Two of NASA’s Great Observatories, the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope, have captured views of a unique NASA experiment designed to intentionally smash a spacecraft into a small asteroid in the world’s first-ever in-space test for planetary defense. These observations of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) impact mark the first time that Webb and Hubble simultaneously observed the same celestial target. On Sept. 26, 2022, at 7:14 pm EDT, DART intentionally crashed into Dimorphos, the asteroid…

Extreme nonlinear wave group dynamics in directional wave states. Understanding the unpredictable behaviors of ocean waves can be a matter of survival for seafarers. Deep-water wave groups have been known to be unstable and become rogue, causing unsuspecting boats to tip over. This rogue wave behavior results from modulation instability, which generally occurs only for uni-directional waves. Wave focusing — the amplification of waves — is also expected to weaken when interacting with other wave systems. Now, a team led by Kyoto University…

Gemini observation of distant quasar uncovers evidence of first-generation star that died in ‘super-supernova’ explosion. Astronomers may have discovered the ancient chemical remains of the first stars to light up the Universe. Using an innovative analysis of a distant quasar observed by the 8.1-meter Gemini North telescope on Hawai‘i, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab, the scientists found an unusual ratio of elements that, they argue, could only come from the debris produced by the all-consuming explosion of a 300-solar-mass first-generation star….

Researchers at QuTech—a collaboration between the Delft University of Technology and TNO—have engineered a record number of six, silicon-based, spin qubits in a fully interoperable array. Importantly, the qubits can be operated with a low error-rate that is achieved with a new chip design, an automated calibration procedure, and new methods for qubit initialization and readout. These advances will contribute to a scalable quantum computer based on silicon. The results are published in Nature today. Different materials can be used…

Researchers from the University of Rostock and Technion Haifa have created the first three-dimensional topological insulator for light. A judiciously placed screw dislocation allows optical signals to wind around the surface of a synthetic lattice while keeping it protected from scattering. Their discovery has recently been published in the renowned journal “Nature”. Crystals have enthralled humans for thousands of years with their visual beauty and elegant symmetrical shapes, and, more recently, with their numerous technological applications. Fundamentally, these materials are…

New powerful technology reveals lost seabed structures. The ship which sent an iceberg warning to the RMS Titanic, before the ocean-liner sank, has been identified lying in the Irish Sea. In 1912 the merchant steamship SS Mesaba was crossing the Atlantic and sent a warning radio message to the RMS Titanic. The message was received, but never reached the bridge. Later that night, the supposedly unsinkable Titanic hit an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage, taking 1,500 lives and…

Researchers in quantum technology at Chalmers University of Technology have succeeded in developing a technique to control quantum states of light in a three-dimensional cavity. In addition to creating previously known states, the researchers are the first ever to demonstrate the long-sought cubic phase state. The breakthrough is an important step towards efficient error correction in quantum computers. “We have shown that our technology is on par with the best in the world,” says Simone Gasparinetti, who is head of…

… largest-ever catalog. How old is our universe, and what is its size? A team of researchers led by University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa astronomers Brent Tully and Ehsan Kourkchi from the Institute for Astronomy have assembled the largest-ever compilation of high-precision galaxy distances, called Cosmicflows-4. Using eight different methods, they measured the distances to a whopping 56,000 galaxies. The study has been published in the Astrophysical Journal. Galaxies, such as the Milky Way, are the building blocks of the…

Researchers at the Flatiron Institute and their colleagues trained a machine learning tool to capture the physics of electrons moving on a lattice using far fewer equations than would typically be required, all without sacrificing accuracy. Using artificial intelligence, physicists have compressed a daunting quantum problem that until now required 100,000 equations into a bite-size task of as few as four equations — all without sacrificing accuracy. The work, published in the September 23 issue of Physical Review Letters, could…

The device could help scientists explore unknown regions of the ocean, track pollution, or monitor the effects of climate change. Scientists estimate that more than 95 percent of Earth’s oceans have never been observed, which means we have seen less of our planet’s ocean than we have the far side of the moon or the surface of Mars. The high cost of powering an underwater camera for a long time, by tethering it to a research vessel or sending a…

In December 2020, a small landing capsule brought rock particles from the asteroid Ryugu to Earth – material from the beginnings of our solar system. The Japanese space probe Hayabusa 2 had collected the samples. Geoscientist Professor Frank Brenker and his team from Goethe University Frankfurt were among the first researchers wordwide allowed literally to “shed light” on these scientifically precious samples. In the process, they discovered areas with a massive accumulation of rare earths and unexpected structures. As part…

Physicists from Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University demonstrate electron transport on a quantum chip. Millions of quantum bits are required for quantum computers to prove useful in practical applications. The scalability is one of the greatest challenges in the development of future devices. One problem is that the qubits have to be very close to each other on the chip in order to couple them together. Researchers at Forschungszentrum Jülich and RWTH Aachen University have now come a significant…

Fiber link over 75 kilometers enables new QKD experiments. The Thuringian Ministry of Science has provided eleven million euros in funding for developing an infrastructure for quantum communication networks in the Free State Thuringia, Germany. This includes a fiber-based test route between Jena and Erfurt. Partners of the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering IOF have now successfully exchanged quantum keys on the 75 km route for the first time. It is a milestone for the research of…

A research team from Münster and Pittsburgh first examined chiral oxide catalysts. The results are to help in the future production of spin-selective catalytic oxide materials, thus improving the efficiency of chemical reactions. Controlling the spin of electrons opens up future scenarios for applications in spin-based electronics (spintronics), for example in data processing. It also presents new opportunities for controlling the selectivity and efficiency of chemical reactions. Researchers recently presented first successes with the example of water splitting for producing…

New study by international team of scientists reveals an evolving, magnetized environment and surprising source location for deep-space fast radio bursts – observations that defy current understanding. Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are millisecond-long cosmic explosions that each produce the energy equivalent to the sun’s annual output. More than 15 years after the deep-space pulses of electromagnetic radio waves were first discovered, their perplexing nature continues to surprise scientists – and newly published research only deepens the mystery surrounding them. In the…

Theoretical study exploits precision of new heavy ion collision data to predict how gluons are distributed inside protons and neutrons. The Science The nuclei of atoms are made up of protons and neutrons, collectively referred to as nucleons. Nucleons in turn consist of quarks and gluons. Understanding how those inner building blocks are distributed within nuclei can reveal how large protons and neutrons appear when probed at high energy. This work used comparisons between model calculations and new precision data from collisions of heavy…