all Department of Physics stories

Quantum gas microscope offers glimpse of quirky ultracold atoms

404132862 — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:39:22 -0500

Harvard physicists have created a quantum gas microscope that can be used to observe single atoms at temperatures so low the particles follow the rules of quantum mechanics, behaving in bizarre ways.

The work, published this week in the journal Nature, represents the first time scientists have detected single atoms in a crystalline structure made solely of light, called a Bose Hubbard optical lattice. It's part of scientists' efforts to use ultracold quantum gases to understand and develop novel quantum materials.

Materials scientists find better model for glass creation

404132862 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:09:50 -0500

Harvard materials scientists have come up with what they believe is a new way to model the formation of glasses, a type of amorphous solid that includes common window glass.

Glasses form through the process of vitrification, in which a glass-forming liquid cools and slowly becomes a solid whose molecules, though they’ve stopped moving, are not permanently locked into a crystal structure. Instead, they’re more like a liquid that has merely stopped flowing, though they can continue to move over long stretches of time.

Frans Spaepen named interim director of Center for Nanoscale Systems

50443248 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 15:59:26 -0400

Frans Spaepen, director of the Rowland Institute, will serve as interim director of Harvard University’s Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS) starting July 1, upon completion of his term as interim dean of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences

Physics for the musical masses

50443248 — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:34:34 -0400

Harvard physicist Lisa Randall is taking Paris’ opera-going public to the fifth dimension this month, working with a composer and artist to present an opera that incorporates Randall’s theories about extra dimensions of space.

Looking for subatomic insights in Minnesota

50443248 — Mon, 18 May 2009 14:00:14 -0400

After years of planning, officials broke ground this month for a new high-energy physics experiment that will probe the behavior of one of the basic particles that make up the universe: the neutrino.

Researchers see exotic force for first time

404132862 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:09:52 -0500

For the first time, researchers have measured a long-theorized force that operates at distances so tiny they’re measured in billionths of a meter, which may have important applications in nanotechnology as scientists and engineers seek new ways to create devices far too small for the eye to see.

The advance, by researchers by Harvard and National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers, used a novel combination of materials to create a repulsive Casimir force, which pushes apart certain materials when separated by distances so tiny — between 20 nanometers and 100 nanometers — that they’re nearly touching.

Star quest knowledge provides new view of ourselves

404132862 — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:50:21 -0400

In a basement laboratory at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), surrounded by instruments built to detect the universe’s distant secrets, sits a machine that will help us look not outward to the stars, but inward at our own bodies.

ATLAS detector seeks to illuminate universe’s mysteries

404132862 — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:37:28 -0400

Scientists at Harvard and around the world held their breath earlier today, as colleagues switched on the most powerful particle accelerator ever built, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the particle physics laboratory in Geneva.

Harvard researchers selected for National Academy of Sciences membership

yvette — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 16:39:20 -0400

Eight Harvard faculty members this week were elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Turning on cells with magnetic switches

404132862 — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 16:35:50 -0500

Harvard scientists have figured out how to turn cells on and off using magnets, an advance with potentially broad applications as researchers around the world work to find new ways to manipulate cells and correct cellular functions that diseases send awry.

NAS elects five Harvard faculty members

50443248 — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 13:10:17 -0400

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) announced this past Tuesday (May 1) the election of five Harvard affiliates among its 72 new members and 18 foreign associates. Members are chosen in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Medieval Islamic architecture presages 20th century mathematics

50443248 — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 09:30:06 -0400

Intricate decorative tilework found in medieval architecture across the Islamic world appears to exhibit advanced decagonal quasicrystal geometry - a concept discovered by Western mathematicians and physicists only in the 1970s and 1980s. If so, medieval Islamic application of this geometry would predate Western mastery by at least half a millennium.

The finding, by Peter J. Lu at Harvard University and Paul J. Steinhardt at Princeton University, will be published this week in the journal Science.

Light and matter united

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 12:04:48 -0400

Lene Hau has already shaken scientists' beliefs about the nature of things. Albert Einstein and just about every other physicist insisted that light travels 186,000 miles a second in free space, and that it can't be speeded-up or slowed down. But in 1998, Hau, for the first time in history, slowed light to 38 miles an hour, about the speed of rush-hour traffic.

Two years later, she brought light to a complete halt in a cloud of ultracold atoms. Next, she restarted the stalled light without changing any of its characteristics, and sent it on its way. These highly successful experiments brought her a tenured professorship at Harvard University and a $500,000 MacArthur Foundation award to spend as she pleased.

MacArthur Foundation honors Harvard faculty members, Radcliffe fellow

70652986 — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 06:28:04 -0400

Harvard faculty members and a Radcliffe fellow probing the mysteries of stem cells, the early universe, the modern practice of surgery, and the significance of public sights and modern ruins were honored Sept. 19 with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's $500,000, no-strings-attached "genius grants."

The four are Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology Kevin Eggan, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management and Assistant Professor of Surgery Atul Gawande, Professor of Astronomy and of Physics Matias Zaldarriaga, and Radcliffe fellow Anna Schuleit.

The four join 21 other MacArthur Foundation fellows engaged in a broad spectrum of endeavors - from deep sea exploring to journalism to sculpting - who have in common creativity and originality.

Measuring one of the universe's building blocks

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 14:37:46 -0400

Electrons are everywhere. There are trillions of them around you as you read this. They help make your computer, TV, cell phone - even the universe - work.

Every atom boasts a thin cloud of them orbiting its core, or nucleus. When they jump from one orbit to another, they create the electric and magnetic forces that power the universe. Their behaviors in the most energetic orbits determine the chemical properties of everything you can think of.