Tag: Electrons
Tiny accelerators get electrons up to speed using lasers
One day, powerful particle accelerators might fit in your pocket.
Two teams of physicists have built tiny structures that both accelerate electrons and keep them confined in a manageable beam, instead of spewing them willy-nilly. That’s a first for such mini accelerators, and a crucial step toward making these devices more useful and widespread.
“One of the main problems with particle accelerators … is that they’re too big and they’re too expensive,” says physicist Jared Maxson of Cornell University, who
Technique to see the ultrafast world of electrons wins 2023 physics Nobel
Glimpses of the ultrafast world of electrons are changing scientists’ vision of the inner workings of atoms and molecules. The 2023 Nobel Prize in physics goes to three physicists who illuminated this realm with ultrashort pulses of light, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced October 3.
Physicists Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier will split the 11 million Swedish kronor (about $1 million) prize, awarded “for experimental methods that generate attosecond pulses of light for the study of
A rain of electrons causes Mercury’s X-ray auroras
Mercury’s auroras are perfectly in character. While temperate Earth gets heavenly light shows over its poles, hellish Mercury gets invisible ribbons of X-ray radiation that cling to its sun-blasted surface.
But as alien as they may appear, Mercury’s X-ray auroras have a lot in common with Earth’s polar lights, and with auroras throughout the solar system.
Scientists have now directly shown that fluctuations in Mercury’s magnetic field can fling electrons toward the planet, where they eventually rain down and cause
Electrons are extremely round, a new measurement confirms
Electrons are really, really round.
A new measurement confirms the subatomic particle’s spherical shape to a record level of exactness, physicists report in the July 7 Science.
That near-perfect roundness deepens the mystery behind how the universe came to be filled with matter as opposed to its counterpart, antimatter. Any asymmetry in the electron’s shape, namely the distribution of the particle’s electric charge, would point to a related asymmetry in the laws of nature, one that could explain this