The new supercomputer “Minerva” has been put into operation at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, AEI).

The new supercomputer “Minerva” has been put into operation at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, AEI). 

With 9,504 compute cores, 38 TeraByte memory and a peak performance of 302.4 TeraFlop/s it is more than six times as powerful as its predecessor. The scientists of the department “Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity” can now compute significantly more gravitational waveforms and also carry out more complex simulations.

Minerva is to solve Einstein’s equations

Above all, the new computer cluster – named after the Roman goddess of wisdom – is used for the calculation of gravitational waveforms. These ripples in space time – measured for the first time directly in September 2015 – originate when massive objects such as black holes and neutron stars merge. Obtaining the exact forms of the emitted gravitational waves requires numerically solving Einstein’s complicated, non-linear field equations on supercomputers like Minerva. The AEI has been at the forefront of this field for many years and its researchers have been making important contributions to the software tools of the trade.

Tracking down faint signals in the detectors’ background noise and inferring information about astrophysical and cosmological properties of their sources requires calculating the mergers of many different binary systems such as binary black holes or pairs of a neutron star and a black hole, with different combinations of mass ratios and individual spins.

“Such calculations need a lot of compute power and are very time-consuming. The simulation of the first gravitational wave measured by LIGO lasted three weeks – on our previous supercomputer Datura,” says AEI director Professor Alessandra Buonanno. “Minerva is significantly faster and so we can now react even quicker to new detections and can calculate more signals.”

Ready for the gravitational wave detectors’ second science run
The gravitational wave detectors Advanced LIGO in the USA (aLIGO) and GEO600 in Ruthe near Hanover started their second observational run (“O2”) on 30 November 2016. aLIGO is now more sensitive than ever before: The detectors will be able to detect signals from about 20% further away compared to O1, which increases the event rate by more than 70%.

Credit : mpg.de

Numerical simulation of the gravitational-wave event GW151226 associated to a binary black-hole coalescence. The strength of the gravitational wave is indicated by elevation as well as color, with cyan indicating weak fields and orange indicating strong fields. The sizes of the black holes as well as the distance between the two objects is increased by a factor of two to improve visibility. The colors on the black holes represent their local deformation due to their intrinsic rotation (spin) and tides.


 Numerical-relativistic Simulation: S. Ossokine , A. Buonanno (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics) and the Simulating eXtreme Spacetime project; scientific visualization: T. Dietrich, R. Haas (Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics)

Researchers in the Astrophysical and Cosmological Relativity division at AEI have improved the capabilities of aLIGO detectors to observe and estimate parameters of gravitational-wave sources ahead of O2. For the search for binary black hole mergers, they have refined their waveform models using a synergy between numerical and analytical solutions of Einstein’s equations of general relativity. They calibrated approximate analytical solutions (which can be computed almost instantly) with precise numerical solutions (which take very long even on powerful computers). This allows the AEI researchers to use the available computing power more effectively and to search more quickly and discover more potential signals from merging black holes in O2, and to determine the nature of their sources. AEI researchers also have prepared simulations of merging neutron star and boson star binaries. These can be simultaneously observed in electromagnetic and gravitational radiation, and can provide new precise tests of Einstein’s theory of general relativity.

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Story source: 

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Mpg . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

A famous physicist demonstrated that the 2015 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to the wrong person

2015 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded for the discovery of  (neutrino oscillations) through which it is proved that neutrinos have mass. 

The report does not claim the prize holders deserved or not that research was flawed, the physicist argues that the way the commission interpreted discovery is wrong. The award was given for research into neutrinos, particles (phantom) which appear from nuclear interaction as well as the center of the sun.

Japanese Physicist Wins 2015 Nobel Prize For Neutrino Research

They are described as (ghost particles) because rarely interact with matter. The only way that scientists can detect the presence of neutrinos is through their interaction with subatomic weak forces and gravity, using Super-Kamiokande detector and the detector particles from Japan or Neutrino Sudbury Observatory (SNO) in Canada.

