Stars powered with dark matter still need proving but could reveal clues about the nature of one of the universe’s great mysteries. Stars beam brightly out of the darkness of space thanks to fusion, atoms melding together and releasing energy. But what if there’s another way to power a star? A team of three astrophysicists — Katherine Freese at The University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with Cosmin Ilie and Jillian Paulin ’23 at Colgate University — analyzed images…

The future of electronics will be based on novel kinds of materials. Sometimes, however, the naturally occurring topology of atoms makes it difficult for new physical effects to be created. To tackle this problem, researchers at the University of Zurich have now successfully designed superconductors one atom at a time, creating new states of matter. What will the computer of the future look like? How will it work? The search for answers to these questions is a major driver of…

Groundbreaking study demonstrates control over quantum fluctuations, unlocking potential for probabilistic computing and ultra-precise field sensing. A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has achieved a milestone in quantum technologies, demonstrating for the first time the control of quantum randomness. The team of researchers focused on a unique feature of quantum physics known as “vacuum fluctuations”. You might think of a vacuum as a completely empty space without matter or light. However, in the quantum world, even this “empty” space experiences fluctuations or changes. Imagine a calm sea that suddenly…

Astronomers find answers to mysterious action of ghost stars in our Galaxy. A collaboration of scientists from The University of Manchester and the University of Hong Kong have found a source for the mysterious alignment of stars near the Galactic Centre. The alignment of planetary nebulae was discovered ten years ago by a Manchester PhD student, Bryan Rees, but has remained unexplained. New data obtained with the European Southern Observatory Very Large Telescope in Chile and the Hubble Space Telescope,…

Experiments at the unique wind tunnel of the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPI-DS) in Göttingen show that laws formulated more than 80 years ago and their extensions only incompletely explain turbulent flows. Stirring a cup of coffee creates a turbulent flow with large and very small vortices. The vortices of different sizes influence each other by transferring energy from a larger vortex to a smaller one, down to the smallest vortex, which dissipates in the liquid due…

On the Moon, there are raw materials that humanity could one day mine and use. Various space agencies, such as the European Space Agency (ESA), are already planning missions to better explore Earth’s satellite and find minerals. This calls for appropriate exploration vehicles. Swiss researchers led by ETH Zurich are now pursuing the idea of sending not just one solitary rover on an exploration tour, but rather an entire team of vehicles and flying devices that complement each other. The…

Scientists at Leipzig University, in collaboration with colleagues at Vilnius University in Lithuania, have developed a new method to measure the smallest twists and torques of molecules within milliseconds. The method makes it possible to track the gene recognition of CRISPR-Cas protein complexes, also known as “genetic scissors”, in real time and with the highest resolution. With the data obtained, the recognition process can be accurately characterised and modelled to improve the precision of the genetic scissors. The results obtained…

Using Hi Tech to Illuminate Quantum Mysteries. In a breakthrough akin to the effects of 3D cinema, scientists are using light particles to uncover the mysteries of electron behavior and propel our understanding of quantum materials forward. These materials, rich with potential for energy-efficient electronics and cutting-edge technology of tomorrow, are distinguished by their topological properties that could rarely be measured directly – until now. An international team of researchers, together with the Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat, has made…

Mars rovers have teams of human experts on Earth telling them what to do. But robots on lander missions to moons orbiting Saturn or Jupiter are too far away to receive timely commands from Earth. Researchers in the Departments of Aerospace Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign developed a novel learning-based method so robots on extraterrestrial bodies can make decisions on their own about where and how to scoop up terrain samples. “Rather than simulating how…

Researchers led by Leipzig University have found a ground-breaking application in oncology for the scientific field of Physics of Cancer. This is a milestone for the new research field, proving its clinical relevance for the first time. Based on tissue and cell mechanics and using machine learning, the team developed a marker for cancer cell motility in digital pathology. The marker delivers new information about breast tumours that will improve the ability to predict the risk of metastasis, even after…

Physicists at the University of Regensburg (UR) led by the research groups of Professor Dr. Christoph Strunk / Dr. Nicola Paradiso and Professor Dr. Jaroslav Fabian made an exciting discovery: In their publication just published in Nature Nanotechnology, the research teams experimentally demonstrate a dramatic sign change of the supercurrent diode effect. The corresponding experimental data are in quantitative agreement with the theory of Dr. Andreas Costa, also physicist at the University of Regensburg. Most transistors, including the building blocks…

How polarization patterns enable new technology. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign researchers have developed a novel method for underwater geolocalization using deep neural networks that have been trained on 10 million polarization-sensitive images collected from locations around the world. This new study, led by electrical and computer engineering professor Viktor Gruev, along with computer science professor David Forsyth, enables underwater geolocalization using only optical data while providing a tool for tethered-free underwater navigation. These findings were recently published in the journal eLight. “We…

The quantum nature of interactions between elementary particles allows drawing non-trivial conclusions even from processes as simple as elastic scattering. The ATLAS experiment at the LHC accelerator reports the measurement of fundamental properties of strong interactions between protons at ultra-high energies. The physics of billiard ball collisions is taught from early school years. In a good approximation, these collisions are elastic, where both momentum and energy are conserved. The scattering angle depends on how central the collision was (this is…

Frank Geurts named co-spokesperson of the STAR collaboration. Rice University physicist Frank Geurts is one of two scientists elected to lead the world’s longest-running nuclear physics experiment at a particle collider facility, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Together with Brookhaven Lab physicist Lijuan Ruan, Geurts will serve a three-year term as co-spokesperson for the STAR collaboration. This group of over 740 scientists from 74 institutions across 15 countries uses a 1,200-ton, building-sized instrument ⎯ the Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC, or…

This AI system only needs a small amount of data to predict molecular properties, which could speed up drug discovery and material development. Discovering new materials and drugs typically involves a manual, trial-and-error process that can take decades and cost millions of dollars. To streamline this process, scientists often use machine learning to predict molecular properties and narrow down the molecules they need to synthesize and test in the lab. Researchers from MIT and the MIT-Watson AI Lab have developed…

A state-of-the-art laser has been commissioned at European XFEL and used for its first user experiment, paving the way for new scientific insights. The DiPOLE 100-X laser delivers ultra-powerful bursts of green light that can transform matter into extreme states, allowing scientists to study its behavior at high temperatures and pressures. Over 100 international researchers were involved in the first experiment. DiPOLE, or Diode Pumped Optical Laser for Experiments, is a new type of laser that can generate high-energy bursts…