Electrons flowing like liquids pave way for more-robust quantum computers. As you walk in a crowded shopping mall, it is easier to maintain social distancing when passing through a large atrium than when you are on an escalator. The same is true for electrons: if forced into circumstances where they must move in single file, the electric repulsion between them can alter the flow of electrical current. This gives rise to special material properties that are long sought-after by physicists,…

Computing power of quantum machines is currently still very low. Increasing it is still proving to be a major challenge. Physicists at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, now present a new architecture for a universal quantum computer that overcomes such limitations and could be the basis of the next generation of quantum computers soon. Quantum bits (qubits) in a quantum computer serve as a computing unit and memory at the same time. Because quantum information cannot be copied, it cannot…

Since 2018, when the NASA InSight Mission deployed the SEIS seismometer on the surface of Mars, seismologists and geophysicists at ETH Zurich have been listening to the seismic pings of more than 1,300 marsquakes. Again and again, the researchers registered smaller and larger Mars quakes. A detailed analysis of the quakes’ location and spectral character brought a surprise. With epicentres originating in the vicinity of the Cerberus Fossae – a region consisting of a series of rifts or graben –…

A recently released set of topography maps provides new evidence for an ancient northern ocean on Mars. The maps offer the strongest case yet that the planet once experienced sea-level rise consistent with an extended warm and wet climate, not the harsh, frozen landscape that exists today. “What immediately comes to mind as one the most significant points here is that the existence of an ocean of this size means a higher potential for life,” said Benjamin Cardenas, assistant professor…

Researchers study the energy and angular dependence of how neutrons scatter off materials to improve reactor safety and efficiency. The Science Nuclear fission and fusion reactors use the elements carbon and silicon as shielding and structural materials. Nuclear engineers also use these elements in fuel and in neutron moderators, which control the speed of neutrons to help maintain chain reactions. Silicon carbide, for example, can be used to clad fuel and as a pellet coating that offers protection from accidents such as…

Mainz University succeeds in the first round of the new Carl Zeiss Foundation Wildcard program / Researchers present an innovative approach for enhancing electronic devices. Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) are pursuing a completely new and unconventional strategy to improve the way data can be processed and – in particular – stored. Together with their partners at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, they have been granted funding by the Carl Zeiss Foundation (CZS). The project of this interdisciplinary…

An international team of astrophysicists has made a puzzling discovery while analyzing certain star clusters. The University of Bonn played a major role in the study. The finding challenges Newton’s laws of gravity, the researchers write in their publication. Instead, the observations are consistent with the predictions of an alternative theory of gravity. However, this is controversial among experts. The results have now been published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In their work, the researchers investigated…

A 3D-printed device in a tank of water braids nanowires and moves microparticles. The next generation of phones and wireless devices are going to need new antennae to access higher and higher frequency ranges. One way to make antennae that work at tens of gigahertz — the frequencies needed for 5G and higher devices — is to braid filaments about 1 micrometer in diameter. But today’s industrial fabrication techniques won’t work on fibers that small. Now a team of researchers…

… may one day help with laundry. New research from Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute can help robots feel layers of cloth rather than relying on computer vision tools to only see it. The work could allow robots to assist people with household tasks like folding laundry. Humans use their senses of sight and touch to grab a glass or pick up a piece of cloth. It is so routine that little thought goes into it. For robots, however, these tasks are…

For the first time, physicists have observed novel quantum effects in a topological insulator at room temperature. This breakthrough, published as the cover article of the October issue of Nature Materials, came when Princeton scientists explored a topological material based on the element bismuth. The scientists have used topological insulators to demonstrate quantum effects for more than a decade, but this experiment is the first time these effects have been observed at room temperature. Typically, inducing and observing quantum states…

University of Tübingen astrophysicists combine measurements from different telescopes to uncover mysterious object hidden in a supernova cloud. The lightest neutron star so far found is located at the center of the supernova remnant HESS J1731-347. Dr. Victor Doroshenko, Dr. Valery Suleimanov, Dr. Gerd Pühlhofer and Professor Andrea Santangelo from the High Energy Astrophysics section of the University of Tübingen’s Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics discovered the unusual object with the help of X-ray telescopes in space. According to calculations…

Forty years ago, physicists at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics found a new plasma state that could be particularly suitable for energy production: the H-mode. On 8 November 1982, the corresponding paper was published, giving fusion research a worldwide boost. To this day, the investigation of the H-mode is one of their most important fields of work. The breakthrough came on a Thursday when – as often before – plasmas with neutral beam heating were to be studied…

Team of three researchers with participation from Humboldt-Universität to receive 8 million euros in funding from the European Research Council. Both a future tap-proof quantum Internet and the quantum computer use principles and methods of quantum optics, which deals with the interaction of photons, i.e. light particles, with quantum emitters such as atoms or molecules. Particular progress has recently been made in the field of nonlinear quantum optics. There, one investigates photons that attract or repel each other in a…

Physicists have created the first Bose-Einstein condensate — the mysterious ”‘fifth state” of matter — made from quasiparticles, entities that do not count as elementary particles but that can still have elementary-particle properties like charge and spin. For decades, it was unknown whether they could undergo Bose-Einstein condensation in the same way as real particles, and it now appears that they can. The finding is set to have a significant impact on the development of quantum technologies including quantum computing….

Integration on a chip. Extreme miniaturization of infrared (IR) detectors is critical for their integration into next-generation consumer electronics, wearables and ultra-small satellites. Thus far, however, IR detectors have relied on bulky (and expensive) materials and technologies. A team of scientists lead by Empa researcher Ivan Shorubalko now succeeded in developing a cost-effective miniaturization process for IR spectrometers based on a quantum dot photodetector, which can be integrated on a single chip, as they report in Nature Photonics. Miniaturization of…

Studying the interplay between massive star formation and the interstellar medium is important to understand the evolution of galaxies. An international research team led by Fatemeh Tabatabaei including several scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, performed high-resolution radio observations of the local group galaxy Messier 33 with the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA). Their results show a direct connection between molecular gas and star formation exists in M33. Massive star formation amplifies…