To solve a long-standing puzzle about how long a neutron can “live” outside an atomic nucleus, physicists entertained a wild but testable theory positing the existence of a right-handed version of our left-handed universe. They designed a mind-bending experiment at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory to try to detect a particle that has been speculated but not spotted. If found, the theorized “mirror neutron” — a dark-matter twin to the neutron — could explain a discrepancy between answers from two types of neutron lifetime experiments and provide the first observation of dark matter.

Anyone who has ever flown is probably familiar with the concept of turbulence. Yet understanding turbulent flow—how it develops, its intensity, and its properties—remains somewhat elusive. UT’s physicists have helped develop a new technique using excimers created by neutron capture to observe turbulence around macroscopic objects (an airplane, for example, or a ship). Their technique enables measurements of how turbulence behaves over space and time, and can be scaled to work in three dimensions. The work was published in Physical Review Letters (PRL) and was designated an Editor’s Suggestion.