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An Oak Ridge National Laboratory and University of Tennessee team has used the Department of Energy's Jaguar supercomputer to calculate the number of isotopes allowed by the laws of physics.

(Phys.org) -- Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have designed a method to evaluate different conductors for use in metamaterial structures, which are engineered to exhibit properties not possible in natural materials. The work was reported this month in Nature Photonics.

(PhysOrg.com) -- An international collaboration of scientists has reported a landmark calculation of the decay process of a kaon into two pions, using breakthrough techniques on some of the world's fastest supercomputers. This is the same subatomic particle decay explored in a 1964 Nobel Prize-winning experiment performed at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), which revealed the first experimental evidence of charge-parity (CP) violation — a lack of symmetry between particles and their corresponding antiparticles that may hold the answer to the question "Why are we made of matter and not antimatter?"

(PhysOrg.com) -- UK's National Physical Laboratory time scientists have made an accurate measurement of the highly forbidden octupole transition frequency in an ytterbium ion, which could be used as the basis for the next generation of optical atomic clocks.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Sandia National Laboratories is using its Ion Beam Laboratory (IBL) to study how to rapidly evaluate the tougher advanced materials needed to build the next generation of nuclear reactors and extend the lives of current reactors.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Sandia National Laboratories is using its Ion Beam Laboratory (IBL) to study how to rapidly evaluate the tougher advanced materials needed to build the next generation of nuclear reactors and extend the lives of current reactors.

New research, published by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL), takes a significant step towards changing the international definition of the kilogram – which is currently based on a lump of platinum-iridium kept in Paris. NPL has produced technology capable of accurate measurements of Planck's constant, the final piece of the puzzle in moving from a physical object to a kilogram based on fundamental constants of nature. The techniques are described in a paper published in Metrologia on the 20th February.

Making superconducting nanocircuits with rounded corners will improve their performance, according to John R. Clem, a physicist at the U.S.

For several years, physicists at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), USA, have studied an unusual state of matter called the quark–gluon plasma, which they believe mimics the hot, dense particle soup that existed immediately after the big bang. Now, the PHENIX collaboration at RHIC reports findings about a particle called the J/ψ meson that will help physicists distinguish the properties of the quark–gluon plasma (QGP) from those of normal matter.

(PhysOrg.com) -- A series of neutron scattering experiments at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other research centers is exploring the key question about a long-sought quantum state of matter called supersolidity: Does it exist?

Scientists working at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have created the shortest, purest X-ray laser pulses ever achieved, fulfilling a 45-year-old prediction and opening the door to a new range of scientific discovery.

Researchers working at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have used the world's most powerful X-ray laser to create and probe a two-million-degree piece of matter in a controlled way for the first time. This feat, reported today in Nature, takes scientists a significant step forward in understanding the most extreme matter found in the hearts of stars and giant planets, and could help experiments aimed at recreating the nuclear fusion process that powers the sun.

By Meredith Wadman of Nature magazine US researchers are concerned that revised guidelines that recommend a minimum size for breeding lab rodents' cages will substantially increase the cost of animal work. The eighth edition of the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, published last year by the US National Academies in Washington DC, is the first to recommend minimum cage sizes for female rats and mice and their litters. [More]

To better understand the fundamental behavior of molecules at surfaces, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are combining the powers of neutron scattering with chemical analysis.

(PhysOrg.com) -- National Physical Laboratory is well known for having some of the fastest and most accurate clocks in the world, but now new research with the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre has led to the calibration of one of the world's slowest ‑ the argon-argon clock.