… could lead to exciting developments in nanotechnology. Cambridge researchers have discovered a new topological phase in a two-dimensional system, which could be used as a new platform for exploring topological physics in nanoscale devices. Two-dimensional materials such as graphene have served as a playground for the experimental discovery and theoretical understanding of a wide range of phenomena in physics and materials science. Beyond graphene, there are a large number 2D materials, all with different physical properties. This is promising…
Assessing how energy-generating synthetic organelles could sustain artificial cells. Energy production in nature is the responsibility of chloroplasts and mitochondria and is crucial for fabricating sustainable, synthetic cells in the lab. Mitochondria are not only “the powerhouses of the cell,” as the middle school biology adage goes, but also one of the most complex intracellular components to replicate artificially. In Biophysics Reviews, by AIP Publishing, researchers from Sogang University in South Korea and the Harbin Institute of Technology in China…
Scientists at the Universities of Würzburg and Ottawa have solved the decades-old problem of distinguishing between single and multiple light excitations. They present their new method in the journal Nature. The construction of the first laser in 1960 ushered in commercial applications with light that have become an integral part of our everyday lives. At the same time, this development opened up the scientific field of laser spectroscopy – a technique that is central to the analysis of materials and…
Plasma physicists from Ukraine, Germany and Japan collaborate to spark fusion power. Lead author Yurii Victorovich Kovtun, despite being forced to evacuate the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology amid the current Russia-Ukraine war, has continued to work with Kyoto University to create stable plasmas using microwaves. Getting plasma just right is one of the hurdles to harnessing the massive amounts of energy promised by nuclear fusion. Plasmas — soups of ions and electrons — must be held at the right density, temperature,…
A new SISSA study proposes an array of interferometers in space to detect subtle fluctuations in the background gravitational signals that may reveal the secrets of black hole mergers. Every year, hundreds of thousands of pairs of black holes merge in a cosmic dance that emits gravitational waves in every direction. Since 2015, the large ground-based LIGO, Virgo and KAGRA interferometers have made it possible to detect these signals, although only about a hundred such events, an infinitesimal fraction of…
LMS instrument will study electrical conductivity of the Moon’s interior. Southwest Research Institute recently delivered the Lunar Magnetotelluric Sounder (LMS) to Firefly Aerospace in Cedar Park, Texas, for integration into the Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander scheduled to arrive at the Moon in 2024. The sounder will determine the electrical conductivity of the interior of the Moon by measuring low-frequency electric and magnetic fields. “For more than 50 years, scientists have used magnetotelluric techniques, which use natural characteristics of the…
Quantum interference between dissimilar particles offers new approach for mapping gluons in nuclei, and potentially harnessing entanglement. The Science Nuclear physicists have found a new way to see details inside atomic nuclei. They do so by tracking interactions between particles of light and gluons—the gluelike particles that hold together the building blocks of protons and neutrons. The method relies on harnessing a new type of quantum interference between two dissimilar particles. Tracking how these entangled particles emerge from the interactions lets…
NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is cruising back to Earth with a sample it collected from the rocky surface of asteroid Bennu. When its sample capsule parachutes down into the Utah desert on Sept. 24, OSIRIS-REx will become the United States’ first-ever mission to return an asteroid sample to Earth. After seven years in space, including a nail-biting touchdown on Bennu to gather dust and rocks, this intrepid mission is about to face one of its biggest challenges yet: deliver the asteroid sample to Earth…
The MINERvA experiment in the NuMI beam at Fermilab has made the first accurate image of the proton using neutrinos instead of light as the probe. The Science Protons and neutrons, the building blocks of atomic nuclei, are themselves made up of strongly interacting quarks and gluons“>quarks and gluons. Because the interactions are so strong, the structure of protons and neutrons is difficult to calculate from theory. Instead, scientists must measure it experimentally. Neutrino experiments use targets that are nuclei made of many protons and neutrons…
Samples from the asteroid Ryugu collected by the Hayabusa2 mission contain nitrogenous organic compounds, including the nucleobase uracil, which is a part of RNA. Researchers have analyzed samples of asteroid Ryugu collected by the Japanese Space Agency’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft and found uracil—one of the informational units that make up RNA, the molecules that contain the instructions for how to build and operate living organisms. Nicotinic acid, also known as Vitamin B3 or niacin, which is an important cofactor for metabolism…
A team including physicists of the University of Bern has for the first time detected subatomic particles called neutrinos created by a particle collider, namely at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A team including physicists of the University of Bern has for the first time detected subatomic particles called neutrinos created by a particle collider, namely at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The discovery promises to deepen scientists’ understanding of the nature of neutrinos, which are among the most abundant…
Tamed light offers new possibilities. In a major breakthrough in the fields of nanophotonics and ultrafast optics, a Sandia National Laboratories research team has demonstrated the ability to dynamically steer light pulses from conventional, so-called incoherent light sources. This ability to control light using a semiconductor device could allow low-power, relatively inexpensive sources like LEDs or flashlight bulbs to replace more powerful laser beams in new technologies such as holograms, remote sensing, self-driving cars and high-speed communication. “What we’ve done…
… blowing bubbles in the central region of the Teacup Galaxy. When matter falls into supermassive black holes in the centers of galaxies, it unleashes enormous amounts of energy and is called an active galactic nuclei (or AGN). A fraction of AGN release part of this energy as jets that are detectable in radio wavelengths that travel at velocities close to light speed. While the jet travels across the galaxy, it collides with the clouds and gas around it and in some…
Using previously developed theoretical and mathematical models, researchers used information on the speed of the process of DNA unzipping through a nanopore to accurately retrieve the thermodynamics of double helix formation and breaking. Reconstructing accurately how the parts of a complex molecular are held together knowing only how the molecule distorts and breaks up. This was the challenge taken on by a research team led by SISSA’s Cristian Micheletti and recently published on Physical Review Letters. In particular, the scientists…
The Atmospheric Waves Experiment, led by USU’s SDL and College of Science, is set for a December launch. NASA has announced that the launch of the Utah State University Space Dynamics Laboratory and College of Science-led Atmospheric Waves Experiment, or AWE, is scheduled for December 2023. The NASA-funded instrument will launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to the International Space Station. AWE Principal Investigator Michael Taylor from USU’s College of Science leads a team of scientists that will provide new…
Researchers have shown how energy disappears in quantum turbulence, paving the way for a better understanding of turbulence in scales ranging from the microscopic to the planetary. Dr Samuli Autti from Lancaster University is one of the authors of a new study of quantum wave turbulence together with researchers at Aalto University. The team’s findings, published in Nature Physics, demonstrate a new understanding of how wave-like motion transfers energy from macroscopic to microscopic length scales, and their results confirm a theoretical…
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