Category Physics

The researchers have discovered 2 craters in Jämtland. One is enormous, while the other is a tenth of the size of the first. “The 2 meteorite impacts occurred at the same time, 458 million years ago, and formed these two craters,” says Prof Erik Sturkell. They found one of the craters 20 kilometres south of Östersund in Brunsflo. This is an enormous crater, with a diameter of 7.5 kilometres. The smaller crater is located 16 kilometres from there, and has a diameter of 700 metres.

“Around 470 million years ago, 2 large asteroids collided in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, and many fragments were thrown off in new orbits. Many of these crashed on Earth, such as these two in Jämtland,” says Erik Sturkell.

Jämtland was under the sea at the time, with a water depth of 500m at th...

The polarity of the star’s surface magnetic field, north or south, is indicated by red and blue respectively. Yellow lines indicate the magnetic field lines running from the stellar surfaces. Credit: Visualisation courtesy of Volkmar Holzwarth, KIS, Freiburg

The 1st massive binary star, epsilon Lupi, in which both stars have magnetic fields has been discovered by a PhD candidate. A binary star is a star system consisting of 2 or more stars, orbiting around their common center of mass.For the past few years, BinaMIcS (Binarity and Magnetic Interactions in various classes of Stars) collaboration, formed to study the magnetic properties of close binaries, has been trying to find such an object. They have now discovered one using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope.

“The origin of magnetism amo...

Understanding motions of thin layers may help design solar cells, flexible electronics and catalysts of the future. New research shows how individual atoms move in trillionths of a second to form wrinkles on a 3-atom-thick material. It was made possible with SLAC’s instrument for ultrafast electron diffraction (UED), which uses energetic electrons to take snapshots of atoms and molecules on timescales as fast as 100 quadrillionths of a second.

Monolayers, or 2D materials, contain just a single layer of molecules. In this form they can take on new and exciting properties such as superior mechanical strength and an extraordinary ability to conduct electricity and heat...

Researchers show that two photons, depicted in this artist’s conception as waves (left and right), can be locked together at a short distance. Under certain conditions, the photons can form a state resembling a two-atom molecule, represented as the blue dumbbell shape at center. Credit: E. Edwards/JQI

It’s not lightsaber time, not yet. But a theoretical physicist team has taken another step toward building objects out of photons, and the findings hint that weightless particles of light can be joined into a sort of ‘molecule’ with its own peculiar force. The findings build on previous research that several team members contributed to before joining NIST...