Physics & Astronomy

ispace, inc. (ispace), a global lunar exploration company, and the University of Leicester, have agreed to collaborate on approaches to lunar night survivability for future ispace lunar lander and rover missions. The University and ispace through ispace EUROPE S.A., have entered into a strategic consulting agreement to explore lunar night survivability utilizing Radioisotope Heater Units on the Series 3 lunar lander and rovers. The University was awarded funding under Phase I and Phase II of the UK International Bilateral Fund…

Researchers analyzing data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have pinpointed three galaxies that may be actively forming when the universe was only 400 to 600 million years old. Webb’s data shows these galaxies are surrounded by gas that the researchers suspect to be almost purely hydrogen and helium, the earliest elements to exist in the cosmos. Webb’s instruments are so sensitive that they were able to detect an unusual amount of dense gas surrounding these galaxies. This gas will…

Nonlinear light microscopy has revolutionized our ability to observe and understand complex biological processes. However, light can also damage living matter. Yet, the mechanism behind the irreversible perturbation of cellular processes by intense light remains poorly understood. To address this lacuna, the research groups of Hanieh Fattahi and Daniel Wehner at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) and Max-Planck-Zentrum für Physik und Medizin have joined forces to identify the conditions under which intense pulsed lasers can…

…could improve methods for heating fusion plasma. Both literally and figuratively, light pervades the world. It banishes darkness, conveys telecommunications signals between continents and makes visible the invisible, from faraway galaxies to the smallest bacterium. Light can also help heat the plasma within ring-shaped devices known as tokamaks as scientists worldwide strive to harness the fusion process to generate green electricity. Now, scientists have made discoveries about light particles known as photons that could aid the quest for fusion energy….

A study now published in Nature Communications brings remarkable insights into the enigmatic behavior of supercritical fluids, a hybrid state of matter occupying a unique space between liquids and gases, and arising in domains that go from the pharmaceutical industry to planetary science. The obtained results are at the limit of current experimental possibilities and could only be obtained in a high flux neutron source such as the ILL. A liquid or gaseous substance pushed beyond its critical point (i.e.,…

The European research consortium EUROfusion has had more than 100 fusion facilities in its member states independently assessed. The facilities of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) were consistently categorised in the best category ‘Indispensable’. How important are the European nuclear fusion research facilities on the way to a fusion power plant? An independent panel of experts investigated this question on behalf of the European consortium EUROfusion. Between autumn 2023 and spring 2024, the panel evaluated more than…

International research team cracks a hard physics problem. Strongly interacting systems play an important role in quantum physics and quantum chemistry. Stochastic methods such as Monte Carlo simulations are a proven method for investigating such systems. However, these methods reach their limits when so-called sign oscillations occur. This problem has now been solved by an international team of researchers from Germany, Turkey, the USA, China, South Korea and France using the new method of wavefunction matching. As an example, the…

Looking like a glittering cosmic geode, a trio of dazzling stars blaze from the hollowed-out cavity of a reflection nebula in this new image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The triple-star system is made up of the variable star HP Tau, HP Tau G2, and HP Tau G3. HP Tau is known as a T Tauri star, a type of young variable star that hasn’t begun nuclear fusion yet but is beginning to evolve into a hydrogen-fueled star similar to…

Research examines the nature of explosive events in the magnetosphere. Southwest Research Institute is investigating an unusual event in the Earth’s magnetotail, the elongated portion of the planet’s magnetosphere trailing away from the Sun. Using data from NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, SwRI scientists are examining the nature of substorms, fleeting disturbances in the magnetotail that release energy and often cause aurorae. Since their launch in 2015, the MMS spacecraft have been surveying the magnetopause, the boundary between the magnetosphere…

The SPECULOOS project has revealed the existence of an Earth-sized planet around SPECULOOS-3, a nearby star similar in size to Jupiter and twice as cold as our Sun. The SPECULOOS project, led by the astronomer Michaël Gillon from the University of Liège, has just discovered a new Earth-sized exoplanet around SPECULOOS-3, an “ultracool dwarf” star as small as Jupiter, twice as cold as our Sun, and located 55 light-years from Earth.  After the famous TRAPPIST-1, SPECULOOS 3 is the second…

A new nucleosynthesis process denoted the νr-process has been suggested by scientists from GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Technische Universität Darmstadt, and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. It operates when neutron-rich material is exposed to a high flux of neutrinos. The theoretical proposal, which was recently published in “Physical Review Letters”, may be the solution to a long-standing issue related to the production of a group of rare isotopes present in the solar system but whose origin is still poorly…

HZDR team achieves new energy record for next generation proton accelerators. The Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has made a significant advance in laser plasma acceleration. By employing an innovative method, a research team managed to substantially exceed the previous record for proton acceleration. For the first time, they achieved energies that so far have only seemed possible at much larger facilities. As the research group reported in the journal Nature Physics (DOI: 10.1038/s41567-024-02505-0), promising applications in medicine and materials science have…

In a recent study published in Nature Physics, researchers from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with researchers of University of Science and Technology of China, have introduced the concept of the “Topological Kerr Effect” by using the low-temperature magnetic field microscopy system and the magnetic force microscopy imaging system supported by the steady-state high magnetic field experimental facility. The study holds great promise for advancing our understanding of topological magnetic structures. Originating in particle physics, skyrmions are unique topological excitations…

Conditions on Saturn’s moon Enceladus simulated in the laboratory. In 2018, very large organic molecules were discovered in ice particles on Saturn’s moon Enceladus. It is still unclear whether they indicate the existence of life or were created in some other way. A recent study could help to answer this question. It is possible, that conditions that support or maintain life in extraterrestrial oceans could leave molecular traces in grains of ice. The research on this was conducted at the…

Slow electrons are used in cancer therapy as well as in microelectronics. It is very hard to observe how they behave in solids. But scientists at TU Wien have made this possible. Electrons can behave very differently depending on how much energy they have. Whether you shoot an electron with high or low energy into a solid body determines which effects can be triggered. Electrons with low energy can be responsible for the development of cancer, for example, but conversely…

Re­search­ers at ETH Zurich have, for the first time, made vis­ible how elec­trons form vor­tices in a ma­ter­ial at room tem­per­at­ure. Their ex­per­i­ment used a quantum sens­ing mi­cro­scope with an ex­tremely high res­ol­u­tion. In brief In graphene, elec­trons be­have like a li­quid. This can lead to the form­a­tion of vor­tices. Such elec­tron vor­tices have now been made vis­ible us­ing a quantum mag­netic field sensor with a high spa­tial res­ol­u­tion. Typ­ic­ally, trans­port phe­nom­ena are more eas­ily de­tec­ted at low tem­per­at­ures. Thanks…