Radio astronomers have detected jets of hot gas blasted out by a black hole in the galaxy at the heart of the Phoenix Galaxy Cluster, located 5.9 billion light-years away in the constellation Phoenix. This is an important result for understanding the coevolution of galaxies, gas, and black holes in galaxy clusters. Galaxies are not distributed randomly in space. Through mutual gravitational attraction, galaxies gather together to form collections known as clusters. The space between galaxies is not entirely empty….
Prof. DONG Zhenchao and Prof. HOU Jianguo from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) improved the spatial resolution from 8 nm to ~8 Å of photoluminescence imaging. It realized sub-molecular resolution with single molecule photofluorescence imaging for the first time. This study was published in Nature Photonics on August 10. To reach atomic resolution with light has always been one of the ultimate goals in nano-optics. The advent of scanning near-field optical…
Until now, these flows of material had been detected only in other wavelength ranges, such as X-rays or the visible, depending on the phase in which the black hole is consuming its surrounding material. This study provides the first evidence that the winds are present throughout the evolution of the eruption, independently of the phase, and this is a step forward in our understanding of the mysterious processes of accretion onto stellar mass black holes. The article has just been…
An international research team from Germany, Italy, and the UK has developed a key photonics component for the intriguing terahertz spectral range. By mixing electronic resonances in semiconductor nanostructures with the photon field of microresonators, they designed a stained mirror that bleaches more easily than ever and could make terahertz lasers ultrafast. The results are published in the current issue of Nature Communications. Terahertz radiation – often dubbed T-rays – marks one of the last frontiers in photonics. Located in…
The very heart of our Milky Way harbours a large bar-like structure of stars whose size and rotational speed have been strongly contested in the last years. A new study has found an elegant solution to the discrepancies found in different observational studies, using the fact that the bar and spiral arms move at different rotational velocities, encountering each other about every 80 Million years. As the faster-rotating bar approaches a spiral arm, it appears to be much longer and…
Scientists led by Kiel University (Germany), in collaboration with the ESRF, University of Victoria (Canada), University of Barcelona (Spain) and Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany), have now found out why and how platinum degrades. Degradation of platinum, used as a key electrode material in the hydrogen economy, severely shortens the lifetime of electrochemical energy conversion devices, such as fuel cells. For the first time, scientists elucidated the movements of the platinum atoms that lead to catalyst surface degradation. Their results are published…
Solar flares emit sudden, strong bursts of electromagnetic radiation from the Sun’s surface and its atmosphere, and eject plasma and energetic particles into inter-planetary space. Since large solar flares can cause severe space weather disturbances affecting Earth, to mitigate their impact their occurrence needs to be predicted. However, as the onset mechanism of solar flares is unclear, most flare prediction methods so far have relied on empirical methods. The research team led by Professor Kanya Kusano (Director of the Institute…
A new letter has been found in the mysterious alphabet of black holes. Two astrophysicists share this discovery in the journal Nature Communications. Black holes are at the center of almost all galaxies that have been studied so far. They have an unimaginably large mass and therefore attract matter, gas and even light. But they can also emit matter in the form of plasma jets – a kind of plasma beam that is ejected from the centre of the galaxy…
The Sun is a magnetized star. Its magnetic field is essentially three dimensional and it occupies all layers of the solar atmosphere. However, routine measurements of the solar magnetic field have only been achieved at the photospheric level, or the solar surface. Lacking precise knowledge about the magnetic field in the outermost solar atmosphere, the corona, has impeded our understanding of the solar magnetism and many phenomena in the solar atmosphere. An international team led by TIAN Hui, a professor…
NASA JPL team uses TACC’s Maverick2 system to develop software, trains models NASA’s Mars rovers have been one of the great scientific and space successes of the past two decades. Four generations of rovers have traversed the red planet gathering scientific data, sending back evocative photographs, and surviving incredibly harsh conditions — all using on-board computers less powerful than an iPhone 1. The latest rover, Perseverance, was launched on July 30, 2020, and engineers are already dreaming of a future…
Imagine reading by the light of an exploded star, brighter than a full moon – it might be fun to think about, but this scene is the prelude to a disaster when the radiation devastates life as we know it. Killer cosmic rays from nearby supernovae could be the culprit behind at least one mass extinction event, researchers said, and finding certain radioactive isotopes in Earth’s rock record could confirm this scenario. A new study led by University of Illinois,…
Observations of magnetic fields in interstellar clouds of gas and dust indicate that these clouds are strongly magnetized, and that magnetic fields influence the formation of stars. The orientation of their internal structure is closely related to that of the magnetic field. The filamentary network of the dense gas surrounding a young star cluster was observed with with the HAWC+ polarimeter on board SOFIA at infrared wavelengths. In some filaments the magnetic field succumbs to the flow of matter and…
Special metal oxides could one day replace semiconductor materials that are commonly used today in processors. Now, for the first time, an international team of researchers from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the University of Kaiserslautern and the University of Fribourg in Switzerland was able to observe how electronic charge excitation changes electron spin in metal oxides in an ultrafast and inphase manner. The study was published in the journal “Nature Communications”. In modern semiconductor electronics, the first key step…
A special type of aurora, draped east-west across the night sky like a glowing pearl necklace, is helping scientists better understand the science of auroras and their powerful drivers out in space. Known as auroral beads, these lights often show up just before large auroral displays, which are caused by electrical storms in space called substorms. Previously, scientists weren’t sure if auroral beads are somehow connected to other auroral displays as a phenomenon in space that precedes substorms, or if…
Supercomputers around the world work around the clock on research problems. In principle, even novel materials can be simulated in computers in order to calculate their magnetic and thermal properties as well as their phase transitions. The gold standard for this kind of modelling is known as the quantum Monte Carlo method. Wave-Particle Dualism However, this method has an intrinsic problem: due to the physical wave-particle dualism of quantum systems, each particle in a solid-state compound not only possesses particle-like…
The Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Solid State Physics IAF has partnered up with the start-up “Twenty-One Semiconductors” (21s) from Stuttgart to bring their unique laser concept from lab to practice. Having become a member of the high-tech incubator “FMD-Space” – initiated by the Research Fab Microelectronics Germany (FMD) – 21s has gained access to Europe’s largest machine park in the field of micro- and nanoelectronics. As a part of the FMD, Fraunhofer IAF is supporting the young company with its…
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