Young stars ejecting plasma could give us clues into the Sun’s past Kyoto, Japan — Down here on Earth we don’t usually notice, but the Sun is frequently ejecting huge masses of plasma into space. These are called coronal mass ejections (CMEs). They often occur together with sudden brightenings called flares, and sometimes extend far enough to disturb Earth’s magnetosphere, generating space weather phenomena including auroras or geomagnetic storms, and even damaging power grids on occasion. Scientists believe that when…
Scientists from the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, Vanderbilt University, City University of New York, University of Nebraska, and University of Iowa have just published new results on asymmetric light-matter waves in the reknowned magazine „Nature“. They have uncovered that low-symmetry crystals can support a new type of wave enabled by optical ‘shear forces’. The results offer new possibilities for compact optical technologies to enable new ways to guide light or to store information optically. We typically…
Arctic researchers and remote sensing experts use AI and HPC to characterize large, unexplored parts of the Earth. Permafrost — ground that has been permanently frozen for two or more years — makes up a large part of the Earth, around 15% of the Northern Hemisphere. Permafrost is important for our climate, containing large amounts of biomass stored as methane and carbon dioxide, making tundra soil a carbon sink. However, permafrost’s innate characteristics and changing nature are not broadly understood….
Creating a virtual reality classroom … School-age children could one day take a class on the moon — with the help of virtual reality, that is. With a $1 million National Science Foundation grant, a multi-university team of researchers will work to expand the possibilities of VR-based education over wireless networks. Led by Bin Li, Penn State associate professor of electrical engineering, the researchers will develop and implement a virtual reality system to create a personalized, collaborative VR platform for…
Researchers at TU Graz have modelled an AI system for automotive radar sensors that filters out interfering signals caused by other radar sensors and dramatically improves object detection. Now the system is to be made more robust to weather and environmental influences as well as new types of interference. In order for driving assistance and safety systems in modern cars to perceive their environment and function reliably in all conceivable situations, they have to rely on sensors such as cameras,…
Space travel can be agonizingly slow: For example, the New Horizons probe took almost 10 years to reach Pluto. Traveling to Proxima Centauri b, the closest habitable planet to Earth, would require thousands of years with even the biggest rockets. Now, researchers calculate in ACS’ Nano Letters that low-power lasers on Earth could launch and maneuver small probes equipped with silicon or boron nitride sails, propelling them to much faster speeds than rocket engines. Instead of catching wind, like the sails on…
An international team of scientists at the European XFEL has taken a snapshot of a cyclic molecule using a novel imaging method. Researchers from the European XFEL, DESY, Universität Hamburg and the Goethe University Frankfurt and other partners used the world’s largest X-ray laser to explode the molecule iodopyridine in order to construct an image of the intact molecule from the resulting fragments. (Nature Physics, DOI 10.1038/s41567-022-01507-0). Exploding a photo subject in order to take its picture? An international research…
New findings enable first direct, real-time images of radiation-sensitive soft nanomaterials in organic solvents. With highly specialized instruments, we can see materials on the nanoscale – but we can’t see what many of them do. That limits researchers’ ability to develop new therapeutics and new technologies that take advantage of their unusual properties. Now, a new method developed by researchers at Northwestern University is using Monte Carlo simulations to extend the capabilities of transmission electron microscopy and answer fundamental questions…
Aston University partners with Pulse Power and Measurement to develop game-changing satellite communication technology. Aston University and Pulse Power and Measurement (PPM) enter three-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) This KTP will allow PPM to access Aston University’s expertise in coherent optical communications network domain techniques Aston University students will benefit from real-world teaching through potential industrial projects and final-year placements Aston University has been working with Pulse Power and Measurement Ltd (PPM) through a knowledge transfer partnership (KTP) to develop…
Scientists studied antimatter in the proton with higher precision than ever before, revealing insights into the particle’s puzzling dynamics. The Science The proton is a positively charged particle that exists at the center of every atom. It is a confined complex system of strongly interacting fundamental particles, quarks, and the nuclear force carriers, gluons. Its properties like charge are dominated by an excess of three quarks — two “up” quarks and one “down” quark, called valence quarks. However, take a closer look,…
In a first for imaging, new microscope captures details, 3D motion of molecules in liquid. Understanding the nitty gritty of how molecules interact with each other in the real, messy, dynamic environment of a living body is a challenge that must be overcome in order to understand a host of diseases, such as Alzheimer’s. Until now, researchers could capture the motion of a single molecule, and they could capture its rotation — how it tumbles as it bumps into surrounding…
Eddies in an exotic liquid known as a superfluid merge to form large vortices, analogous to how cyclones form in the turbulent atmosphere. The new research, by a team from The University of Queensland, the ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems (EQUS) and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Future Low-Energy Electronics Technologies (FLEET) will be important for emerging technological applications of superfluidity, such as precision sensing. Lead author and theorist Dr Matt Reeves said the team’s results…
Optimized approach simplifies underwater optical data links; could enable devices that transmit data and produce power. Although solar cells are typically designed to turn light into power, researchers have shown that they can also be used to achieve underwater wireless optical communication with high data rates. The new approach—which used an array of series-connected solar cells as detectors—could offer a cost-effective, low-energy way to transmit data underwater. “There is a critical need for efficient underwater communication to meet the increasing…
The MATISSE instrument at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope Interferometer has observed a cloud of cosmic dust at the centre of the galaxy NGC 1068 (also known as Messier 77 or M77) hiding a supermassive black hole. The findings of an international team of astronomers including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, have confirmed predictions made around 30 years ago and are giving astronomers new insight into the mechanisms of “active galactic…
University of Wisconsin–Madison physicists have made one of the highest performance atomic clocks ever, they announced Feb. 16 in the journal Nature. Their instrument, known as an optical lattice atomic clock, can measure differences in time to a precision equivalent to losing just one second every 300 billion years and is the first example of a “multiplexed” optical clock, where six separate clocks can exist in the same environment. Its design allows the team to test ways to search for…
Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a new algorithm that allows them to model the dynamics of physical systems from observations. In the future it could be applied to the onset of turbulence and tipping points in climate. Modelling dynamically evolving physical systems is at the core of science and technology. Engineers need to know how the wings of a new airplane model will vibrate under particular flight conditions, and climate scientists are trying to predict how global temperatures and…
Rice lab’s RAMBO reveals unexpected influence on compound’s crystal lattice. Phonons are collective atomic vibrations, or quasiparticles, that act as the main heat carriers in a crystal lattice. Under certain circumstances, their properties can be modified by electric fields or light. But until now, nobody noticed they can respond to magnetic fields as well. That may be because it takes a powerful magnet. Rice University scientists led by physicist Junichiro Kono and postdoctoral researcher Andrey Baydin triggered the unexpected effect in a totally nonmagnetic semiconducting crystal of…
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