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It took a century, but the theory from Albert Einstein handwritten neatly on paper that is now yellowing has finally been vindicated. Israeli officials on Thursday offered a rare look at the documents where Einstein presented his ideas on gravitational waves, a display that coincided with the historic announcement that scientists had glimpsed the first direct evidence of his theory. [...] In a landmark discovery for physics and astronomy, international scientists announced in Washington on Thursday that they had glimpsed the first direct evidence of gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. Einstein's theory states that mass warps space and time,...

In a breakthrough in quantum physics, scientists were able to create the phenomenon of quantum entanglement macroscopically using large magnets at room temperature. ... scientists working at the University of Chicago and the Argonne National Laboratory revealed that they were able to create quantum entanglement at a macroscopic level at room temperature on a semiconductor chip, using atomic nuclei and the application of relatively small magnetic fields. Their breakthrough, which is published in Science Advances, is not only significant in what they accomplished but also how they accomplished it. In quantum physics, the creation of entanglement in particles larger and...

Bursts of gamma rays from the center of our galaxy are not likely to be signals of dark matter but rather other astrophysical phenomena such as fast-rotating stars called millisecond pulsars, according to two new studies, one from a team based at Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and another based in the Netherlands. Previous studies suggested that gamma rays coming from the dense region of space in the inner Milky Way galaxy could be caused when invisible dark matter particles collide. But using new statistical analysis methods, the two research teams independently found that the gamma ray...

Chemistry teachers recently had to update their classroom decor, with the announcement that scientists have confirmed the discovery of four new elements on the periodic table. The as-yet unnamed elements 113, 115, 117 and 118 filled in the remaining gaps at the bottom of the famous chart-a roadmap of matter's building blocks that has successfully guided chemists for nearly a century and a half. The official confirmation, granted by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), was years in the making, as these superheavy elements are highly unstable and tough to create. But scientists had strong reason to...

'The most widespread source of gravitation is the inertial mass, which produces permanent gravitational fields. 'At the opposite, electromagnetic fields could be used to generate artificial, or human-made, gravitational fields, that could be switched on or off at will, depending whether their electromagnetic progenitors are present or not.' The experiment would require major resources, but if successful, it would give humans the power to control the 'last of four fundamental forces,' not within our grips. Current research, the scientist argues, observes and aims to understand gravitational fields, but makes no attempts to change them. 'Somehow, studying gravity is a contemplative...

A long-standing discrepancy between predictions and observed results in test reactors has been called "the great unsolved problem" in understanding the turbulence that leads to a loss of heat in fusion reactors. ... [I]t turns out that interactions between turbulence at the tiniest scale, that of electrons, and turbulence at a scale 60 times larger, that of ions, can account for the mysterious mismatch between theory and experimental results. ... The expectation by physicists for more than a decade had been that turbulence associated with ions (atoms with an electric charge) was so much larger than turbulence caused by electrons...that...

Bizarre quantum bonds connect distinct moments in time, suggesting that quantum links - not space-time - constitute the fundamental structure of the universe. ... A field is a highly entangled system. Different parts of it are mutually correlated: A random fluctuation of the field in one place will be matched by a random fluctuation in another. ("Parts" here refers both to regions of space and to spans of time.) Even a perfect vacuum, which is defined as the absence of particles, will still have quantum fields. And these fields are always vibrating. Space looks empty because the vibrations cancel each...

In "Star Trek," a transporter can teleport a person from one location to a remote location without actually making the journey along the way. Such a transporter has fascinated many people. Quantum teleportation shares several features of the transporter and is one of the most important protocols in quantum information. In a recent study, Prof. Tongcang Li at Purdue University and Dr. Zhang-qi Yin at Tsinghua University proposed the first scheme to use electromechanical oscillators and superconducting circuits to teleport the internal quantum state (memory) and center-of-mass motion state of a microorganism. They also proposed a scheme to create a...

There has been no announcement, no peer review or publication of the findings - all typically important steps in the process of releasing reliable and verifiable scientific research. Instead, a message on Twitter from an Arizona State University cosmologist, Lawrence Krauss, has sparked a firestorm of speculation and excitement. Krauss does not work with the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, or LIGO, which is searching for ripples in the fabric of space and time. But he tweeted on Monday about the apparent shoring up of rumor he'd heard some months ago, that LIGO scientists were writing up a paper...

KISSIMMEE, FLORIDA--Most, if not all, galaxies have supermassive black holes at their centers surrounded by dense clouds of stars. Now, researchers have found one that seems to have lost almost its entire entourage. The team, which reported its find here today at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, says it doesn't know what stripped the stars away. But it has put forward a tantalizing possibility: The object could be an extremely rare medium-sized black hole, which theorists have predicted but observers have never seen. The unusual black hole sits about 1 billion light-years from Earth in SDSS J1126+2944,...

