MC²

October 6, 2009
High-energy heavy ion collisions, which are studied at RHIC in Brookhaven and soon at the LHC in Geneva, can be a source of light flashes of a few yoctoseconds duration (a septillionth of a second, 10-24 s, or ys for short) — the time that light needs to traverse an atomic nucleus. This [...]

October 5, 2009
Controlling huge electromagnetic forces that have the potential to destroy the next generation of particle accelerators is the subject of a new paper by a University of Manchester physicist.
So-called ‘wake fields’ occur during the process of acceleration and can cause particles to fly apart.
The particles are travelling at extremely high energies – and [...]

August 13, 2009
Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US, have performed sophisticated laser measurements to detect the subtle effects of one of nature’s most elusive forces – the “weak interaction”. Their work, which reveals the largest effect of the weak interaction ever observed in an atom, [...]

July 25, 2009
The checkout and calibration of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has been interrupted to aim the recently refurbished observatory at a new expanding spot on the giant planet Jupiter. The spot, caused by the impact of a comet or an asteroid, is changing from day to day in the planet’s cloud tops.
For the [...]