EurekAlert!’s Post

💧 Water is a vital component of our planet and all living organisms, yet many of its properties remain elusive to scientists. 👩🔬 For decades, researchers have hypothesized that below the freezing point, water could exist in two liquid phases with different densities. Due to the difficulty of studying this directly, numerical simulations have been crucial for understanding supercooled water. 🔎 A recent study by SISSA and Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) researchers, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), has added a new dimension to this theory. They found that not only do the two liquid phases have different densities, but they also exhibit distinct electrical properties. In the low-density phase, water molecules spontaneously align, creating microsecond-long electric fields in the liquid. 📑 Read more about this research in our latest press release: https://lnkd.in/ddXCcrKR

Congratulations to Dr. Johann Rudi and his collaborators on their recent publication in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)! PNAS is a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and is one of the world's most-cited multidisciplinary scientific serials and publishes cutting-edge research reports, commentaries, reviews, perspectives, and colloquium papers spanning the biological, physical, and social sciences. "Solid Earth evolution is regulated by mantle convection and plates that deform with highly nonlinear rheologies and with plastic failure. Geophysical inference has been unable to account for such nonlinearities while simultaneously resolving the two key tectonic elements globally: bending plates and megathrust faults. Through advancing the robustness and scalability of computational methods, and combining them with global lithosphere, slab, seismicity and tomography data, we overcome the key challenges. We find that the nonlinearity and stress magnitude for plastic failure during mantle deformation is smaller than found in laboratory experiments while the tectonic stress delivered to different plate interfaces varies for different subduction zones with implications for megathrust earthquakes." https://lnkd.in/d5sPn2V9 Virginia Tech College of Science PNAS

✨ Exciting Announcement! ✨ I am thrilled to share the preprint of my latest paper: "Superfluid Gravity: Unifying Energy, Frequency, and Vibration in a Quantum Framework". This work is a continuation of my previous research, "General Quantum-Relativistic Field Theory: Unified Theory of Gravity and Black Hole Universe Formation", and it delves deeper into the fascinating intersections of quantum mechanics and gravitational theory. In this new paper, I explore the concept of superfluid gravity, offering a novel perspective that unifies energy, frequency, and vibration within a quantum framework. The insights and implications of this research could pave the way for groundbreaking advancements in our understanding of the universe. I am immensely grateful for the support and feedback from the academic community and look forward to engaging in fruitful discussions about these new findings. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or thoughts – I would love to hear from you! 📄 👀 ⏬ #QuantumPhysics #Relativity #Gravity #Research #Science #Innovation #SuperfluidGravity #QuantumFramework

I just finished "Life as No One Knows It" by ASU's Sara Walker. Dr Walker is a physicist / astrobiologist who has been getting a lot of attention recently after appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience. Awesome to see an ASU professor getting this level of attention! This book cover's the basics of her studies on Assembly Theory. At a high level, it seems the goal of Assembly Theory is to quantify molecular complexity in terms of how many steps it would take to create the molecule, then use this complexity analysis to look for signs of life on other planets. Assuming concentrations of complex molecules are correlated with living organisms, then this could be a way to determine if life exists outside of Earth. The book is definitely targeted at a lay-person audience, so it doesn't go into great detail about the actual physics. Transparently, I'm actually confused about the significance and utility of the theory. When I heard "Assembly Theory" I assumed that it involved things from biophysics like chemical reaction rates, entropy, energy, and environmental influence, but this approach seems to be significantly simpler. It is also not clear to me why this complexity metric is assumed to correlate with life, when statistical mechanics teaches us that complex molecules get created randomly all the time. It could just be the way it was presented in the book, so I'll have to dig a bit deeper. I am curious if anyone knows more about this. If you have thoughts or opinions, please let me know in the comments! #physics #biology #astrobiology #popsci

When a group of Phd physicists reported to have measeured neutrino travelling faster than speed of light and got famous the real scientific world replied in Science, the professional periodical for real scientists of any type. The measurement devices they use are manufactured based upon Special Realativity and quantum physics. If those theories are wrong then their measurement gear is defective a priori. If the neutrino went faster than light it went into the past so how did they measure it in the future? Scientists, in the hard sciences, publish their results in professional journals and at least 2 other groups try to repeat under different conditions from different places to make sure it wasn't a fluke due to position on earth. To shout to the world in order to be the first with something new wasn't the "scientific way". It made Science but only made them famous to the world, not professional nor reputable to those of us "old school" Respectfully, Max C.S. Knowlton mcsknowlton@gmail.com Show quoted text Its open carry any weapon here in thunderdome!

