Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization show that the secret to optimal micro-swimming is out there in the nature. They prove that a microswimmer can increase its swimming efficiency by learning the swimming techniques from an unexpected mentor: an air bubble. Engineers have spent considerable efforts to improve the fuel economy of aircraft, cars or ships in the past decades. A similar process has been going on in biology, where swimming microorganisms have evolved over hundreds…

Physicists from Göttingen first to succeed in filming a phase transition with extremely high spatial and temporal resolution. Laser beams can be used to change the properties of materials in an extremely precise way. This principle is already widely used in technologies such as rewritable DVDs. However, the underlying processes generally take place at such unimaginably fast speeds and at such a small scale that they have so far eluded direct observation. Researchers at the University of Göttingen and the…

It’s cool to be small. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have miniaturized the optical components required to cool atoms down to a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, the first step in employing them on microchips to drive a new generation of super-accurate atomic clocks, enable navigation without GPS, and simulate quantum systems. Cooling atoms is equivalent to slowing them down, which makes them a lot easier to study. At room temperature, atoms…

Scientists from the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) and The University of Western Australia (UWA) have set a world record for the most stable transmission of a laser signal through the atmosphere. In a study published today in the journal Nature Communications, Australian researchers teamed up with researchers from the French National Centre for Space Studies (CNES) and the French metrology lab Systèmes de Référence Temps-Espace (SYRTE) at Paris Observatory. The team set the world record for the most stable…

What goes on in the sun can only be observed indirectly. Sunspots, for instance, reveal the degree of solar activity – the more sunspots are visible on the surface of the sun, the more active is our central star deep inside. Even though sunspots have been known since antiquity, they have only been documented in detail since the invention of the telescope around 400 years ago. Thanks to that, we now know that the number of spots varies in regular…

Scientists have combined NASA data and cutting-edge image processing to gain new insight into the solar structures that create the Sun’s flow of high-speed solar wind, detailed in new research published today in The Astrophysical Journal. This first look at relatively small features, dubbed “plumelets,” could help scientists understand how and why disturbances form in the solar wind. The Sun’s magnetic influence stretches billions of miles, far past the orbit of Pluto and the planets, defined by a driving force:…

Scientists at the University of Bonn have built hair-thin optical fibre filters in a very simple way. They are not only extremely compact and stable, but also colour-tunable. This means they can be used in quantum technology and as sensors for temperature or for detecting atmospheric gases. The results have been published in the journal “Optics Express”. Optical fibers not much thicker than a human hair today not only constitute the backbone of our world-wide information exchange. They are also…

ZIM cooperation network on AI-based agricultural robotics launched The recently approved ZIM cooperation network “DeepFarmbots” met virtually for its official kick-off on November 25. The central goal of the network is to develop and disseminate new agricultural robotics solutions for efficient and sustainable agriculture. In an interdisciplinary approach, agricultural robotics is to be linked with new deep learning methods and the synergy effects between the partners are to be deepened. The Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) is participating…

… using AI and supercomputers UT Arlington computer scientists use TACC systems to generate synthetic objects for robot training. Before he joined the University of Texas at Arlington as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and founded the Robotic Vision Laboratory there, William Beksi interned at iRobot, the world’s largest producer of consumer robots (mainly through its Roomba robotic vacuum). To navigate built environments, robots must be able to sense and make decisions about how…

Transport processes are ubiquitous in nature but still raise many questions. The research team around Florian Meinert from the 5th Institute of Physics at the University of Stuttgart has now developed a new method that allows them to observe a single charged particle on its path through a dense cloud of ultracold atoms. The results were published in the prestigious journal Physical Review Letters and are subject in a Viewpoint of the accompanying popular science journal Physics. Meinert‘s team uses…

Computer simulations of cells evolving over tens of thousands of generations reveal why some organisms retain a disused switch mechanism that turns on under severe stress, changing some of their characteristics. Maintaining this “hidden” switch is one means for organisms to maintain a high degree of gene expression stability under normal conditions. Tomato hornworm larvae are green in warmer regions, making camouflage easier, but black in cooler temperatures so that they can absorb more sunlight. This phenomenon, found in some…

Complex production processes in highly flexible and networked manufacturing systems require all processes and distributed systems to be able to exchange their data extremely reliably and with only short delay times. For this so-called “Ultra Reliable and Low Latency Communication” (URLLC), the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), a worldwide cooperation for the standardization of mobile communication technologies, is developing a new standard for future 5G products. The Fraunhofer-Institute for Production Technology IPT and the Swedish mobile communications supplier Ericsson are…

Hard X-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) have delivered intense, ultrashort X-ray pulses for over a decade. One of the most promising applications of XFELs is in biology, where researchers can capture images down to the atomic scale even before the radiation damage destroys the sample. In physics and chemistry, these X-rays can also shed light on the fastest processes occurring in nature with a shutter speed lasting only one femtosecond – equivalent to a millionth of a billionth of a second….

Fabian Schneider leads the new research group “Stellar Evolution Theory” (SET) at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies (HITS). The astrophysicist explores the turbulent life of massive binary stars and their explosive deaths in supernovae. He was awarded an ERC Starting Grant of about € 1.5 million by the European Research Council (ERC). He will use the funds to establish his own junior research group at HITS. Stars are the basic building blocks of the visible Universe. Astrophysicists are particularly…

Research team confirms a new nuclear property predicted by theory Scientists are able to selectively knockout nucleons and preformed nuclear clusters from atomic nuclei using high-energy proton beams. In an experiment performed at the Research Center for Nuclear Physics (RCNP) in Osaka in Japan, the existence of preformed helium nuclei at the surface of several tin isotopes could be identified in a reaction. The results confirm a theory, which predicts the formation of helium clusters in low-density nuclear matter and…

Heidelberg astrophysicists study interstellar gas clouds as part of an international cooperation Computer simulations of turbulence in interstellar gas and molecular clouds – simulations so complex they were inconceivable until now – have provided important new insights into the role turbulence plays in the formation of stars. For the first time, the results of the calculations suggest how these turbulent movements transition from the supersonic to the subsonic range. The work was conducted by an international research team led by…