SNO detector installed underground, before cabling the photomultiplier tubes. (Courtesy of SNO) photo: wikipedia

Experts have discovered that there are three types of neutrinos - electronic, muon and taonic. A neutrino can become electronic or taonic, this process is called oscillation. Super-K detector that can detect muon neutrinos generated only by cosmic rays hitting the Earth's atmosphere, it revealed that the Earth is hit much more atmospheric neutrinos at the surface than in its interior. This phenomenon suggests that neutrinos oscillated while penetrated the atmosphere Super-K detector because he could not detect.



SNO detector team used in 2001 and 2002 for observation of the Sun neutrinos. One of their techniques can only detect electrons, neutrino and another method to detect all three types. The results showed that when the neutrino electron reached Earth, only 34% of them remained electrons neutrino, which means that over time changed their shape.

Nobel Committee for Physics interpreted these results as evidence that neutrinos can oscillate while traveling and finally they have mass.

Alexei Smirnov physicist from Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Germany stated in his work that the committee members have used the wrong word (oscillation). 

He believes the Japanese team successfully proved oscillation action, but the team that used the SNO detector proved what was happening to the neutrinos from the Sun, more subtle change.

Physicist Awarded Einstein Medal ICTP

photo: taringa.net

Smirnov believes that neutrinos from the Sun change its type, but not through oscillations as Nobel committee members have understood.


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• 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to researchers Jean Pierre Sauvage Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa

• NOBEL PEACE 2016. Juan Manuel Santos, Colombia president

• Physicists have made an unexpected discovery related to the second law of thermodynamics, one of the most important principles of physics

• Yoshinori Ohsumi won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2016

Einstein's Theory Just Put the Brakes on the Sun's Spin

Credit: NASA/SDO

Although the sun is our nearest star, it still hides many secrets. But it seems that one solar conundrum may have been solved and a theory originally proposed in 1905 by Albert Einstein could be at the root of it all.

Nov. 21, 1905: It Was a Very Good Year, If You Were Einstein Wired

Twenty years ago, solar astronomers realized that the uppermost layer of the sun rotates slower than the rest of the sun's interior. This is odd. It is well known the sun rotates faster at its equator than at its poles — a phenomenon known as "differential rotation" that drives the sun's 11-year solar cycle — but the fact that the sun has a sluggish upper layer has been hard to understand. It's as if there's some kind of force trying to hold it in place while the lower layers churn below it.

Solar Rotation Varies by Latitude NASA

Now, researchers from University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (IfA), Brazil, and Stanford University may have stumbled on an answer and it could all be down to fundamental physics. It seems that the light our sun generates has a braking effect on the sun's surface layers.


"The sun won't stop spinning anytime soon, but we've discovered that the same solar radiation that heats the Earth is 'braking' the sun because of Einstein's Special Relativity, causing it to gradually slow down, starting from its surface," said Jeff Kuhn, of IfA Maui, in a statement.

Solar Radiation | EM SC 100: First Year Seminar

Special relativity predicts that photons, which carry the electromagnetic force (i.e. light), also carry a tiny amount of momentum. If you have enough photons travelling away from an object, they will carry away a large amount of momentum. In the case of the sun's 4 billion year lifetime, the surface has lost a lot of momentum to photons, causing a slowdown of the uppermost 5 percent of the sun. This mechanism, called the Poynting-Robertson effect, has been observed in interplanetary dust, which feels the drag of the sun's radiation, causing it to fall from the asteroid belt into the inner solar system.

What affects dust inevitably affects the soup of super-heated gas in the sun's upper layers and, over its lifetime, the drag caused by photons being emitted from the sun has created a measurable and, until now, mysterious effect.

Using several years of data from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), the researchers were able to measure waves traveling through the sun to precisely measure the size of the layer that is experiencing this slowdown. The technique, known as "helioseismology," is very similar to measuring the seismic waves travelling through the Earth to measure the strength of an earthquake. The material these seismic waves travel through changes the waves so seismologists can "see" underground.

Helioseismology: Probing the interior of a star PNAS

Though the sun isn't a solid planet made from rock and metal, its dense plasma interior also allows waves to travel, creating oscillations on the surface that can be measured. Helioseismology therefore allows astronomers to "see" into our nearest star, revealing many details about its interior that may not be obvious on the surface. And in this case, by using helioseismology and studying the sun's magnetic field passing from space into the sun's interior, we can gauge how much of a drag Einstein's special relativity has had on the sun's surface.

