When light interacts with matter it can substantially change the behavior of the material. Depending on the form of interaction between light and matter, some chemical reactions appear differently, substances turn magnetic or ferroelectric or begin to conduct electricity without any losses. In particularly thrilling cases, an actual light source may not even be necessary because the mere possibility for light to exist, i.e., its quantum equivalent, the photons, can change the behavior of matter. Theoretical scientists try to describe…

An international team of researchers has made the world’s most precise measurement of the neutron’s lifetime, which may help answer questions about the early universe. An international team of physicists led by researchers at Indiana University Bloomington has announced the world’s most precise measurement of the neutron’s lifetime. The results from the team, which encompasses scientists from over 10 national labs and universities in the United States and abroad, represent a more than two-fold improvement over previous measurements — with…

The fundamental forces of physics govern the matter comprising the Universe, yet exactly how these forces work together is still not fully understood. The existence of Hawking radiation — the particle emission from near black holes — indicates that general relativity and quantum mechanics must cooperate. But directly observing Hawking radiation from a black hole is nearly impossible due to the background noise of the Universe, so how can researchers study it to better understand how the forces interact and…

For the first time, researchers have been able capture images providing unprecedented details of how particles behave in a liquid suspension when the phenomenon known as shear thickening takes place. The work allows us to directly understand the processes behind shear thickening, which had previously only been understood based on inference and computational modeling. Shear thickening is a phenomenon that can occur when particles are suspended in a low-viscosity solution. If the concentration of particles is high enough, then when…

Curtin University researchers have helped to determine the age of the youngest rocks ever found on the Moon, as part of a global space mission that is working to refine the chronology of the entire Solar System. The new research, published in Science, determined the basaltic volcanic rocks, collected as part of China’s Chang’e-5 Moon landing in December 2020, were about two billion years old – or one billion years younger than those previously found on the Moon. The rock…

Simulations of supernova explosions of massive stars paired with neutron stars can explain puzzling results from gravitational wave observatories. A new study showing how the explosion of a stripped massive star in a supernova can lead to the formation of a heavy neutron star or a light black hole resolves one of the most challenging puzzles to emerge from the detection of neutron star mergers by the gravitational wave observatories LIGO and Virgo. The first detection of gravitational waves by…

New research by a City College of New York team has uncovered a novel way to combine two different states of matter. For one of the first times, topological photons—light—has been combined with lattice vibrations, also known as phonons, to manipulate their propagation in a robust and controllable way. The study utilized topological photonics, an emergent direction in photonics which leverages fundamental ideas of the mathematical field of topology about conserved quantities—topological invariants—that remain constant when altering parts of a…

Researchers analyzed the accumulated data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and depicted the motion of a young twin star system XZ Tauri over three years. This first-ever “ALMA Animation” of twin stars sheds new light on the origins of the binary stars and the planets to be formed around them. “This achievement was made possible by the high resolution and rich archival data of ALMA,” says Takanori Ichikawa, the first author of the research paper and a former…

A team from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Stanford University and Purdue University developed and demonstrated a novel, fully functional quantum local area network, or QLAN, to enable real-time adjustments to information shared with geographically isolated systems at ORNL using entangled photons passing through optical fiber. This network exemplifies how experts might routinely connect quantum computers and sensors at a practical scale, thereby realizing the full potential of these next-generation technologies on the path toward the…

Interactions of quantum “quasiparticles” demonstrate unusual fluid flow. The Science Researchers have discovered a hard-to-observe type of spin in a quantum mechanical system. In physics, a quantum mechanical system is a set of components that interact at the quantum scale. This is the realm of atoms and subatomic particles such as those defined in the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Spins are magnetic particles in a quantum system. The researchers successfully simulated and measured how spins can exhibit a type of…

Scientists develop groundbreaking theory for calculating what’s happening inside a proton travelling at the speed of light. For more than 2,000 years, scientists thought the atom was the smallest particle possible. Then, they discovered that it has a nucleus made up of protons and neutrons surrounded by electrons. After that, they found that the protons and neutrons themselves have a complex inner world full of quarks and antiquarks held together by a superglue-like force created by gluons. “Protons along with neutrons constitute…

New information could help improve the reliability of communications. A new data source to help scientists better understand the ionosphere and its potential impact on communications and positioning, navigation, and timing—an essential utility for many critical operations—is now available to the public. The data, which was collected by sensors on GPS satellites in 2018, was released todaythrough a collaborative effort by Los Alamos National Laboratory and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “Radio signals from satellite or ground-based transmitters can…

Considered an ultra-hot Jupiter – a place where iron gets vaporized, condenses on the night side and then falls from the sky like rain – the fiery, inferno-like WASP-76b exoplanet may be even more sizzling than scientists had realized. An international team, led by scientists at Cornell University, University of Toronto and Queen’s University Belfast, reports the discovery of ionized calcium on the planet – suggesting an atmospheric temperature higher than previously thought, or strong upper atmosphere winds. The discovery was made…

Fraunhofer IWM presents the »Triboepitaxy« concept… Four scientists from Freiburg have succeeded for the first time to simulate the localized growth of silicon crystals using shear-induced amorphization and recrystallization. In the future, experts could use this concept to tailor crystalline silicon structures for nanotechnology applications, such as nanoelectronics. “Triboepitaxy”, the fundamental idea that could make this possible, is presented by the team in the journal “Physical Review Letters”. Silicon is the most important material in micro- and nanoelectronics. Yet it…

In January 2021, Empa and BASE (Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy) were among the winners of the prestigious Inclusive Growth and Recovery Challenge by data.org, a platform for partnerships committed to build the field of data science for social impact. In their project, the team is developing a mobile app that aims to give smallholder farmers in rural India advice on how to better store their fresh foods and when to sell them. Eight months into the project, the team…

DFKI presents groundbreaking solution for AI-based system development. Whether in the factory, in the operating room or on Mars – the areas of application for modern robots are extremely diverse. This places enormous demands on the capabilities of the systems and leads to increasingly complex development processes. With the completion of the Q-Rock project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the Robotics Innovation Center of the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) presents a…