International team of scientists reports in Nature the first detection of a quasi-periodic oscillation signal in the radio band from a Galactic black hole system. Black holes are the most mysterious objects in the universe, with features that sound like they come straight from a sci-fi movie. Stellar-mass black holes with masses of roughly 10 suns, for example, reveal their existence by eating materials from their companion stars. And in some instances, supermassive black holes accumulate at the center of…

Novel magnetic memories are energy-efficient and robust. They are based on ferromagnets with operating frequencies in the gigahertz range. The operating frequency could be further increased with antiferromagnets, which, however, cannot be efficiently excited. Researchers from Kaiserslautern and Mainz have now shown that magnetic heterostructures – based on a thin antiferromagnet/ferromagnet bilayer – can combine the advantages of both material classes: A high working frequency with efficient excitation. The work has been published in the renowned journal Physical Review Letters…

Even for scuba and snorkeling enthusiasts, the plunge into open water can be dislocating. Divers frequently swim with limited visibility, which can become a safety hazard for teams trying to find each other in an emergency. Yet even though many dive with smartwatches designed to go to depths of over 100 feet, accurately locating mobile devices underwater has confounded researchers. Now, a team at the University of Washington has developed the first underwater 3D-positioning app for smart devices. When at…

A German-Chinese research team has successfully created a quantum bit in a semiconductor nanostructure. Using a special energy transition, the researchers created a superposition state in a quantum dot – a tiny area of the semiconductor – in which an electron hole simultaneously possessed two different energy levels. Such superposition states are fundamental for quantum computing. However, excitation of the state would require a large-scale free-electron laser that can emit light in the terahertz range. Additionally, this wavelength is too…

Inspired by the effortless way humans handle objects without seeing them, a team led by engineers at the University of California San Diego has developed a new approach that enables a robotic hand to rotate objects solely through touch, without relying on vision. Using their technique, the researchers built a robotic hand that can smoothly rotate a wide array of objects, from small toys, cans, and even fruits and vegetables, without bruising or squishing them. The robotic hand accomplished these…

… as versatile as a Swiss Army knife, very helpful in times of skilled labor shortage. Utilization-optimized, flexibly arranged production modules equipped via driverless transport systems which can manufacture a variety of products; a production planning and control system that can flexibly allocate these modules and, through segmentation and intelligent distribution of manufacturing tasks, make it possible to produce large-size components in small facilities: Matrix production and SWAP-IT create a production infrastructure that enables highly efficient manufacturing of even smaller…

A spectacular new image released today by the European Southern Observatory gives us clues about how planets as massive as Jupiter could form. Using ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), researchers have detected large dusty clumps, close to a young star, that could collapse to create giant planets. “This discovery is truly captivating as it marks the very first detection of clumps around a young star that have the potential to give rise to…

Construction of Monoatomic Lead Layers with Specially Developed Method Unveiled for the First Time. Research team led by Chemnitz University of Technology synthesizes two-dimensional layer of lead using a novel method and describes its atomic structure in detail for the first time – Publication in renowned journal Advanced Materials Interfaces. Scientists from the Professorship of Analysis of Solid Surfaces (Head: Prof. Dr. Christoph Tegenkamp) and the Professorship of Experimental Physics with a focus on Technical Physics (Head: Prof. Dr. Thomas…

…that allows high-density data storage. Scientists have developed a new urea-based metal-free system that can improve data storage in devices. In today’s world of digital information, an enormous amount of data is exchanged and stored on a daily basis. In the 1980s, IBM unveiled the first hard drive—which was the size of a refrigerator—that could store 1 GB of data, but now we have memory devices that have a thousand-fold greater data-storage capacity and can easily fit in the palm…

HZDR team advances to next step toward neuromorphic computing. Neuromorphic computers do not calculate using zeros and ones. They instead use physical phenomena to detect patterns in large data streams at blazing fast speed and in an extremely energy-efficient manner. In their project NIMFEIA, Katrin and Helmut Schultheiß along with their team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have now taken this technology a tremendous step forward. They also demonstrated that their approach can be seamlessly integrated into conventional chip manufacturing….

… to enable more scientific discoveries. The Spallation Neutron Source at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory set a world record when its particle accelerator beam operating power reached 1.7 megawatts, substantially improving on the facility’s original design capability. The accelerator’s higher power provides more neutrons for researchers who use the facility to study and improve a wide range of materials for more efficient solar panels, longer–lasting batteries and stronger, lighter materials for transportation. The achievement marks a…

The transition to chaos is ubiquitous in nonlinear systems. Continuous-wave-driven photonic-chip-based Kerr microresonators exhibit spatiotemporal chaos, also known as chaotic modulation instability. For more than fifteen years such modulation instability states have been considered impractical for applications compared to their coherent-light-state counterparts, such as soliton states. The latter have been the centerpiece for numerous high-profile application demonstrations, from long-range optical communication to photonic computing. Now, researchers from the group of Tobias Kippenberg at EPFL have found a new way to…

The popular 1954 rock song “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” could be the theme music for the Hubble Space Telescope’s latest discovery about what is happening to the asteroid Dimorphos in the aftermath of NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) experiment. DART intentionally impacted Dimorphos on September 26, 2022, slightly changing the trajectory of its orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos. Astronomers using Hubble’s extraordinary sensitivity have discovered a swarm of boulders that were possibly shaken off the asteroid when NASA deliberately slammed…

Scientists at the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) and Boston University have successfully established a connection between the rotation rates of stars in star clusters and those outside them, so-called field stars, enabling the ages of the latter to be derived. The results show that the method of gyrochronology can be applied not only to cluster stars, but also works well for field stars, and thus the ages of many more stars can be determined. How old is a…

An international team led by Curtin University and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research including scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany, has discovered a new type of stellar object that challenges our understanding of the physics of neutron stars. The object could be an ultra-long period magnetar, a rare type of star with extremely strong magnetic fields that can produce powerful bursts of energy. Until recently, all known magnetars released energy at intervals…

Robot powered by artificial intelligence will swim the world’s seas to detect activities that harm the ocean environment. Scientists have started work on a new underwater artificial intelligence bot which can detect activities that harm the ocean environment. The technology, being developed by the University of Southampton with ocean science experts RS Aqua, will be used to spot illegal fishing and protect marine mammals during offshore wind farm construction. More than £700,000 was awarded by Innovate UK for the AI…