Researchers from the University of Southampton, together with colleagues from the universities of Cambridge and Barcelona, have shown it’s theoretically possible for black holes to exist in perfectly balanced pairs – held in equilibrium by a cosmological force – mimicking a single black hole. Black holes are massive astronomical objects that have such a strong gravitational pull that nothing, not even light, can escape. They are incredibly dense. A black hole could pack the mass of the Earth into a…

Research consortium sets standards in the field of open source hardware. The HEP research project has presented an open, flexible design for a security chip. The project “Hardening the value chain through open source, trusted EDA tools and processors (HEP)”, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), uses open source, free components and tools to manufacture a chip at the IHP fab – the Leibniz-Institute for High Performance Microelectronics. The easy accessibility of the used process…

Integrated THz emitter for precise rotating target detection. Researchers integrate terahertz vortex beam emission to advance radar target detection technology. You may not realize it, but the Doppler effect is everywhere in our lives, from tracking the speed of cars with radar to locating satellites in the sky. It’s all about how waves change their frequency when a source (like a radar signal) and a detector are in motion relative to each other. However, traditional radar systems hit a roadblock…

Narrow jet stream near Jupiter’s equator has winds traveling 320 miles per hour. NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has discovered a new, never-before-seen feature in Jupiter’s atmosphere. The high-speed jet stream, which spans more than 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) wide, sits over Jupiter’s equator above the main cloud decks. The discovery of this jet is giving insights into how the layers of Jupiter’s famously turbulent atmosphere interact with each other, and how Webb is uniquely capable of tracking those features….

The ‘wonder material’ graphene is well-known for its high electrical conductivity, mechanical strength, and flexibility. Stacking two layers of graphene with atomic layer thickness produces bilayer graphene, which possesses excellent electrical, mechanical, and optical properties. As such, bilayer graphene has attracted significant attention and is being utilized in a host of next-generation devices, including quantum computers. But complicating their application in quantum computing comes in the form of gaining accurate measurements of the quantum bit states. Most research has primarily…

Quantum sensors make microscale NMR spectroscopy possible. The development of tumors begins with miniscule changes within the body’s cells; ion diffusion at the smallest scales is decisive in the performance of batteries. Until now the resolution of conventional imaging methods has not been high enough to represent these processes in detail. A research team led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has developed diamond quantum sensors which can be used to improve resolution in magnetic imaging. Robin Allert (left)…

Whenever light interacts with matter, light appears to slow down. This is not a new observation and standard wave mechanics can describe most of these daily phenomena. For example, when light is incident on an interface, the standard wave equation is satisfied on both sides. To analytically solve such a problem, one would first find what the wave looks like at either side of the interface, and then employ electromagnetic boundary conditions to link the two sides together. This is…

The seemingly physics-defying properties of quasiparticles could be harnessed for applications ranging from non-destructive imaging to computer-chip manufacturing. An international team of scientists is rethinking the basic principles of radiation physics with the aim of creating super-bright light sources. In a new study published in Nature Photonics, researchers from the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) in Portugal, the University of Rochester, the University of California, Los Angeles, and Laboratoire d’Optique Appliquée in France proposed ways to use quasiparticles to create light…

Hardware processing for AI goes 3D, boosting processing power. A breakthrough development in photonic-electronic hardware could significantly boost processing power for AI and machine learning applications. The approach uses multiple radio frequencies to encode data, enabling multiple calculations to be carried out in parallel. The method shows promise for outperforming state-of-the-art electronic processors, with further enhancements possible. In a paper published today in Nature Photonics, researchers from the University of Oxford, along with collaborators from the Universities of Muenster, Heidelberg,…

An international team has spotted a remote blast of cosmic radio waves lasting less than a millisecond. This ‘fast radio burst’ (FRB) is the most distant ever detected. Its source was pinned down by the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in a galaxy so far away that its light took eight billion years to reach us. The FRB is also one of the most energetic ever observed; in a tiny fraction of a second it released the…

FAU team of researchers succeed for the first time in accelerating electrons using a nano device. Particle accelerators are crucial tools in a wide variety of areas in industry, research and the medical sector. The space these machines require ranges from a few square meters to large research centers. Using lasers to accelerate electrons within a photonic nanostructure constitutes a microscopic alternative with the potential of generating significantly lower costs and making devices considerably less bulky. Until now, no substantial…

An advanced new three-dimensional (3D) computer simulation of the light emitted following a merger of two neutron stars has produced a similar sequence of spectroscopic features to an observed kilonova. “The unprecedented agreement between our simulations and the observation of kilonova AT2017gfo indicates that we understand broadly what has taken place in the explosion and aftermath,” says Luke Shingles, scientist at GSI/FAIR and the leading author of the publication in “The Astrophysical Journal Letters”. Recent observations that combine both gravitational…

A newly discovered type of electronic behavior could help with packing more data into magnetic memory devices. Ordinary pencil lead holds extraordinary properties when shaved down to layers as thin as an atom. A single, atom-thin sheet of graphite, known as graphene, is just a tiny fraction of the width of a human hair. Under a microscope, the material resembles a chicken-wire of carbon atoms linked in a hexagonal lattice. Despite its waif-like proportions, scientists have found over the years…

Pitt researchers receive more than $1.6 million from the NSF to develop miniature robots that can navigate complex terrains using neuroscience concepts. When navigating a busy sidewalk, most people can avoid puddles, other pedestrians, and cracks in the pavement. It may seem intuitive – because it is. There’s a biological component that allows humans and other mammals to navigate our complex environments. Central Pattern Generators (CPG) are neural networks that produce rhythmic patterns of control signals for limbs using simple environmental cues….

From space-wide internet to last-mile connectivity, portable free-space optical communication promises to bridge connectivity gaps on-demand. In a world that relies on high-speed internet and seamless communication, the absence of a reliable fiber connection can be a significant hurdle. Fortunately, a cutting-edge technology known as free-space optical communication (FSO) offers a flexible solution for field-deployable high-speed wireless communication in areas where fiber connections are unavailable. FSO has garnered attention for its versatility across various scales of operation. On a global…

Physicists boost microscopes beyond limits. New technique could be used in medical diagnostics and advanced manufacturing. Ever since Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovered the world of bacteria through a microscope in the late seventeenth century, humans have tried to look deeper into the world of the infinitesimally small. There are, however, physical limits to how closely we can examine an object using traditional optical methods. This is known as the ‘diffraction limit’ and is determined by the fact that light manifests…