Category Physics

Andreas Malikopoulos tests technologies for connected and automated vehicles on a smaller scale at the University of Delaware’s Scaled Smart City (UDSSC) testbed.
Credit: University of Delaware/ Owen Fitter

Pair of studies outline innovations that will improve coordination of traffic patterns and save fuel. New driverless car technologies could lead to a world without traffic lights and speeding tickets. Researchers also hope the innovations will bring about the development of driverless cars that use 19 to 22% less fuel.

Imagine a daily commute that’s orderly instead of chaotic. Connected and automated vehicles could provide that relief by adjusting to driving conditions with little to no input from drivers...

Physicists Jackson Matteucci and Will Fox with poster displaying their research.

Feature describes unexpected discovery of a role the process that seeds magnetic fields plays in mediating a phenomenon that occurs throughout the universe and can disrupt cell phone service and knock out power grids on Earth. Magnetic forces ripple throughout the universe, from the fields surrounding planets to the gasses filling galaxies, and can be launched by a phenomenon called the Biermann battery effect. Now scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have found that this phenomenon may not only generate magnetic fields, but can sever them to trigger magnetic reconnection – a remarkable and surprising discovery.

The Biermann battery effect, a possible s...

The new optical gyroscope — shown here with grains of rice — is 500 times smaller than the current state-of-the-art device.
Credit: Ali Hajimiri/Caltech

Engineers create an optical gyroscope smaller than a grain of rice. A new tiny optical gyroscope fits on the tip of your finger and could find its way into drones and spacecraft in the future. Gyroscopes are devices that help vehicles, drones, and wearable and handheld electronic devices know their orientation in three-dimensional space. They are commonplace in just about every bit of technology we rely on every day. Originally, gyroscopes were sets of nested wheels, each spinning on a different axis...

A mile-long sediment core drilled by the International Ocean Discovery Program helped researchers uncover how the Chicxulub crater formed.
Credit: International Ocean Discovery Program

Extremely strong vibration during large impacts, landslides and earthquakes allow rock to flow. About 99% of the Sun’s energy emitted as neutrinos is produced through nuclear reaction sequences initiated by proton-proton (pp) fusion in which hydrogen is converted into helium, say scientists including physicist Andrea Pocar at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Today they report new results from Borexino, one of the most sensitive neutrino detectors on the planet, located deep beneath Italy’s Apennine Mountains.

“Neutrinos emitted by this chain represent a unique tool for solar and neutrino physics,” the...