11 Mind-Blowing Physics Discoveries Made In 2014

With the help of highly sensitive particle detectors, some of the world's most powerful lasers, and good-old-fashioned quantum mechanics, physicists from around the world made important discoveries this year. 

From detecting elusive particles forged in the core of our sun to teleporting quantum data farther than ever before, these physicists' scientific research has helped us better understand the universe in which we live as well as pave the way for a future of quantum computers, nuclear fusion, and more. 

11. Multiple teams detected what could be our first hints of dark matter.

Although dark matter — the mysterious substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe, but is seemingly undetectable to us here on Earth — is still shrouded in mystery, two important discoveries in 2014 shed the first rays of light on this elusive material.

Dark matter makes up 26.8% of our universe, and to know so little about such a large portion of the cosmos is why these studies to better understand this elusive material are so important.

In September 2014, scientists published, in the journal Physical Review Letters, an unusual measurement from the space-based detector called the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). The detector measured an unexpected excess of positrons — the antiparticle to electrons — inside of high-energy radiation from space called cosmic rays. One explanation for this excess is the decay of dark matter. 

Then, a few months later, a team of scientists discovered another possible source of dark matter. Using the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton spacecraft and NASA's space-based Chandra X-ray Observatory, two groups of scientists measured a surprising spike in X-ray emissions that were coming from the Andromeda galaxy and the Perseus galaxy cluster. No known particle can explain this spike, leading the scientists to suspect more mysterious causes, one being dark matter, which they report in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Despite neither of these surprising measurements actually confirming the detection of dark matter, they are an important step in nailing down, once and for all, what our universe is made of. 

10. For the first time, physicists figured out the chemical composition of the mysterious and extremely rare phenomenon of "ball lightning."

Reports of ball lighting stretch back as far as the 16^th century, but until the 1960s most scientists refused to believe it was real. But, it is real. Ball lighting is a floating sphere or disk of lightning up to 10 feet across that lasts only seconds.

This year, however, scientists in China not only added to the surmounting evidence supporting ball lightning’s existence, they also took the first spectrum of the rare phenomenon. A spectrum is the rainbow of individual wavelengths of light from a given source, and is used to figure out its chemical make up because different atoms give off different energies (and therefore colors) of light when excited. 

In the ball lightnings' spectra, the physicists saw minerals from soil, which supports the theory that ball lightning forms after a bolt of lighting strikes the ground. The lightning vaporizes the silicon in the soil, making a floating ball of silicon that interacts with oxygen in the air, making it glow.

The physicists announced their discovery last January in the journal Physical Review Letters. 

9. An analog of the theoretical radiation made by black holes was recreated in the lab.

Last October, Jeff Steinhauer, a physicist at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, announced that he had created an analogue for a bizarre type of radiation that can, in theory, escape black holes.

Black holes are objects that have a strong gravitational pull, so once anything passes a certain point, called the event horizon, it is trapped and cannot escape, except for a special kind of radiation called Hawking radiation.

While it has never been observed in space, it was first theorized by Stephen Hawking in 1974. Hawking radiation is important to describe how particles of radiation near the event horizon of a black hole can move from inside of the black hole to outside of it— a behavior that is theoretically possible, according to quantum mechanics.

Steinhauer created a sonic black hole in the lab that traps sound instead of light. This is much easier because sound moves much slower than light.

In a paper published in October in the journal Nature Physics, he describes how he discovered sound waves hopping the "black hole's" event horizon.

This analogue to Hawking radiation could help solve a burning question for physicists who study black holes: If a piece of radiation is encoded with information, like the spin value of particles, and falls into a black hole, is that information lost forever?