A Snapshot of the Inside of an Atom - ScienceNOW

A Snapshot of the Inside of an Atom - ScienceNOW: ...the team first fired two lasers at hydrogen atoms inside a chamber, kicking off electrons at speeds and directions that depended on their underlying wave functions. A strong electric field inside the chamber guided the electrons to positions on a planar detector that depended on their initial velocities rather than on their initial positions. So the distribution of electrons striking the detector matched the wave function the electrons had at the moment they left their hydrogen nuclei behind. The apparatus displays the electron distribution on a phosphorescent screen as light and dark rings, which the team photographed using a high-resolution digital camera.

The World's Most Sensitive Scale Can Weigh Single Protons

The World's Most Sensitive Scale Can Weigh Single Protons: A group of scientists at the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology have created a new scale (and process for weighing) that increases the accuracy of small-scale, um, scales to new heights. Their new scale, which uses short nanotubes at very low temperatures, was able to measure the vibration of items down to a single yoctogram, one septillionth of a gram. For some (possible helpful) scale (that word again!), a single proton weighs 1.7 yoctograms. The scale could be used in the future for medical diagnostics as well as research.

Magnetic properties of a single proton directly observed for the first time

Magnetic properties of a single proton directly observed for the first time: The proton has an intrinsic angular momentum or spin, just like other particles. It is like a tiny bar magnet; in this analogy, a spin quantum jump would correspond to a (switch) flip of the magnetic poles. However, detecting the proton spin is a major challenge. While the magnetic moments of the electron and its anti-particle, the positron, were already being measured and compared in the 1980s, this has yet to be achieved in the case of the proton. "We have long been aware of the magnetic moment of the proton, but it has thus far not been observed directly for a single proton but only in the case of particle ensembles..."
The real problem is that the magnetic moment of the proton is 660 times smaller than that of the electron, which means that it is considerably harder to detect.

Proton dripping tests a fundamental force in nature

Proton dripping tests a fundamental force in nature: Like gravity, the strong interaction is a fundamental force of nature. It is the essential "glue" that holds atomic nuclei—composed of protons and neutrons— together to form atoms, the building blocks of nearly all the visible matter in the universe. Despite its prevalence in nature, researchers are still searching for the precise laws that govern the strong force. However, the recent discovery of an extremely exotic, short-lived nucleus called fluorine-14 in laboratory experiments may indicate that scientists are gaining a better grasp of these rules.
Fluorine-14 comprises nine protons and five neutrons. It exists for a tiny fraction of a second before a proton "drips" off, leaving an oxygen-13 nucleus behind.

Proton puzzle: Trouble at the heart of the atom - physics-math - 30 March 2011 - New Scientist

Proton puzzle: Trouble at the heart of the atom: Measuring the muons' orbital energy levels meant first guessing the gaps between the two levels of interest, so a laser could be tuned to the right frequency to bump a muon from one level to another. The team did this by reversing the QED equations and plugging in the accepted value for the proton's radius to give an estimated starting point.

In the first couple of attempts to run the full experiment, in 2003 and 2007, that approach didn't work: the muons did not respond. It was only in 2009, when the team had a new laser that could reach higher frequencies, that they found the muons' sweet spot and persuaded them to dance. Feeding the experimentally determined energy levels back into the QED calculation produced the shocker. The error on the proton's radius had shrunk by a factor of 10, as expected - but the radius had shrunk too. At 0.8418 femtometres, it was about 4 per cent lower than the previous average...

Particles That Flock: Strange Synchronization Behavior at the Large Hadron Collider: Scientific American

Particles That Flock: Strange Synchronization Behavior at the Large Hadron Collider: Scientific American: "Last summer physicists noticed that some of the particles created by their proton collisions appeared to be synchronizing their flight paths, like flocks of birds. The findings were so bizarre that “we’ve spent all the time since [then] convincing ourselves that what we were see ing was real..." The effect is subtle. When proton collisions result in the release of more than 110 new particles, the scientists found, the emerging particles seem to fly in the same direction.