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(PhysOrg.com) -- According to the cosmological principle, there is no special place or direction in the universe when viewed on the cosmic scale. The assumption enabled Copernicus to propose that Earth was not the center of the universe and modern scientists to assume that the laws of physics are the same everywhere. Due to the cosmological principle, scientists also assume that the universe is “homogeneous” - having a uniform structure throughout - and “isotropic” - having uniform properties throughout.

Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have measured the lifetime of an extremely stable energy level of magnesium atoms with great precision. Magnesium atoms are used in research with ultra-precise atomic clocks. The new measurements show a lifetime of 2050 seconds, which corresponds to approximately

Everyday life enters a different phase on the Tuesday after Labor Day, the unofficial start of autumn in the United States. As students and employees return from vacation, and vehicles fully flood roadways once again, drivers face an increased risk of what may be the worst hassle a commuter can encounter: traffic gridlock.

Wiring systems powered by highly-efficient superconductors have long been a dream of science, but researchers have faced such practical challenges such as finding pliable and cost-effective materials.

Neutron scattering studies of "cobalt blue," a compound prized by artists for its lustrous blue hue, are revealing unique magnetic characteristics that could answer questions about mysterious properties in other materials.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The ability to control light forms the basis of many technologies, from microscopy to optical computing. Now, a team of scientists from ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, has demonstrated that a single organic molecule can shift the phase of a laser beam by three degrees. That amount of phase shift is enough to allow the researchers to perform applications such as recording the first phase-contrast images of single molecules and fabricating a single-molecule electro-optical phase switch.

Researchers at the University of Warwick and Oxford University have developed a form of crystal that can deliver highly accurate temperature readings, down to individual milli-kelvins, over a very broad range of temperatures: -120 to +680 degrees centigrade.

September is commonly the month where things begin to gather pace again, and in the world of fusion energy research, things are no different. European scientists working on the Joint European Torus (JET), the world's largest magnetic confinement fusion device, are about to embark on the first round of experiments following a 22-month period where the device was out of action whilst being upgraded and commissioned.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists have reached a crucial milestone that could lead to a new class of materials with useful electronic properties. In research reported in the Sept.

Researchers at Northwestern University have created a new kind of cloaking material that can render objects invisible in the terahertz range.

High sensitivity magnetic sensors are important in medical diagnostics for applications such as monitoring heart and brain activities, where mapping distributions of localized extremely weak magnetic fields arising from these organs could provide early warning of life threatening diseases and malfunction.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A constant stabilization experiment of a quantum state has been successfully carried out for the first time by a team from the Laboratoire Kastler Brossel headed by Serge Haroche. The researchers succeeded in maintaining a constant number of photons in a high-quality microwave cavity. The results of their study are published in the online journal Nature on September 1, 2011.

A new paradigm in quantum information processing has been demonstrated by physicists at UC Santa Barbara. Their results are published in this week's issue of Science Express online.

An international team of scientists has developed a novel X-ray technique for imaging atomic displacements in materials with unprecedented accuracy. They have applied their technique to determine how a recently discovered class of exotic materials – multiferroics – can be simultaneously both magnetically and electrically ordered.

(PhysOrg.com) -- The physicists of the University of Innsbruck and the Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI) in Innsbruck have come considerably closer to their goal to investigate complex phenomena in a model system: They have realized a digital, and therefore, universal quantum simulator in their laboratory, which can, in principle, simulate any physical system efficiently. Their work has been published in the online issue of the journal Science.