Topological quasiparticles with sophisticated spin textures are intriguing objects in particle physics and magnetic materials that exhibit exotic physics and have potential applications in information storage and processing. The most fundamental and exemplary topological spin texture is called the skyrmion, which is a nanoscale circular domain wall carrying a nonzero integer topological charge. The skyrmion texture was recently realized in structured optical fields, as a powerful tool to open new research directions of topological photonics. Since the first observation of…

New research led by NASA provides a closer look at a nearby star thought to resemble our young Sun. The work allows scientists to better understand what our Sun may have been like when it was young, and how it may have shaped the atmosphere of our planet and the development of life on Earth. Many people dream of meeting with a younger version of themselves to exchange advice, identify the origins of their defining traits, and share hopes for the…

New research published in Nature has revealed the solution to Jupiter’s ‘energy crisis’, which has puzzled astronomers for decades. Space scientists at the University of Leicester worked with colleagues from the Japanese Space Agency (JAXA), Boston University, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) to reveal the mechanism behind Jupiter’s atmospheric heating. Now, using data from the Keck Observatory in Hawai’i, astronomers have created the most-detailed yet global map of the gas…

Superflares, extreme radiation bursts from stars, have been suspected of causing lasting damage to the atmospheres and thus habitability of exoplanets. A newly published study found evidence that they only pose a limited danger to planetary systems, since the radiation bursts do not explode in the direction of the exoplanets. Using optical observations from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP), in collaboration with scientists in the US and Spain, studied large…

Quantum information could be behind the next technological revolution. By analogy with the bit in classical computing, the qubit is the basic element of quantum computing. However, demonstrating the existence of this information storage unit and using it remains complex, and hence limited. In a study published on 3 August 2021 in Physical Review X, an international research team consisting of CNRS researcher Fabio Pistolesi1 and two foreign researchers used theoretical calculations to show that it is possible to realize…

Droplet breakup shows how lower stomach contraction waves classify foods. In efforts to fight obesity and enhance drug absorption, scientists have extensively studied how gastric juices in the stomach break down ingested food and other substances. However, less is known about how the complex flow patterns and mechanical stresses produced in the stomach contribute to digestion. Researchers from France, Michigan, and Switzerland built a prototype of an artificial antrum, or lower stomach, to present a deeper understanding of how physical…

Shortly after it formed, the Moon was covered in a global ocean of molten rock (magma). As the magma ocean cooled and solidified, dense minerals sank to form the mantle layer, while less-dense minerals floated to form the surface crust. Later intense bombardment by massive asteroids and comets punched through the crust, blasting out pieces of mantle and scattering them across the lunar surface. Recently, a pair of NASA studies identified the most likely locations to find pieces of mantle on…

Artificial intelligence (AI) will in future enable drones to provide precise information on the occurrence of weeds in cereal crops and pinpoint where in the field which plant species is present and in which density. Better precision in crop protection will help to reduce environmental impacts and improve biodiversity in the field. The project ‘weed-AI-seek’ (coordinated by ATB) is aimed at an intelligent monitoring and mapping system that focuses on the real-time assessment of weed distribution in cereal crops. The…

A team at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has designed and commissioned the production of a computer chip that implements post-quantum cryptography very efficiently. Such chips could provide protection against future hacker attacks using quantum computers. The researchers also incorporated hardware trojans in the chip in order to study methods for detecting this type of “malware from the chip factory”. Hacker attacks on industrial operations are no longer science fiction – far from it. Attackers can steal information on…

NASA mission will study the creation of the solar wind. On July 23, 2021, the Polarimeter to UNify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH) mission achieved an important milestone, passing its latest NASA review and entering the final mission design phase with a new launch-readiness target of October 2023. Southwest Research Institute is leading PUNCH, a NASA Small Explorer (SMEX) mission that will integrate understanding of the Sun’s corona, the outer atmosphere visible during total solar eclipses, with the “solar wind”…

In space, autonomous robots are supposed to fulfil diverse tasks. In order to meet the respective requirements, existing systems are strongly mission-specific. The downside: If the mission requirements change, a completely new development might be necessary. The German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) and the University of Bremen want to initiate a paradigm shift in space robotics with the help of the recently launched ModKom project. By developing a modular system, the usually highly specialized robots are to be…

Data science specialist CASUS and the research consortium PIONEER ally in the fight against prostate cancer. The Center for Advanced Systems Understanding (CASUS) at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has joined PIONEER, a 12.8m euro project funded by the public-private partnership Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 (IMI2). The HZDR is PIONEER’s 36th member. The European consortium aims to transform the field of prostate cancer care by unlocking the potential of big data and big data analytics. Spread all across Europe, databases from…

Magnetic fields around black holes decay quickly, report researchers from the Flatiron Institute, Columbia University and Princeton University. This finding backs up the so-called ‘no-hair conjecture’ predicted by Einstein’s general relativity. Black holes aren’t what they eat. Einstein’s general relativity predicts that no matter what a black hole consumes, its external properties depend only on its mass, rotation and electric charge. All other details about its diet disappear. Astrophysicists whimsically call this the no-hair conjecture. (Black holes, they say, “have…

Research team develops new method to study astrophysical processes in the laboratory. In the depths of space, there are celestial bodies where extreme conditions prevail: Rapidly rotating neutron stars generate super-strong magnetic fields. And black holes, with their enormous gravitational pull, can cause huge, energetic jets of matter to shoot out into space. An international physics team with the participation of the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has now proposed a new concept that could allow some of these extreme processes to…

Using data from the MUSE instrument, researchers at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) succeeded in detecting extremely faint planetary nebulae in distant galaxies. The method used, a filter algorithm in image data processing, opens up new possibilities for cosmic distance measurement – and thus also for determining the Hubble constant. Planetary nebulae are known in the neighbourhood of the Sun as colourful objects that appear at the end of a star’s life as it evolves from the red…

Researchers at the University of Regensburg track the first step of the reaction of one single dye pigment with oxygen at unprecedented resolution. Why is it that the colours of a t-shirt fade over time in the sun? Why do you get a sunburn, and why do the leaves of a tree turn brown in the autumn? These questions all have one theme in common, the interplay between dye pigments and ambient oxygen. Every child learns about this chemical reaction…