… a phenomenon finally understood. Like a work of art enshrined in a museum, some stones end up on a pedestal of ice in nature, with no human intervention. This “Zen stone” phenomenon, named after the stacked stones in Japanese gardens, appears on the surface of frozen lakes, Lake Baikal (Russia) in particular. These structures result from the phenomenon of sublimation, which causes a body, in this case ice, to change from solid to gaseous form without the intermediary form…
Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, have succeeded in creating tiny vehicles powered by nothing but light. By layering an optical metasurface onto a microscopic particle, and then using a light source to control it, they succeeded in moving the tiny vehicles in a variety of complex and precise ways – and even using them to transport other objects. WATCH A VIDEO OF THE METAVEHICLES IN ACTION HERE Light has an inherent power to move microscopic objects –…
Different forms of linear transformations, such as the Fourier transform, are widely employed in processing of information in various applications. These transformations are generally implemented in the digital domain using electronic processors, and their computation speed is limited with the capacity of the electronic chip being used, which sets a bottleneck as the data and image size get large. A remedy of this problem might be to replace digital processors with optical counterparts and use light to process information. In…
The Universe is filled with energetic particles, such as X rays, gamma rays, and neutrinos. However, most of the high-energy cosmic particles’ origins remain unexplained. Now, an international research team has proposed a scenario that explains these; black holes with low activity act as major factories of high-energy cosmic particles. Details of their research were published in the journal Nature Communications. Gamma rays are high-energy photons that are many orders of magnitude more energetic than visible light. Space satellites have…
This sparkling starfield, captured by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 and Advanced Camera for Surveys, contains the globular cluster ESO 520-21 (also known as Palomar 6). A densely packed, roughly spherical collection of stars, it lies close to the center of the Milky Way, where interstellar gas and dust absorb starlight and make observations more challenging. Interstellar absorption affects some wavelengths of light more than others, changing the colors of astronomical objects by causing them to…
Rochester researchers next will aim for a combination of spatial, temporal imaging. When we look at an object with our eyes, or with a camera, we can automatically gather enough pixels of light at visible wavelengths to have a clear image of what we see. However, to visualize a quantum object or phenomenon where the illumination is weak, or emanating from nonvisible infrared or far infrared wavelengths, scientists need far more sensitive tools. For example, they have developed single-pixel imaging…
Exotic phase transitions unlock pathways to future, superfluid-based technologies. We can learn a lot by studying microscopic and macroscopic changes in a material as it crosses from one phase to another, for example from ice to water to steam. A new Australian study examines systems transitioning from ‘normal’ fluid to a quantum state known as a superfluid, which can flow with zero friction, with a view to future, superfluid-based, quantum technologies, such as ultra-low energy electronics.We can learn a lot…
The exotic nucleus tin-100 is challenging to access experimentally, but ab initio calculations provide reliable results. This is shown by new precision mass measurements of indium isotopes in the vicinity of tin in the nuclear chart, using sophisticated techniques at CERN. Physicists from Klaus Blaum’s department at the MPI for Nuclear Physics played a major role in this. Achim Schwenk’s Max Planck Fellow group at the TU Darmstadt contributed to the theoretical calculations. The tin isotope with the mass number…
EURAMET to start a new European Metrology Network… Central pool of expertise under the coordination of PTB More than 23 million people in the world are exposed to ionizing radiation sometime during the course of their work. Natural radiation is everywhere and affects everyone. The topic of radiation protection is also becoming ever more varied. Due to the latest developments, such as pulsed radiation in medical, industrial or technical applications, we are now increasingly dealing with radiation fields of ever…
A team of researchers from Germany, China and the United States has discovered that two twisted layers of MoS₂ can be used to control kinetic energy scales in solids. In addition to using the twist angle to control the material’s electronic properties, the researchers have also now demonstrated that the electrons in MoS₂ can interfere destructively, stopping their motion for certain paths. This property makes it possible to engineer exotic magnetic states. The work by scientists from the Max Planck…
When optical gain or loss are precisely controlled using nanophotonics, a new physical event called the non-Hermitian phenomenon can be observed, potentially the next-generation technology of optical signal control and sensing. However, it is difficult to control the optical gain and loss in optical experiments precisely. Recently, a research team led by Professor Heedeuk Shin of the Department of Physics at POSTECH, in collaboration with a research team led by Professor Jae Woong Yoon of the Department of Physics at…
A team of researchers from Harvard, MIT and the Max Planck Institute Chemical Physics of Solids developed a theory to explain how hydrodynamic electron flow could occur in 3D materials and observed it for the first time using a new imaging technique. Electrons flow through most materials more like a gas than a fluid, meaning they don’t interact much with one another. It was long hypothesized that electrons could flow like a fluid, but only recent advances in materials and…
If you want to remove a layer of paint from a metal surface, you can use a sandblaster: Countless grains of sand are blasted onto the surface, and what emerges is clean metal. “Sputtering” can be imagined in a very similar way – only much smaller, on an atomic scale. The surface is irradiated with ions, i.e. charged atoms, allowing microscopic impurities to be removed, for example. If you are dealing with perfect surfaces where all the surface atoms are…
A new experimental method that tracks the motion of fibers instead of particles reveals previously hidden information about turbulent flows. Turbulent flows are random, chaotic and occur across many scales, making them notoriously difficult to measure Scientists have now developed a new and improved means of measuring turbulent flows, using fibers rather than tracer particles The team tested their method by using both computer simulations and lab experiments The researchers used fibers of different lengths to measure the turbulent flow…
… Twisting to the light of nanoparticles. Physicists at the University of Bath iin the UK observe a new physical effect in chiral (twisted) nanoparticles. Physics researchers at the University of Bath in the UK discover a new physical effect relating to the interactions between light and twisted materials – an effect that is likely to have implications for emerging new nanotechnologies in communications, nanorobotics and ultra-thin optical components. In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Italian master craftsman Antonio…
Scientists take a closer look inside the perfect fluid. Berkeley Lab research brings us closer to understanding how our universe began. Scientists have reported new clues to solving a cosmic conundrum: How the quark-gluon plasma – nature’s perfect fluid – evolved into matter. A few millionths of a second after the Big Bang, the early universe took on a strange new state: a subatomic soup called the quark-gluon plasma. And just 15 years ago, an international team including researchers from…
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