Best of Last Week–Littlest quark found, cause of Earth's first extinction and short sleepers more likely to catch colds
(Phys.org)—It was another good week for physics as the "littlest" quark-gluon plasma was revealed by physicists using the Large Hadron Collider—the team from the University of Kansas discovered the material believed to have existed when the universe was born, using fewer particles than was thought to be needed. Another team of researchers from China and the U.S. set an efficiency record demonstrating a quantum computer that "computes without running"—the new generalized CFC was demonstrated to have an efficiency of 85 percent. And a pair of researchers, Raphael Bousso and Netta Engelhardt, proposed a new law that implies thermodynamic time runs backwards inside black holes. Also, a team of researchers from several research institutions in the U.S. has produced the first global antineutrino emission map that highlights the Earth's energy budget –they believe it will help scientists monitor new and existing man-made sources of radiation.