axions – Quanta Magazine

He Seeks Mystery Magnetic Fields With His Quantum Compass

Charlie Wood — Fri, 17 May 2024 14:03:34 +0000

Atomic physicists “are jacks of all trades,” according to Alex Sushkov. “You have to have the idea, design the experiment, build the experiment, run the experiment, fix everything, take data, analyze data, write up the paper. You do everything,” and that “suits my personality.” In his lab at Boston University, the Russian-born Australian is supercharging a 50-year-old tool for new purposes.

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What Is the Nature of Time?

Steven Strogatz — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:00:20 +0000

Time seems linear to us: We remember the past, experience the present and predict the future, moving consecutively from one moment to the next. But why is it that way, and could time ultimately be a kind of illusion? In this episode, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek speaks with host Steven Strogatz about the many “arrows” of time and why most of them seem irreversible...

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In a Monster Star’s Light, a Hint of Darkness

Joshua Sokol — Tue, 29 Aug 2023 14:06:17 +0000

Last October, as the James Webb Space Telescope beamed down its first long exposures of the sky near the constellation Eridanus, astronomers began to piece together the story of a dim, flickering point of light that seemed to emerge from the deepest recesses of the universe. Whatever it was, it glimmered for too long to be a supernova; a single star, too, was off the table. “It feels like you’re...

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Brightest-Ever Space Explosion Reveals Possible Hints of Dark Matter

Jonathan O'Callaghan — Wed, 26 Oct 2022 13:50:03 +0000

On Sunday, October 9, Judith Racusin was 35,000 feet in the air, en route to a high-energy astrophysics conference, when the biggest cosmic explosion in history took place. “I landed, looked at my phone, and had dozens of messages,” said Racusin, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. “It was really exceptional.” The explosion was a long gamma-ray burst...

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A Hint of Dark Matter Sends Physicists Looking to the Skies

Jonathan O'Callaghan — Tue, 19 Oct 2021 14:44:10 +0000

Approximately 85% of the mass in the universe is missing — we can infer its existence, we just can’t see it. Over the years, a number of different explanations for this “dark matter” have been proposed, from undiscovered particles to black holes. One idea in particular, however, is drawing renewed attention: the axion. And researchers are turning to the skies to track it down.

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