The mechanism of molecular self-organization was assessed in a new model by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS). In their study, they simulated how environmental factors such as temperature influence the size of oil droplets in elastic matrices. The study will also help understanding droplet formation in biological cells, where biological molecules self-organize in condensates. The full paper was recently published in the renowned journal PNAS. In biology, proper regulation of the cell’s interior is…

Quantum computer experiments at UMD show that combining quantum computer pieces doesn’t have to mean combining their error rates. Pobody’s nerfect—not even the indifferent, calculating bits that are the foundation of computers. But JQI Fellow Christopher Monroe’s group, together with colleagues from Duke University, have made progress toward ensuring we can trust the results of quantum computers even when they are built from pieces that sometimes fail. They have shown in an experiment, for the first time, that an assembly…

New measurement method promises spectacular insights into the interior of planets. At the heart of planets, extreme states are to be found: temperatures of thousands of degrees, pressures a million times greater than atmospheric pressure. They can therefore only be explored directly to a limited extent – which is why the expert community is trying to use sophisticated experiments to recreate equivalent extreme conditions. An international research team including the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has adapted an established measurement method to…

A team of scientists from Germany, Sweden and China has discovered a new physical phenomenon: complex braided structures made of tiny magnetic vortices known as skyrmions. Skyrmions were first detected experimentally a little over a decade ago and have since been the subject of numerous studies, as well as providing a possible basis for innovative concepts in information processing that offer better performance and lower energy consumption. Furthermore, skyrmions influence the magnetoresistive and thermodynamic properties of a material. The discovery…

Chinese researchers recently discovered a new effect that can generate spin-polarization in fluid. The new effect, which is called “shear-induced polarization (SIP),” predicts that shear flow can induce polarization in the momentum space. This research was conducted by scientists from the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), together with their collaborators at Peking University and Central China Normal University, who studied polarization induced by shear flow for the first time. Their discoveries were published…

Groundbreaking research success: Computer scientists from the Cognitive Systems Lab at the University of Bremen have now succeeded in an international project to realize a so-called speech neuroprosthetic. With it, imagined speech can be made acoustically audible – without latency in real time. The advancement can help people who have fallen silent due to neurological diseases and cannot communicate with the outside world without external help. Great research successes require international collaboration: For several years, the Cognitive Systems Lab (CSL)…

When it comes to directly imaging Earth-like exoplanets orbiting faraway stars, seeing isn’t always believing. A new Cornell University study finds that next-generation telescopes used to see exoplanets could confuse Earth-like planets with other types of planets in the same solar system. With today’s telescopes, dim distant planets are hard to see against the glare of their host stars, but next-generation tools such as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, currently under development by NASA, will be better at imaging Earth-like…

The last few decades have seen impressive progress in laser-based technologies, which have led to significant advancements in atomic and molecular physics. The development of ultrashort laser pulses now allows scientists to study extremely fast phenomena, like charge transport in molecules and elementary steps of chemical reactions. But beyond that, our ability to observe such processes on the attosecond scale (one quintillionth of a second) means that it is also possible to steer and probe the dynamics of individual electrons…

Lasers, devices that emit light in one direction, with photons traveling at one specific frequency and all with the same phase (coherent), govern the way we communicate today. Although lasers are known to most people as little torches emitting high purity color beams, the workhorse of lasers is actually in the infrared part of spectrum, where our eyes cannot see. The reason for this is that optical fibers are highly transparent to the infrared (1.3-1.6 um), allowing efficient optical transmission…

A team from Bristol’s Quantum Engineering labs has shown how to protect qubits from errors using photons in a silicon chip. Quantum computers are gaining pace. They promise to provide exponentially more computing power for certain very tricky problems. They do this by exploiting the peculiar behaviour of quantum particles, such as photons of light. However, quantum states of particles are very fragile. The quantum bits, or qubits, that underpin quantum computing pick up errors very easily and are damaged…

New telescope will see planetary neighbors’ atmospheres. When the world’s most powerful telescope launches into space this year, scientists will learn whether Earth-sized planets in our ‘solar neighborhood’ have a key prerequisite for life — an atmosphere. These planets orbit an M-dwarf, the smallest and most common type of star in the galaxy. Scientists do not currently know how common it is for Earth-like planets around this type of star to have characteristics that would make them habitable. “As a…

Experiments will give scientists a closer look at how exploding stars create world’s heaviest elements. How do the chemical elements, the building blocks of our universe, get built? This question has been at the core of nuclear physics for the better part of a century. At the beginning of the 20th century, scientists discovered that elements have a central core or nucleus. These nuclei consist of various numbers of protons and neutrons. Now, scientists at Michigan State University’s Facility for Rare Isotope…

Like the speed of an advancing race car driver, the winds in the outermost “lane” of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot are accelerating – a discovery only made possible by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, which has monitored the planet for more than a decade. Researchers analyzing Hubble’s regular “storm reports” found that the average wind speed just within the boundaries of the storm, known as a high-speed ring, has increased by up to 8 percent from 2009 to 2020. In contrast,…

… a phenomenon finally understood. Like a work of art enshrined in a museum, some stones end up on a pedestal of ice in nature, with no human intervention. This “Zen stone” phenomenon, named after the stacked stones in Japanese gardens, appears on the surface of frozen lakes, Lake Baikal (Russia) in particular. These structures result from the phenomenon of sublimation, which causes a body, in this case ice, to change from solid to gaseous form without the intermediary form…

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have succeeded in creating tiny vehicles powered by nothing but light. By layering an optical metasurface onto a microscopic particle, and then using a light source to control it, they succeeded in moving the tiny vehicles in a variety of complex and precise ways – and even using them to transport other objects.   WATCH A VIDEO OF THE METAVEHICLES IN ACTION HERE Light has an inherent power to move microscopic objects –…

Different forms of linear transformations, such as the Fourier transform, are widely employed in processing of information in various applications. These transformations are generally implemented in the digital domain using electronic processors, and their computation speed is limited with the capacity of the electronic chip being used, which sets a bottleneck as the data and image size get large. A remedy of this problem might be to replace digital processors with optical counterparts and use light to process information. In…