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Tag Archives: Physical Review Letters
Quasicrystal, heal thyself
Scientists have uncovered a remarkable self-healing property in a strange class of materials known as quasicrystals, revealing their ability to grow into a perfect, single structure even when faced with obstacles. The discovery challenges a long-held understanding of crystal formation … Continue reading
What does a quantum Bayes’s rule look like?
Bayes’s rule is one of the most fundamental principles in probability and statistics. It allows us to update our beliefs in the face of new evidence. In its simplest form, the rule tells us how to revise the probability of … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Scicomm, Science
Tagged Bayes's rule, Bayesian network, Bayesianism, Choi operators, commutativity, completely positive trace-preserving map, noise correction, Physical Review Letters, principle of minimum change, probability, quantum computing, quantum information theory, stochastic processes, unitarity, variational Bayesian inference
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Rescuing superconductivity
From a paper in Nature Reviews Physics, December 19, 2024: One of the forefront fields of modern superconductivity research is that on hydrides at high pressures. Over the past few years, this research has attracted considerable publicity, of which a … Continue reading
Unexpected: Magnetic regions in metal blow past speed limit
You’re familiar with magnetism, but do you know what it looks like at the smallest scale? Take a block of iron, for example. It’s ferromagnetic, which means if you place it near a permanent magnet – like a refrigerator magnet … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged ferromagnetism, ferromagnets, magnetic domains, magnetic permeability, nickel, Physical Review Letters, pump-probe, spin quantum number, ultrafast phenomena
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You can do worse than watching paint dry – ask physics
I live in Chennai, a city whose multifaceted identity includes its unrelenting humidity. Its summers are seldom hotter than those in Delhi but they are more unbearable because it leaves people sweaty, dehydrated, and irritated. Delhi’s heat doesn’t have the … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged active process, advection, compressive stress, evaporation, Jean-Baptiste Salmon, Physical Review Letters, polymer gelation, relative humidity, skin, sweating
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The journal’s part in a retraction
What explains a journal’s peer-review producing two different results on two separate occasions? Continue reading
Posted in Science
Tagged Ashkan Salamat, Brad Ramshaw, James Hamlin, lutetium hydride, Nature journal, peer review, Physical Review Letters, Ranga Dias, retraction, room-temperature superconductivity
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Is Dias bringing the bus back?
So Physical Review Letters formally retracted that paper about manganese sulphide, in the limelight for having been coauthored by Ranga P. Dias, yesterday. The retraction notice states: “Of the authors on the original paper, R. Dias stands by the data … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm, Science
Tagged Ashkan Salamat, lutetium hydride, manganese sulphide, Physical Review Letters, Ranga P Dias, research misconduct, room-temperature superconductivity, The New York Times, University of Nevada, University of Rochester
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Gerald Guralnik (1936-2014)
Of the six scientists who came up with the idea of a Higgs boson in the mid-1960s, independently or in collaboration with others, I’ve met all of one. Tom Kibble was at the Institute of Mathematical Science, Chennai, in January 2013 … Continue reading