NASA/CXC/Univ of Texas/E Schlegel et al Image caption The two waves of hot, X-ray emitting gas were seen in this image from Chandra ================================================================================================================ Astronomers have spotted two huge waves of gas being "burped" by the black hole at the heart of a nearby galaxy. The swathes of hot gas, detected in X-ray images from Nasa's Chandra space telescope, appear to be sweeping cooler hydrogen gas ahead of them. This vast, rippling belch is taking place in NGC 5195 - a small, neglected sibling of the "Whirlpool Galaxy", 26 million light years away. That makes it one of the closest...

<p>It was the perfect holiday surprise. On Dec. 15 the latest results from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland were announced, after early rumors had physicists buzzing. A signal in the data suggests a discovery that no one predicted: a possible new particle several times heavier than the Higgs boson.</p>

In a recent interview, Gaza ENT doctor Muhammad Yahya Barzaq said that he had written a book refuting Einstein's Theory of Special Relativity. "Had Einstein deigned to read the discoveries of Christian Doppler, we would never have had something called the Einstein Theory," he said. Barzaq further said that he had come up with his invention of what he called a "cartridge plane" after replacing a cassette at the exact moment when an airplane was flying overhead. On the issue of Gaza he said that people there "deserve to live because they have the benefit and interest of humanity at...

It might seem like more of a magic trick than real science, but physicists have successfully made a 'cloud' of atoms exist in two separate places at the same time. The laws of standard physics dictate an object can't be in two places at once, but the researchers have exploited a quirk of tiny particles that exist in the quantum world, and applied this to atoms. Their breakthrough raises the prospect of being able to send not just information but perhaps even 'recreate' physical objects over large distances in a form of teleportation.

Fabrication schematic of ordered mesoporous fewlayer carbon (OMFLC). Credit: Science (2015). DOI: 10.1126/science.aab3798 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ (Phys.org) - A team of researchers working in China has found a way to dramatically improve the energy storage capacity of supercapacitors - by doping carbon tubes with nitrogen. In their paper published in the journal Science, the team describes their process and how well the newly developed supercapacitors worked, and their goal of one day helping supercapacitors compete with batteries. Like a battery, a capacitor is able to hold a charge, unlike a battery, however, it is able to be charged and discharged very quickly...

There are a lot of different ways to define science, but perhaps one that everyone can agree on is that it’s a process by which: 1.knowledge about the natural world or a particular phenomenon is gathered, 2.a testable hypothesis is put forth concerning a natural, physical explanation for that phenomenon, 3.that hypothesis is then tested and either validated or falsified, 4.and an overarching framework — or scientific theory — is constructed to explain the hypothesis and that makes predictions about other phenomena, 5.which is then tested further, and either validated, in which case new phenomena to test are sought (back...

Black holes earn their name because their gravity is so strong not even light can escape from them. Oddly, though, physicists have come up with a bit of theoretical sleight of hand to retrieve a speck of information that's been dropped into a black hole. The calculation touches on one of the biggest mysteries in physics: how all of the information trapped in a black hole leaks out as the black hole "evaporates." Many theorists think that must happen, but they don't know how. Unfortunately for them, the new scheme may do more to underscore the difficulty of the larger...

Imperial College London has found that two networks of genes determine whether people are intelligent or not so bright. Genes which make people intelligent have been discovered and scientists believe they could be manipulated to boost brain power. Researchers have believed for some time that intellect is inherited with studies suggesting that up to 75 per cent of IQ is genetic, and the rest down to environmental factors such as schooling and friendship groups. But until now, nobody has been able to pin-point exactly which genes are responsible for better memory, attention, processing speed or reasoning skills. Now Imperial College...

Black holes can only grow if they have a gas disc to feed on NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Flickr ======================================================================================================== Black holes can only grow to 50 billion times the mass of the Sun, before they lose their only source of 'food' and stop growing. Scientists discovered that black holes have a size limit, as when it gets so big, the gas which feeds the great void loses its energy, and falls into the unknown. A researcher from the University of Leicester analysed the disc of gas which surrounds supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies. He found that...

The Universe we know and love — with Einstein’s General Relativity as our theory of gravity and quantum field theories of the other three forces — has a problem that we don’t often talk about: it’s incomplete, and we know it. Einstein’s theory on its own is just fine, describing how matter-and-energy relate to the curvature of space-and-time. Quantum field theories on their own are fine as well, describing how particles interact and experience forces. Normally, the quantum field theory calculations are done in flat space, where spacetime isn’t curved. We can do them in the curved space described by...