"This is a gentle torque that is slowing it down, but over the Sun's 5 billion year lifetime it has had a very noticeable influence on its outer 35,000 kilometers [22,000 miles]," said Kuhn. 

These findings have accepted for publication in the journal Physical Review Letters and can be previewed on the arXiv pre-print service.

Using our sun as a laboratory for other stars, Kuhn's team believe that a similar effect likely happens for all stars and could have a strong influence on stellar evolution. Now solar astronomers are very interested to understand how this solar slowdown impacts the sun's magnetic field that threads through the entire solar system. As the sun's magnetism is the root cause of space weather that can trigger solar flares and coronal mass ejections that could interfere with satellites and power grids, this research could have a key role to play in our understanding of solar impacts on Earth.

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• The First Stars in the Universe could provide clues about Dark Matter

• Young galaxies "born" at least 50 stars annually

• What form does the atomic nucleus? New discovery may explain the mysteries of the Universe.

• A new theory on the Creation of the Universe, disprove the Big Bang

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The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Space.com . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Physicists have made an unexpected discovery related to the second law of thermodynamics, one of the most important principles of physics

Photo ; insspirito/Pixabay  

Thermodynamic laws are some of the most important principles of modern physics that define how the three amounts fundamental physics - temperature, energy and entropy (the amount of thermal condition of physical systems, which increases during an irreversible transformation of their own, but in the case of reversible transformations remains constant) - behave in certain circumstances.

Now physicists have discovered an ambiguity in one of these laws could create scenarios where entropy could diminish with time. Thanks to modern physics, almost every phenomenon in the universe can be explained using the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics using. But in addition, there are four laws of thermodynamics, which explains how heat (or heat) is converted to or from different types of energy.

But the second law of thermodynamics is of particular importance, since this energy transition from a system usable by one unusable. As usable energy in a closed or isolated system decreases and unusable energy increases entropy, in turn, increases.

As said by researchers, the second law of thermodynamics is probably much deeper than first law (which states that energy can not be created or destroyed), because the limitations of the universe. But what would happen if there was the possibility of creating a system that would decrease the entropy?

Researchers at the US Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory said they found ambiguity in the second law of thermodynamics, entropy which is moving towards another direction at a microscopic scale. They investigated a concept that is based on this law, called the theory H which, in its most simple, discloses that if you open a door between two rooms, one heated and the other not, it will produce a balance of heat . But as the researchers claimed, it is imposbil explain how each molecule moves in this scenario, so physicists analyzed as a group, not individually. But to identify the conduct of each molecule, according Theory H Laboratory Argonne decided to treat this study at a quantum scale. They did so using quantum information theory, which is based on a variety of natural materials applied abstract mathematical systems to be condensed discovered a new quantum theory H. "This makes manageable Theory H wording consistent with things that can be observed by physicists," says one of the team who started this study, Ivan Sadovskyy.

The researchers believe it is likely that the circumstances in which entropy decreases to be analyzed using this new vision Theory H.



Source: Science Alert

NOBEL PHYSICS 2016. Nobel Prize winners are David DJ. Thouless, F. M. Duncan Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz

Nobel Physics Prize winners for 2016 are David J. Thouless, F. M. Duncan Haldane and J. Michael Kosterlitz, announced on Tuesday the Nobel committee in Stockholm.

David Thouless, Duncan Haldane and Michael Kosterlitz winners of 2016 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for discoveries,, theoretical topological phase transitions and topographic phases of matter ''.

Nobel Prize winners in 2016 they opened a new gate in the different states of matter. Using advanced mathematical methods, they studied the unusual phases or states of matter, such as superconductors, magnetic superfluidele strata. Thanks to their work, researchers can explore unusual phases of matter.

Kosterlitz and Thouless have studied the phenomenon that occurs in a flat world surfaces or extremely thin layers inside that can be considered two-dimensional compared to the three-dimensional (length, width and height), which are generally easier to describe. Also, Haidan studied the matter that is formed in the form of yarn, so thin as can be regarded as one-dimensional.


