news 2015

Geneva, 03 June, 2015. Birmingham physicists eagerly await results as CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) starts to deliver physics data today for the first time in 27 months. After an almost two year shutdown and several months re-commissioning, the LHC is now providing collisions to all its experiments at the unprecedented energy of 13 TeV, almost double the collision energy of its first run.

A new protocol for estimating unknown optical processes, called unitary operations, with precision enhanced by the unique properties of quantum mechanics has been demonstrated by scientists and engineers from the University of Bristol, UK, and the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore. The work, published in the June issue of Optica, could lead to both dramatically better sensors for medical research and new approaches to benchmark the performance of ultra-powerful quantum computers.

A team of engineers have created tiny acoustic vortices and used them to grip and spin microscopic particles suspended in water. The research by academics from the University of Bristol's Department of Mechanical Engineering and Northwestern Polytechnical University in China, is published in Physical Review Letters .

Astronomers have discovered a disc of planetary debris surrounding a young sun-like star that shares remarkable similarities with the Kuiper Belt that lies beyond Neptune, and may aid in understanding how our solar system developed.

Antineutrinos have been observed changing their identities in the same way as their normal neutrino counterparts by the T2K experiment. The latest results from the T2K experiment in Japan were announced this week by a team of researchers including physicists from Imperial College London. Differences between the identity-shifting behaviour of neutrinos and antineutrinos could explain why the universe is made up of normal matter, and was not obliterated by antimatter shortly after the Big Bang.

Reactions caused by light, such as photosynthesis, can now be captured in greater detail thanks to a technique developed by Imperial researchers. Using extremely short-lived pulses of light allows researchers to capture the quickest movements of electrons and understand precisely what happens during a reaction between light and molecules.

Scientists at The University of Manchester have made an important discovery about how certain cells stick to each other to form tissue. The team from the Faculty of Life Sciences studied how cells in the skin and heart are bound together through structures called desmosomes. They wanted to understand how these junctions between the cells in the tissue are so strong.

A Cardiff University scientist will star on one of Canada's top science TV shows to explain what happens when inflight aircraft are struck by lightning. Dr Daniel Mitchard, a senior researcher at the Morgan-Botti Lightning Laboratory, met with Jennifer Gardy, one of the hosts of the long-running CBC science show 'The Nature of Things' during two days of filming.

Quantity of water on Earth not unique Water likely reached Earth via comets and asteroids crashing into Earth's surface Evidence found in the atmosphere of white dwarf star Asteroid found to contain 30-35% Earth's water content Research led by the University of Warwick and published by Royal Astronomical Society Water delivery via asteroids or comets is likely taking place in many other planetary systems, just as it happened on Earth, new research strongly suggests.

Materials called perovskites could revolutionise the solar and electronics industries as they could potentially convert sunlight into electricity more efficiently and less expensively than today's silicon-based semiconductors. A new study published in Science by researchers from the University of Washington and Oxford University suggests that perovskite materials, generally believed to be uniform in composition, actually contain flaws that can be engineered to improve solar devices even further.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. You can change your cookie settings at any time. Otherwise, we'll assume you're OK to continue. First potential signs of "interacting” dark matter suggest it is not completely dark after all Astronomers believe they might have observed the first potential signs of dark matter interacting with a force other than gravity.

A breakthrough in understanding the way in which crystals develop will have a major impact for the pharmaceutical, chemical and food industries. Lancaster University chemists in collaboration with international colleagues have uncovered a 'Crystal Nuclei Breeding Factory' which, they say, will lead to a more effective and efficient development of quality chemical products.

Scientists have announced that comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is non-magnetised in the first set of results from the Philae lander. The Philae lander, carrying an array of scientific instruments, detached from the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft in November 2014. It landed on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko after a descent of several hours to start analysing the comet's surface and atmosphere.

New understanding of the nature of electromagnetism could lead to antennas small enough to fit on computer chips - the 'last frontier' of semiconductor design - and could help identify the points where theories of classical electromagnetism and quantum mechanics overlap. This is the missing piece of the puzzle of electromagnetic theory Gehan Amaratunga A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge have unravelled one of the mysteries of electromagnetism, which could enable the design of antennas small enough to be integrated into an electronic chip.

After two years of intense maintenance and consolidation, and several months of preparation for restart, the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator in the world, is back in operation after a major upgrade. The upgrade of the LHC will allow scientists to search for new discoveries which have so far been out of reach Andy Parker Early on Easter Sunday, the Large Hadron Collider's second run got underway, when proton beams began rotating in the 27-kilometre ring for the first time in two years.

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. You can change your cookie settings at any time. Otherwise, we'll assume you're OK to continue. Restart of the Large Hadron Collider could lead to "new discoveries” The restart of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could lead to "fundamental breakthroughs" in our understanding of the Universe, according to a Durham University expert.

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) set to be switched back on and will run at twice its previous energy Improvements mean one day's worth of data in 2015 could be equivalent to all the data taken previously by the LHC since 2010 Extra energy will increase the ability of LHC experiments to discover new particles Scientists at the University of Sheffield are hoping their work will help to make a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the fundamental laws that govern the universe as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is set to be switched back on over Easter.

New research provides revelations about the most energetic event in the universe - the merging of two spinning, orbiting black holes into a much larger black hole. The behaviour of a these black hole spins is a key part of understanding their evolution Ulrich Sperhake An international team of astronomers, including from the University of Cambridge, have found solutions to decades-old equations describing what happens as two spinning black holes in a binary system orbit each other and spiral in toward a collision.

An atomically thin layer of water freezes at room temperature to form square ice with symmetry completely alien to water molecules, University of Manchester researchers have found. The breakthrough findings allow better understanding of the counterintuitive behaviour of water at the molecular scale and are important for development of more efficient technologies including filtration, desalination and distillation.

In an article which originally appeared on The Conversation, Dr Tom Whyntie explains how the world's largest distributed computer grid helped find the Higgs boson and what it'll be doing as the Large Hadron Collider is started up again. The world's largest science experiment, the Large Hadron Collider, has potentially delivered one of physics' "Holy Grails" in the form of the Higgs boson.