news 2011

Researchers from the University of Birmingham and Lancaster University, analysing data taken by the ATLAS experiment, have been at the centre of what is believed to be the first clear observation of a new particle at the Large Hadron Collider. The research is published today (22 December 11) on the online repository arXiv.

Scientists at University of Sheffield map out Britain's sun spots Britain is getting brighter according to solar experts at the University of Sheffield who have also revealed the coastal city of Portsmouth was the UK's sunniest place in 2011. At the other end of the sunshine scale, Loch Maree in North West Scotland was found to be the least sunny place in the UK last year.

Physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider have received an early Christmas present. Using apparatus partly designed in Bristol, the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) collaboration has presented the first tentative evidence of the Higgs boson. The discovery of this new particle has been described as the 'holy grail of particle physics' and would confirm our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature.

Avalanches created in controlled laboratory environments are helping us to understand the potentially lethal processes that these natural disasters unleash. In September 2002, one hundred million cubic metres of rock and ice separated from the northern slope of the Kazbek massif in North Ossetia, Russia.

Search for Higgs boson at an "exciting beginning”, Durham University expert says The search for the Higgs boson is at a "very exciting and positive beginning", according to a Durham University physics expert. Scientists working on two experiments - Atlas and CMS - at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), at CERN, in Geneva, today reported seeing hints of the Higgs boson at a similar mass, though they have not yet claimed a discovery.

Experiments at CERN point towards the discovery of the Higgs boson particle, scientists at the organisation have said. Researchers at the Large Hadron Collider, an underground facility near Geneva, have been searching for evidence of the theoretical particle first postulated by Peter Higgs. Scientists at have said that tantalising hints have been seen by experiments there, but these are not yet strong enough to claim a discovery.

Patients with life-threatening heart valve disease could be helped with alternative scanning techniques that provide greater insight into the condition. University researchers used an imaging technique that could help predict which patients will need open heart surgery to replace their heart valves.

A multi-purpose optical chip which generates, manipulates and measures entanglement and mixture - two quantum phenomena which are essential driving forces for tomorrow's quantum computers - has been developed by researchers from the University of Bristol's Centre for Quantum Photonics. This work represents an important step forward in the race to develop a quantum computer.

An international team of astronomers, including scientists from the University of Birmingham, has looked deep inside some old stars and discovered that their cores spin at least ten times as fast as their surfaces. The research, led by Leuven University in Belgium, is published today (7 December 2011) .

Scientists at The University of Nottingham have discovered a way to control how tiny flat molecules fit together in a seemingly random pattern. The researchers have been studying molecules which resemble tiny rhombus/diamond shaped tiles, with a side length of around 2 nanometres — 2 billionths of a metre.

The astrophysicist Stephen Hawking believes that if humanity is to survive we will have to up sticks and colonise space. But is the human body up to the challenge? Scientists at The University of Nottingham believe that Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans), a microscopic worm which is biologically very similar to the human being, could help us understand how humans might cope with long-duration space exploration.

A team of University researchers will get their hands on some of Europe's fastest supercomputers in a bid to crack Einstein's theory of relativity and help describe what happens when two black holes collide. Experts in gravitational waves from the School of Physics and Astronomy have secured almost 16.7 million hours worth of supercomputer time to simulate and map the most violent events in the universe since the big bang - namely, collisions of black holes.

The final throws of one of the largest and rarest stars in our galaxy have been discovered by astrophysicists using the European Southern Observatory (ESO). The discovery will enable research into the evolution of stars, and provide invaluable insight into their explosive deaths. The research was carried out by academics from ESO, the Universities of Leeds and Manchester in the UK, and other institutions in Europe.

Researchers have found a way to prevent HIV from damaging the immune system, in a new lab-based study published in the journal Blood . The research, led by scientists at Imperial College London and Johns Hopkins University, could have important implications for the development of HIV vaccines. HIV/AIDS is the third biggest cause of death in low income countries, killing around 1.8 million people a year worldwide.

Ultra high precision analyses of some of the oldest rock samples on Earth provides clear evidence that the planet's accessible reserves of precious metals are the result of a bombardment of meteorites more than 200 million years after the Earth was formed. During the formation of the Earth, molten iron sank to its centre to make the core.

Researchers have developed a form of crystal that can deliver highly accurate temperature readings, down to individual milli-kelvins, over a very broad range of temperatures: -120to +680 degrees centigrade. The researchers used a "birefringent" crystal which splits light passing through it into two separate rays.

UCL scientists are part of an international team which has developed a novel X-ray technique for imaging atomic displacements in materials with unprecedented accuracy. The team has applied the technique to determine how a recently discovered class of exotic materials - multiferroics - can be simultaneously both magnetically and electrically ordered.

Internet connection speeds could be tens of times faster than they currently are, thanks to research by University of Manchester scientists using wonder material graphene. A collaboration between the Universities of Manchester and Cambridge, which includes scientists Andre Geim and Kostya Novoselov, has discovered a crucial recipe for improving characteristics of graphene devices for use as photodetectors in future high-speed optical.

Research has resolved a 40 year old problem with observations of turbulence in the solar wind first made by the probe Mariner Five. The research resolves an issue with what is by far the largest and most interesting natural turbulence lab accessible to researchers today. Our current understanding tells us that turbulence in the solar wind should not be affected by the speed and direction of travel of that solar wind.

A once-massive star that's been transformed into a small planet made of diamond: that is what astronomers think they've found in the Milky Way. The researchers first detected an unusual star called a pulsar using the Parkes radio telescope of the Australian Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and followed up their discovery with the Lovell radio telescope, based at Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, and one of the Keck telescopes in Hawaii.