Their discovery has provided important information regarding theoretical understanding of the mysteries of matter, offering new perspectives on the development of innovative materials.

Last year, the Nobel Prize for Physics has been awarded to researchers Takaaki Kajita Japanese and Canadian Arthur B. McDonald for their significant contributions regarding experiments showed that neutrinos change their identities, metamorphosis implies that they have mass .

Since 1901, the prize for Physics was awarded 109 times and were 201 winners, including the only two women: Marie Curie and Maria Goeppert-Mayer. 47 times the prize was awarded to a single winner. However, John Bardeen received the Nobel Physics twice.

The youngest of the laureates was Noben Lawrence Bragg, who was 25 when he received the Nobel Prize in Physics with his father in 1915. The oldest winner is David Raymond Jr., who was 88 years old when he received the prize for physics in 2002.

Nobel season began Monday, when Japanese researcher Yoshinori Ohsumi was awarded the prize for medicine in 2016 for discovering the mechanism of autophagy. Errors in these genes can cause a range of diseases, and these findings help explain the causes of diseases like cancer or Parkinson's disease.

2015 Nobel season will continue on Wednesday with chemistry award. Thursday will be announced the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.

Nobel Peace Prize winner - awarded only by Norway, according to the desire of the founder of the prestigious awards, Alfred Nobel - will be announced Friday. Nobel Prize for economics will be presented Monday, October 12th.

The laureates will receive a gold medal and a prize of 8 million Swedish kronor (about 850,000 euros) which can be split between up to three winners in each category.

Physics laureates receive a medal that represents Nature in the form of a goddess, like Isis, coming out of the clouds and has hands horn of plenty, and the veil which covers the face austere genius is supported by Science.

On the medal is inscribed a quote from Virgil, Aeneid inspired: Inventas vitam juvat excoluisse per artes (Inventions enrich life which art adorns a), and below is engraved the name of the laureate. The design belongs to Erik Lindberg.

Nobel laureates will receive their awards during a formal ceremony in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10, the day that commemorates the death of prize founder Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896.

Name nominees and other information about them or about the selection process can not be made public for 50 years.

Nobel Prizes are awarded since 1901, except for the economy, established in 1968 by the Swedish Central Bank to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the founding of this institution. The awards were created after the death of Alfred Nobel weld engineer (1833 - 1896), inventor of dynamite, in his will according to his will.


Physics was the first area of the awards mentioned in the will of Alfred Nobel, the scholar and businessman Swedish ruled that the income of his immense fortune to be offered each year "in the form of prizes to those who, in the previous year, brought the greatest service to humanity ".

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Source: Descopera

Marie Curie - the most important women in science

Marie Curie, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize and the first scientist who won the award twice, in two different fields, physics and chemistry, was voted the leading woman scientist of all time.

Researcher of Polish origin who discovered the treatment of cancer with radiation, was passed at a rate of 25.4 percent, nearly double the second place, Rosalind Franklin, nationality English biophysicist who helped discover the structure of DNA.

The following places were occupied by astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell and Dr. Jane Goodall, primatologist who brought to the attention of the scientific world primates.

Marie Curie (7 November 1867 – 4 July 1934), née Maria Salomea Skłodowska was a Polish physicist and chemist, working mainly in France,who is famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the only woman to win in two fields, and the only person to win in multiple sciences. She was also the first female professor at the University of Paris (La Sorbonne), and in 1995 became the first woman to be entombed on her own merits in Paris' Panthéon.

She was born in Warsaw, in the Congress Kingdom of Poland, then part of the Russian Empire. She studied at Warsaw's clandestine Floating University and began her practical scientific training in Warsaw. In 1891, aged 24, she followed her older sister Bronisława to study in Paris, where she earned her higher degrees and conducted her subsequent scientific work. She shared her 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with her husband Pierre Curie and with physicist Henri Becquerel. She was the sole winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Her achievements included a theory of radioactivity (a term that the Curies coined), techniques for isolating radioactive isotopes, and the discovery of two elements, polonium and radium. Under her direction, the world's first studies were conducted into the treatment of neoplasms, using radioactive isotopes. She founded the Curie Institutes in Paris and in Warsaw, which remain major centres of medical research today. During World War I, she established the first military field radiological centres.

