Kategorie: Forschung & Technik

Scientists from California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna, Russia, have discovered element 118. The three atoms that they found have an average lifetime of 0.9 milliseconds. That’s too short to study the new element’s chemical properties, but the superheavy atom sits directly beneath radon on the periodic table. It’s in the same family as helium and neon.

In 1999 and 2001, the LLNL scientists announced the discovery of elements 114 and 116, respectively. In 2004, the Livermore-Dubna team observed elements 113 and 115. Also in 1999, researchers at LLNL reported synthesizing element 118, but, in 2001, they retracted their claim when subsequent experiments failed to confirm the discovery.

Livermore scientists team with Russia to discover element 118

Mixing antimatter and matter usually has predictably violent consequences – the two annihilate one another in a fierce burst of energy. But physicists at CERN in Geneva have found a new way to make the two combine, at least briefly, into a single substance. This exceptionally unstable stuff, made of protons and antiprotons, is called protonium. The researchers believe that some of the antiprotons reacted with ionised molecules of ordinary hydrogen, stealing away a proton. These proton-antiproton systems lasted microseconds at most, but that was long enough to drift away from the core of the experiment before exploding. Protonium has been made before, but only in violent particle collisions. The new chemical method could be used to make it in much larger quantities.
Source: Physical Review Letters, vol. 97, no. 153401 (2006): Evidence For The Production Of Slow Antiprotonic Hydrogen In Vacuum
Abstract

Beaming people in „Star Trek“ fashion is still in the realms of science fiction, but physicists in Denmark have teleported information from light to matter bringing quantum communication and quantum computing closer to reality. Until now scientists have teleported similar objects such as light or single atoms over short distances from one spot to another in a split second. But Professor Eugene Polzik and his team at the Niels Bohr Institute at the Copenhagen University in Denmark have made a breakthrough by using both light and matter.

Quantum teleportation between light and matter