Perovskite Tandem Solar Cells, a new type of solar cell technology, promise highest efficiencies at a low price tag and could revolutionize energy production in space. Together with his collaborators at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and Technical University of Berlin, Dr. Felix Lang from the University of Potsdam launched the first perovskite tandem solar cells into space to test their performance with extreme radiation levels and temperature cycles. Recently, he successfully received the first data from his experiment. July 9, 2024 was…

Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a laser that produces the strongest ultra-short laser pulses to date. In the future, such high power pulses could be used for precision measurements or materials processing. In brief Researchers have developed a laser that can produce extremely short pulses with peak powers up to 100 megawatts and 550 watts of average power. This was made possible by an optimized arrangement of the mirrors in the laser and improvements of a special mirror, which…

…with Gaia and machine learning. A group of scientists led by the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) and the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) have used a novel machine learning model to process data for 217 million stars observed by the Gaia mission in an extremely efficient way. The results are competitive with traditional methods used to estimate stellar parameters. This new approach opens up exciting opportunities to map characteristics like interstellar extinction and…

Machine learning-equipped camera systems can be an effective and low-cost flood defence tool, researchers show. Smart CCTV systems trained to spot blockages in urban waterways could become an important future tool in flood prevention, new research published today has found. Researchers at the University of Bath have shown that their AI-enabled detection software, ‘AI on The River’ trained to accurately detect natural debris, litter or waste blocking trash screens mounted in culverts, can be integrated to existing CCTV systems to…

A research team led by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has devised a unique method to observe changes in materials at the atomic level. The technique opens new avenues for understanding and developing advanced materials for quantum computing and electronics. The new technique, called the Rapid Object Detection and Action System, or RODAS, combines imaging, spectroscopy and microscopy methods to capture the properties of fleeting atomic structures as they form, providing unprecedented insights into how material properties evolve at the smallest scales. Traditional…

Astronomers have observed Jupiter’s legendary Great Red Spot (GRS), an anticyclone large enough to swallow Earth, for at least 150 years. But there are always new surprises – especially when NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope takes a close-up look at it. Hubble’s new observations of the famous red storm, collected 90 days between December 2023 to March 2024, reveal that the GRS is not as stable as it might look. The recent data show the GRS jiggling like a bowl of gelatin. The…

Boron could help the tungsten wall inside a tokamak keep its atoms to itself. Fusion researchers are increasingly turning to the element tungsten when looking for an ideal material for components that will directly face the plasma inside fusion reactors known as tokamaks and stellarators. But under the intense heat of fusion plasma, tungsten atoms from the wall can sputter off and enter the plasma. Too much tungsten in the plasma would substantially cool it, which would make sustaining fusion reactions very challenging. Now, researchers at…

EU project “MiCCrobioTAckle” studies the gut microbiome in cancer and promotes young scientists for microbiota medicine. By Friederike Gawlik The new EU-funded international research network “MiCCrobioTAckle” will investigate the role of the gut microbiome in tumor cachexia and develop new treatment approaches. Twelve doctoral candidates will receive comprehensive training from research and industry to become experts in the microbiota. The Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology – Hans Knöll Institute (Leibniz-HKI) is coordinating the consortium and leading…

NASA’s Curiosity rover, currently exploring Gale crater on Mars, is providing new details about how the ancient Martian climate went from potentially suitable for life – with evidence for widespread liquid water on the surface – to a surface that is inhospitable to terrestrial life as we know it. Although the surface of Mars is frigid and hostile to life today, NASA’s robotic explorers at Mars are searching for clues as to whether it could have supported life in the…

James Webb Space Telescope reveals elusive details in young star systems. Astronomers have discovered new details of gas flows that sculpt planet-forming disks and shape them over time, offering a glimpse into how our own solar system likely came to be. Every second, more than 3,000 stars are born in the visible universe. Many are surrounded by what astronomers call a protoplanetary disk – a swirling “pancake” of hot gas and dust from which planets form. The exact processes that…

Major breakthrough for the development of diamond-based quantum computers. Quantum computers and quantum communication are pioneering technologies for data processing and transmission that is much faster and more secure than with conventional computers. Qubits are the basic units of information in quantum computers; they are the quantum mechanical counterparts of the bits in ordinary data processing. Where, for example, laser pulses in a glass fiber transport information from A to B in classical digital communication, quantum mechanics uses individual photons….

Introducing diffraction casting, optical-based parallel computing. Increasingly complex applications such as artificial intelligence require ever more powerful and power-hungry computers to run. Optical computing is a proposed solution to increase speed and power efficiency but has yet to be realized due to constraints and drawbacks. A new design architecture, called diffraction casting, seeks to address these shortcomings. It introduces some concepts to the field of optical computing that might make it more appealing for implementation in next-generation computing devices. Whether…

The tiny device uses a tightly focused beam of light to capture and manipulate cells. MIT researchers have developed a miniature, chip-based “tractor beam,” like the one that captures the Millennium Falcon in the film “Star Wars,” that could someday help biologists and clinicians study DNA, classify cells, and investigate the mechanisms of disease. Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the device uses a beam of light emitted by a silicon-photonics chip to manipulate particles millimeters away…

International team produces global maps of coronal magnetic field. For the first time, scientists have taken near-daily measurements of the Sun’s global coronal magnetic field, a region of the Sun that has only been observed irregularly in the past. The resulting observations are providing valuable insights into the processes that drive the intense solar storms that impact fundamental technologies, and thus lives and livelihoods, here on Earth. An analysis of the data, collected over eight months by an instrument called…

DFKI optimizes system development with hybrid AI and human feedback. Recent developments in robotics have brought the vision of robots taking over complex tasks as personal assistants and interaction partners for humans within reach. Researchers at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) have taken an important step in this direction as part of the M-Rock project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Using innovative approaches based on hybrid AI methods and human feedback,…

Everyday experience tells us that light reflected from a perfectly flat mirror will give us the correct image without any deformation. Interestingly, this is not the case when the light field itself is structured in a complex way. Tiny deformations appear. These have now been observed for the first time in the laboratory by researchers at Tampere University. The results confirm the prediction of this fundamental optical effect made more than a decade ago. They also show how it can…