Dr. Yanfa Yan, Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Ohio Research Scholar Chair, is one of two researchers at The University of Toledo listed among Clarivate’s 2024 Highly Cited Researchers.   The distinction recognizes researchers who have authored multiple papers that rank in the top 1% by citations for their field and publication year during the past decade, as tracked in Clarivate’s Web of Science citation index. Additional qualitative analysis and expert judgment are also factors.   This is the sixth consecutive year that Dr. Yan, whose research expertise is perovskite solar cells, has received this distinction. Google scholar documents 66,312 citations for Dr. Yan (as of 11.26.24)!   #UToledoPhysics #UToledo #UToledoRocketScience #perovskite #ThePowerToDo   UTNews: bit.ly/3YVShq9 Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization Clarivate UToledo Research & Sponsored Programs

📃Scientific paper: Jupiter's Polar Vortex Crystals Explored using the Shallow Water Equations Abstract: At the poles of Jupiter, cyclonic vortices are clustered together in patterns made up of equilateral triangles called vortex crystals. Such patterns are seen in laboratory flows but never before in a planetary atmosphere, where the planet's rotation and gravity add new physics. Here we use the shallow water (SW) equations at the pole of a rotating planet to study the emergence and evolution of vortices starting from an initial random pattern of small-scale turbulence. The flow is in a single layer with a free surface whose slope produces the horizontal pressure gradient force. We explored three parameters in the problem: the mean kinetic energy of the initial turbulence, the horizontal scale of the initial turbulence, and the radius of deformation of the undisturbed fluid layer. We find that some regions of this parameter space lead to vortex crystals and others lead to chaotic behavior and mergers. Our results identified that the relative change of the layer thickness is the key quantity that determines whether the vortex crystal or chaotic patterns emerge. Continued on ES/IODE ➡️ https://etcse.fr/mz7 ------- If you find this interesting, feel free to follow, comment and share. We need your help to enhance our visibility, so that our platform continues to serve you.

Scientific Applications of LLMs Presents INDUS, a comprehensive suite of LLMs for Earth science, biology, physics, planetary sciences, and more. Includes an encoder model, embedding model, and small distilled models. There are a lot of underexplored applications of LLMs in domain-specific areas so it's good to see and learn about these efforts. (Check comments for paper link)

#Physics | 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗡𝗲𝘂𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗼 𝗢𝗯𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗼𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗡𝗲𝘂𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗼 𝗢𝗯𝘀𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗗𝗨𝗡𝗘 | Prof. Dr. Michele Weber from the University of Bern's Laboratory for High Energy Physics (LHEP) has led a study that marks the first observation of neutrinos using the "ND-LAr" detector prototype at the world's ultimate neutrino observatory, DUNE. This significant milestone is part of ongoing efforts to better understand these fundamental particles, which played a crucial role in the early universe. The research involved testing the ND-LAr prototype at the University of Bern, with plans for the neutrino beam to resume at Fermilab in fall 2024. The data from these initial detections will pave the way for numerous doctoral theses and scientific publications, forming the foundation for the commissioning of ND-LAr in 2030. The University of Bern’s participation in DUNE is funded by several Swiss and European institutions, marking the first collaboration between a Swiss university and Fermilab. 👉 Learn more >> https://lnkd.in/gDABSdSz Photo: Dan Svoboda, Fermilab 🇨🇭 Follow #ScienceSwitzerland for the latest news and emerging trends on Swiss science, technology, education, and innovation >> swissinnovation.org Follow us >> Science-Switzerland #Science | #Education | #Research | #Innovation

A recent study published in Scientific Reports proposes a novel approach to a longstanding debate in theoretical physics regarding the number of fundamental constants required to describe the observable universe. The research suggests that in relativistic space-time, all physical quantities can be measured using a single constant: the second. This challenges traditional views that rely on multiple units, such as the meter and kilogram. The study highlights the potential for simplification in measurement standards, emphasizing the interrelation of space and time in relativistic contexts, and underscores the evolving nature of scientific understanding in fundamental physics.