Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to observe the ‘inside-out’ growth of a galaxy in the early universe, only 700 million years after the Big Bang. This galaxy is one hundred times smaller than the Milky Way, but is surprisingly mature for so early in the universe. Like a large city, this galaxy has a dense collection of stars at its core but becomes less dense in the galactic ‘suburbs’. And like a large city, this…
Experimental findings about plasma wave reflection could answer questions about high temperatures. There is a profound mystery in our sun. While the sun’s surface temperature measures around 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, its outer atmosphere, known as the solar corona, measures more like 2 million degrees Fahrenheit, about 200 times hotter. This increase in temperature away from the sun is perplexing and has been an unsolved mystery since 1939, when the high temperature of the corona was first identified. In the ensuing…
Scientists visualize and control magnetic domains in quantum antiferromagnets. When something draws us in like a magnet, we take a closer look. When magnets draw in physicists, they take a quantum look. Scientists from Osaka Metropolitan University and the University of Tokyo have successfully used light to visualize tiny magnetic regions, known as magnetic domains, in a specialized quantum material. Moreover, they successfully manipulated these regions by the application of an electric field. Their findings offer new insights into the…
A research team led by researchers at the Institute of Modern Physics (IMP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has synthesized a new plutonium isotope, plutonium-227. This study was published in Physical Review C. The magic numbers of protons and neutrons, such as 2, 8, 20, 28, 50, 82, and 126, are correlated with shell closures. In past studies, systematic analyses have revealed a persistent weakening of the neutron shell closure of 126 up to uranium, making it fascinating to explore whether…
Perovskite Tandem Solar Cells, a new type of solar cell technology, promise highest efficiencies at a low price tag and could revolutionize energy production in space. Together with his collaborators at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin and Technical University of Berlin, Dr. Felix Lang from the University of Potsdam launched the first perovskite tandem solar cells into space to test their performance with extreme radiation levels and temperature cycles. Recently, he successfully received the first data from his experiment. July 9, 2024 was…
Researchers at ETH Zurich have developed a laser that produces the strongest ultra-short laser pulses to date. In the future, such high power pulses could be used for precision measurements or materials processing. In brief Researchers have developed a laser that can produce extremely short pulses with peak powers up to 100 megawatts and 550 watts of average power. This was made possible by an optimized arrangement of the mirrors in the laser and improvements of a special mirror, which…
…with Gaia and machine learning. A group of scientists led by the Leibniz Institute for Astrophysics Potsdam (AIP) and the Institute of Cosmos Sciences at the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) have used a novel machine learning model to process data for 217 million stars observed by the Gaia mission in an extremely efficient way. The results are competitive with traditional methods used to estimate stellar parameters. This new approach opens up exciting opportunities to map characteristics like interstellar extinction and…
Astronomers have observed Jupiter’s legendary Great Red Spot (GRS), an anticyclone large enough to swallow Earth, for at least 150 years. But there are always new surprises – especially when NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope takes a close-up look at it. Hubble’s new observations of the famous red storm, collected 90 days between December 2023 to March 2024, reveal that the GRS is not as stable as it might look. The recent data show the GRS jiggling like a bowl of gelatin. The…
Boron could help the tungsten wall inside a tokamak keep its atoms to itself. Fusion researchers are increasingly turning to the element tungsten when looking for an ideal material for components that will directly face the plasma inside fusion reactors known as tokamaks and stellarators. But under the intense heat of fusion plasma, tungsten atoms from the wall can sputter off and enter the plasma. Too much tungsten in the plasma would substantially cool it, which would make sustaining fusion reactions very challenging. Now, researchers at…
NASA’s Curiosity rover, currently exploring Gale crater on Mars, is providing new details about how the ancient Martian climate went from potentially suitable for life – with evidence for widespread liquid water on the surface – to a surface that is inhospitable to terrestrial life as we know it. Although the surface of Mars is frigid and hostile to life today, NASA’s robotic explorers at Mars are searching for clues as to whether it could have supported life in the…
James Webb Space Telescope reveals elusive details in young star systems. Astronomers have discovered new details of gas flows that sculpt planet-forming disks and shape them over time, offering a glimpse into how our own solar system likely came to be. Every second, more than 3,000 stars are born in the visible universe. Many are surrounded by what astronomers call a protoplanetary disk – a swirling “pancake” of hot gas and dust from which planets form. The exact processes that…
International team produces global maps of coronal magnetic field. For the first time, scientists have taken near-daily measurements of the Sun’s global coronal magnetic field, a region of the Sun that has only been observed irregularly in the past. The resulting observations are providing valuable insights into the processes that drive the intense solar storms that impact fundamental technologies, and thus lives and livelihoods, here on Earth. An analysis of the data, collected over eight months by an instrument called…
Everyday experience tells us that light reflected from a perfectly flat mirror will give us the correct image without any deformation. Interestingly, this is not the case when the light field itself is structured in a complex way. Tiny deformations appear. These have now been observed for the first time in the laboratory by researchers at Tampere University. The results confirm the prediction of this fundamental optical effect made more than a decade ago. They also show how it can…
Researchers from Jena Deliver Optics for Greenhouse Gas Monitoring. ESA’s CO2M space mission aims to find out exactly how many CO₂ -greenhouse gas in Earth’s atmosphere is caused by human activity. Researchers from Jena have developed and manufactured what is probably the most important optical assembly for the spectrometers on board the satellites: the disperser. It allows high-precision measurements of greenhouse gases and their concentration. The first airworthy assembly has now been fully delivered. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide…
Quantum squeezing is a concept in quantum physics where the uncertainty in one aspect of a system is reduced while the uncertainty in another related aspect is increased. Imagine squeezing a round balloon filled with air. In its normal state, the balloon is perfectly spherical. When you squeeze one side, it gets flattened and stretched out in the other direction. This represents what is happening in a squeezed quantum state: you are reducing the uncertainty (or noise) in one quantity,…
Discovery of orbital angular momentum monopoles boosts the emerging field of orbitronics, an energy-efficient alternative to electronics. Orbital angular momentum monopoles have been the subject of great theoretical interest as they offer major practical advantages for the emerging field of orbitronics, a potential energy-efficient alternative to traditional electronics. Now, through a combination of robust theory and experiments at the Swiss Light Source SLS at Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, their existence has been demonstrated. The discovery is published in the journal…
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