While a French citizen, Marie Skłodowska Curie (she used both surnames)never lost her sense of Polish identity. She taught her daughters the Polish language and took them on visits to Poland.She named the first chemical element that she discovered – polonium, which she first isolated in 1898 – after her native country.

Curie died in 1934 at the sanatorium of Sancellemoz (Haute-Savoie), France, due to aplastic anemia brought on by her years of exposure to radiation.

"The survey indicates the vital need to celebrate and draw attention to the many women researchers, who helped form what we now call modern science," said Dr. Roger Highfield, editor of The New Scientist.

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Source: The Telegraph

Do Black Holes have a back door?

Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

One of the biggest problems when studying black holes is that the laws of physics as we know them cease to apply in their deepest regions. Large quantities of matter and energy concentrate in an infinitely small space, the gravitational singularity, where space-time curves towards infinity and all matter is destroyed. Or is it? A recent study by researchers at the Institute of of Corpuscular Physics (IFIC, CSIC-UV) in Valencia suggests that matter might in fact survive its foray into these space objects and come out the other side.

Published in the journal Classical and Quantum Gravity, the Valencian physicists propose considering the singularity as if it were an imperfection in the geometric structure of space-time. And by doing so they resolve the problem of the infinite, space-deforming gravitational pull.

Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

"Black holes are a theoretical laboratory for trying out new ideas about gravity," says Gonzalo Olmo, a Ramón y Cajal grant researcher at the Universitat de València (University of Valencia, UV). Alongside Diego Rubiera, from the University of Lisbon, and Antonio Sánchez, PhD student also at the UV, Olmo's research sees him analysing black holes using theories besides general relativity (GR).

Specifically, in this work he has applied geometric structures similar to those of a crystal or graphene layer, not typically used to describe black holes, since these geometries better match what happens inside a black hole: "Just as crystals have imperfections in their microscopic structure, the central region of a black hole can be interpreted as an anomaly in space-time, which requires new geometric elements in order to be able to describe them more precisely. We explored all possible options, taking inspiration from facts observed in nature."

Using these new geometries, the researchers obtained a description of black holes whereby the centre point becomes a very small spherical surface. This surface is interpreted as the existence of a wormhole within the black hole. "Our theory naturally resolves several problems in the interpretation of electrically-charged black holes," Olmo explains. "In the first instance we resolve the problem of the singularity, since there is a door at the centre of the black hole, the wormhole, through which space and time can continue."

This study is based on one of the simplest known types of black hole, rotationless and electrically-charged. The wormhole predicted by the equations is smaller than an atomic nucleus, but gets bigger the bigger the charge stored in the black hole. So, a hypothetical traveller entering a black hole of this kind would be stretched to the extreme, or "spaghettified," and would be able to enter the wormhole. Upon exiting they would be compacted back to their normal size.

Seen from outside, these forces of stretching and compaction would seem infinite, but the traveller himself, living it first-hand, would experience only extremely intense, and not infinite, forces. It is unlikely that the star of Interstellar would survive a journey like this, but the model proposed by IFIC researchers posits that matter would not be lost inside the singularity, but rather would be expelled out the other side through the wormhole at its centre to another region of the universe.

Another problem that this interpretation resolves, according to Olmo, is the need to use exotic energy sources to generate wormholes. In Einstein's theory of gravity, these "doors" only appear in the presence of matter with unusual properties (a negative energy pressure or density), something which has never been observed. "In our theory, the wormhole appears out of ordinary matter and energy, such as an electric field" (Olmo).

Credit: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss

The interest in wormholes for theoretical physics goes beyond generating tunnels or doors in spacetime to connect two points in the Universe. They would also help explain phenomena such as quantum entanglement or the nature of elementary particles. Thanks to this new interpretation, the existence of these objects could be closer to science than fiction.


Other articles on the same theme:

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• What form does the atomic nucleus? New discovery may explain the mysteries of the Universe.

• The First Stars in the Universe could provide clues about Dark Matter

• Astronomers issued a shocking theory about the universe: 'The Universe is Flat!'

Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by sciencedaily . Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.