth's climate cools roughly every 100,000 years, with vast areas of North America, Europe and Asia being buried under thick ice sheets. Eventually, the pendulum swings back: it gets warmer and the ice masses melt. While geologists and climate physicists found solid evidence of this 100,000-year cycle in glacial moraines, marine sediments and arctic ice, until now they were unable to find a plausible explanation for it.
Physicists freeze motion of light for a minute
Physicists in Darmstadt have been able to stop something that has the greatest possible speed and that never really stops. We're talking about light. Already a decade ago, physicists stopped it very for a short moment. In previous years, this extended towards stop times of a few seconds for simple light pulses in extremely cold gases and special crystals. But now the researchers at Darmstadt extended the possible duration and applications for freezing the motion of light considerably. The physicists, headed by Thomas Halfmann at the Institute of Applied Physics of the Technische Universit�t Darmstadt, stopped light for about one minute. They were also able to save images that were transferred by the light pulse into the crystal for a minute � a million times longer than previously possible.
First hundred thousand years of our universe: Researchers find tantalizing new hints of clues
Mystery fans know that the best way to solve a mystery is to revisit the scene where it began and look for clues. To understand the mysteries of our universe, scientists are trying to go back as far they can to the Big Bang. A new analysis of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation data by researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has taken the furthest look back through time yet � 100 years to 300,000 years after the Big Bang - and provided tantalizing new hints of clues as to what might have happened.
If we landed on Europa, what would we want to know?
(Phys.org) �Most of what scientists know of Jupiter's moon Europa they have gleaned from a dozen or so close flybys from NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft in 1979 and NASA's Galileo spacecraft in the mid-to-late 1990s. Even in these fleeting, paparazzi-like encounters, scientists have seen a fractured, ice-covered world with tantalizing signs of a liquid water ocean under its surface. Such an environment could potentially be a hospitable home for microbial life. But what if we got to land on Europa's surface and conduct something along the lines of a more in-depth interview? What would scientists ask? A new study in the journal Astrobiology authored by a NASA-appointed science definition team lays out their consensus on the most important questions to address.
Researcher uses DNA to demonstrate just how closely everyone on Earth is related to everyone else
New research by Peter Ralph of USC Dornsife has confirmed that everyone on Earth is related to everyone else on the planet. So the Trojan Family is not just a metaphor. Turns out, we're also linked by genetics more closely than previously thought.
Carbon emissions to impact climate beyond the day after tomorrow
Future warming from fossil fuel burning could be more intense and longer-lasting than previously thought. This prediction emerges from a new study by Richard Zeebe at the University of Hawai'i who includes insights from episodes of climate change in the geologic past to inform projections of man-made future climate change. The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Battery design gets boost from aligned carbon nanotubes
Researchers at North Carolina State University have created a new flexible nano-scaffold for rechargeable lithium ion batteries that could help make cell phone and electric car batteries last longer.
Five times less platinum: Fuel cells could become economically more attractive thanks to novel aerogel catalyst
Fuel cells that convert hydrogen into power and only produce pure water as a by-product have the potential to lead individual mobility into an environmentally friendly future. The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) has been researching and developing such low-temperature polymer electrolyte fuel cells for more than 10 years and initial field tests have already demonstrated the successful use of these fuel cells in cars and buses. However, further research is still required to improve the durability and economic viability of the technology. An international team of researchers involving the PSI has now manufactured and characterised a novel nanomaterial that could vastly increase the efficiency and shelf-life of these fuel cells � as well as reduce material costs.
New and remarkable details of the Sun now available from Big Bear Observatory
Researchers at NJIT's Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in Big Bear, CA have obtained new and remarkably detailed photos of the Sun with the New Solar Telescope (NST). The photographs reveal never-before-seen details of solar magnetism revealed in photospheric and chromospheric features.
Researchers remove oil from water using copper cones inspired by cactus spines (w/ Video)
(Phys.org) �A team of researchers working at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, has developed a new way to remove oil from water�using a design inspired by nature. In their paper published in the journal Nature Communications, the team describes how an array of their cones could be used to help clean up oil spills.
New insights into the one-in-a-million lightning called 'ball lightning'
One of the rare scientific reports on the rarest form of lightning�ball lightning�describes better ways of producing this mysterious phenomenon under the modern laboratory conditions needed to explain it. The new study on a phenomenon that puzzled and perplexed the likes of Aristotle 2,300 years ago and Nikola Tesla a century ago appears in ACS' The Journal of Physical Chemistry A.
Squeezed light produced using silicon micromechanical system
One of the many counterintuitive and bizarre insights of quantum mechanics is that even in a vacuum�what many of us think of as an empty void�all is not completely still. Low levels of noise, known as quantum fluctuations, are always present. Always, that is, unless you can pull off a quantum trick. And that's just what a team led by researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has done. The group has engineered a miniature silicon system that produces a type of light that is quieter at certain frequencies�meaning it has fewer quantum fluctuations�than what is usually present in a vacuum.
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