Mobile radar device pinpoints signs of life When someone is buried by an avalanche, earthquake or other disaster, a rapid rescue can make the difference between life and death. The Fraunhofer Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques FHR has developed a new kind of mobile radar device that can search hectare-sized areas quickly and thoroughly. The new technology combines greater mobility with accurate detection of vital signs. Some regions of the world record hundreds of earth tremors a…

Scientists typically prefer to work with ordered systems. However, a diverse team of physicists and biophysicists from the University of Groningen found that individual light-harvesting nanotubes with disordered molecular structures still transport light energy in the same way. By combining spectroscopy, molecular dynamics simulations and theoretical physics, they discovered how disorder at the molecular level is effectively averaged out at the microscopic scale. The results were published on 28 September in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. The double-walled…

It is usually believed that ferroelectricity can appear in insulating or semiconducting materials rather than in metals, because conducting electrons of metals always screen out the internal static electric field arising from the dipole moments. In 1965, Anderson and Blount proposed the concept of ‘ferroelectric metal’, pointing out that the electric polarization may appear in certain martensitic transitions due to the inversion symmetry breaking [Anderson et al. Phys Rev Lett 1965, 14, 217-219]. However, after exploration of more than a…

Scientists often refer to the neutrino as the “ghost particle.” Neutrinos were one of the most abundant particles at the origin of the universe and remain so today. Fusion reactions in the sun produce vast armies of them, which pour down on the Earth every day. Trillions pass through our bodies every second, then fly through the Earth as though it were not there. “While first postulated almost a century ago and first detected 65 years ago, neutrinos remain shrouded in mystery because…

In the coming years and decades, various nations want to explore the moon, and plan to send astronauts there again for this purpose. But on our inhospitable satellite, space radiation poses a significant risk. The Apollo astronauts carried so-called dosimeters with them, which performed rudimentary measurements of the total radiation exposure during their entire expedition to the moon and back again. In the current issue (25 September) of the prestigious journal Science Advances, Chinese and German scientists report for the…

A new system, developed by Tohoku University researchers in Japan in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US, takes 3D images that can detect defects in metallic structures. The approach was published in the journal Applied Physics Letters and could enhance safety in power plants and airplanes. Yoshikazu Ohara and colleagues at Tohoku University use non-destructive techniques to study structures, and wanted to find a way to produce 3D images of structural defects. They developed a new technology,…

CHEOPS keeps its promise: Observations with the space telescope reveal details of the exoplanet WASP-189b – one of the most extreme planets known. CHEOPS is a joint mission by the European Space Agency (ESA) and Switzerland, under the aegis of the University of Bern in collaboration with the University of Geneva. Eight months after the space telescope CHEOPS started its journey into space, the first scientific publication using data from CHEOPS has been issued. CHEOPS is the first ESA mission…

Orchids are quite decorative. However, many orchid species are also threatened by land conversion and illegal harvesting. But only a fraction of those species is included in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, because assessments require a lot of time, resources and expertise. A new approach, an automated assessment developed under the lead of biodiversity researchers from Central Germany, now shows that almost 30% of all orchid species are possibly threatened. The findings have been published in Conservation Biology…

Through a one-of-a-kind experiment at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, nuclear physicists have precisely measured the weak interaction between protons and neutrons. The result quantifies the weak force theory as predicted by the Standard Model of Particle Physics. The team’s weak force observation, detailed in Physical Review Letters, was measured through a precision experiment called n3He, or n-helium-3, that ran at ORNL’s Spallation Neutron Source, or SNS. Their finding yielded the smallest uncertainty of any comparable weak…

Nanoscale vortices known as skyrmions can be created in many magnetic materials. For the first time, researchers at PSI have managed to create and identify antiferromagnetic skyrmions with a unique property: critical elements inside them are arranged in opposing directions. Scientists have succeeded in visualising this phenomenon using neutron scattering. Their discovery is a major step towards developing potential new applications, such as more efficient computers. The results of the research are published today in the journal Nature. Whether a…

Bringing the power of the sun to Earth requires sound theory, good engineering, and a little finesse. The process entails trapping charged, ultra-hot gas known as plasma so its particles can fuse and release enormous amounts of energy. The most widely used facilities for this process are doughnut-shaped tokamaks that hold plasma in place with strong magnets that are precisely shaped and positioned. But errors in the shaping or placement of these magnets can lead to poor confinement and loss…

These systems could potentially overcome computational hurdles faced by current digital technologies. In the September issue of the journal Nature, scientists from Texas A&M University, Hewlett Packard Labs and Stanford University have described a new nanodevice that acts almost identically to a brain cell. Furthermore, they have shown that these synthetic brain cells can be joined together to form intricate networks that can then solve problems in a brain-like manner. “This is the first study where we have been able…

It uses terahertz radiation to power a miniscule copper accelerator structure. Particle accelerators generate high-energy beams of electrons, protons and ions for a wide range of applications, including particle colliders that shed light on nature’s subatomic components, X-ray lasers that film atoms and molecules during chemical reactions and medical devices for treating cancer. As a rule of thumb, the longer the accelerator, the more powerful it is. Now, a team led by scientists at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National…

While in a three-dimensional world, all particles must be either fermions or bosons, it is known that in fewer dimensions, the existence of particles with intermediate quantum statistics, known as anyons, is possible. Such fascinating objects are strongly believed to exist as emerging quasiparticles in fractional quantum Hall systems, but despite great efforts, experimental evidence of anyons has remained very limited. Since quantum statistics is defined through the behavior of the phase of the wave function, when two identical particles…

In 2019, the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration delivered the first image of a black hole, revealing M 87*—the supermassive object in the center of M87. The EHT team, including a number of MPIfR scientists, has now analyzed archival data sets from 2009-2013, some of them not published before. The contribution of the APEX telescope is very important for the success of this analysis. The results reveal that the shadow was already present in earlier data, although it could not be…

Scientists analyze sunquakes to pinpoint flare energy source, perhaps predict flare severity. Solar flares are violent explosions on the sun that fling out high-energy charged particles, sometimes toward Earth, where they disrupt communications and endanger satellites and astronauts. But as scientists discovered in 1996, flares can also create seismic activity — sunquakes — releasing impulsive acoustic waves that penetrate deep into the sun’s interior. While the relationship between solar flares and sunquakes is still a mystery, new findings suggest that…