Category: Physics
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Negative mass. Impossibilities. Dasein.
Matter with negative mass, a seeming impossibility, could actually have existed in the early universe, a new study shows. A novel solution to Einstein’s equations for gravity permits the existence of negative mass in a rapidly expanding universe like our own, physicists Manu Paranjape and Saoussen Mbarek of the University of Montreal report November 14…
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Imaginary particles. Explaining tangible things…
Tangible products—like a solar-powered hearing aid—may come from not-so-real particles. More particular, scientists analyze the behaviour of modern materials with the help of imaginary structures called quasiparticles. (1) In physics, quasiparticles and collective excitations (which are closely related) are emergent phenomena that occur when a microscopically complicated system such as a solid behaves as if…
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Higgs boson, lack of imagination, modern science.
The Higgs boson — a particle thought to explain how other particles get their mass — is tiny, but it may not be the tiniest particle yet. Theories have long predicted the existence of even smaller particles that might make up the Higgs, and recent research suggests these pip-squeaks, dubbed techni-quarks, are likely lurking in…
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Physics constants not so constant. Unless you assume so…
Australian astronomers have combined all observations of supernovae ever made to determine that the strength of gravity has remained unchanged over the last nine billion years. (1) But is this really the case? How solid is such a conclusion? Digging a little deeper makes things more clear… The original paper can be found here. The…
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Old theories. New theories. All the same… (?!)
When physicists translated a 13th-century Latin text into modern equations, they discovered that the English theologian who wrote it had unwittingly predicted the idea of the multiverse in 1225. While the work probably won’t advance current models, it does show that some of the philosophical conundrums posed by cosmology are surprisingly pervasive. In particular, Tom…
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