Researchers provide the first plausible explanation to why one of the most massive black hole pairs observed to date by gravitational waves also seemed to merge on a non-circular orbit. Their suggested solution, now published in Nature, involves a chaotic triple drama inside a giant disk of gas around a super massive black hole in a galaxy far, far away. Black holes are one of the most fascinating objects in the Universe, but our knowledge of them is still limited…
Experiments point the way to solving mystery that keeps clusters hot. Galaxies rarely live alone. Instead, dozens to thousands are drawn together by gravity, forming vast clusters that are the largest objects in the universe. “Galaxy clusters are one of the most awe-inspiring things in the universe,” said Prof. Emeritus Don Lamb, a University of Chicago astrophysicist and co-author on a new paper published March 9—one that may point the way towards solving a decades-long mystery. Scientists have long known…
Intense mid-infrared excitation has been demonstrated as a powerful tool for controlling the magnetic, ferroelectric and superconducting properties of complex materials. Nonlinear phononics is key to this end, as it displaces specific atoms away from their equilibrium positions to manipulate microscopic interactions. So far, this effect has been thought to occur only within the optically excited volume. Now researchers in Hamburg discovered that the polarization reversal in ferroelectric lithium niobate (LiNbO3) even occurs in areas well away from the direct…
Renowned engineering and architecture firm, IDOM, faces rigorous design requirements of the Giant Magellan Telescope’s enclosure to allow for unobstructed observations of the night sky. The Giant Magellan Telescope today announced they have awarded IDOM, a renowned engineering and architecture firm based in Spain, a contract to complete the telescope enclosure design by 2024. The award follows an extensive enclosure designer evaluation and selection process based on a detailed set of criteria involving design team experience, proposed approaches to specific…
For the first time, NASA’s Neutron star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER) has observed the merging of multimillion-degree X-ray spots on the surface of a magnetar, a supermagnetized stellar core no larger than a city. “NICER tracked how three bright, X-ray-emitting hot spots slowly wandered across the object’s surface while also decreasing in size, providing the best look yet at this phenomenon,” said George Younes, a researcher at George Washington University in Washington and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt,…
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, researchers at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands have for the first time detected dimethyl ether in a planet-forming disc. With nine atoms, this is the largest molecule identified in such a disc to date. It is also a precursor of larger organic molecules that can lead to the emergence of life. “From these results, we can learn more about the origin of life on our planet and therefore get a better…
Physicists at ETH Zurich demonstrate that vacuum fluctuations can cause a breakdown of topological protection in the paradigmatic integer quantum Hall effect. “Up to 1980 nobody expected that there exists an effect like the Quantized Hall Effect, which depends exclusively on fundamental constants and is not affected by irregularities in the semiconductor like impurities or interface effects.” So spoke the German physicist Klaus von Klitzing on receiving the 1985 Nobel Prize in Physics. He was recognised for his discovery, in…
Physicists use the Summit supercomputer to better understand a family of superconductors. The Science Over the last 35 years, scientists have investigated a special type of materials called superconductors. When cooled to the correct temperatures, these materials allow electricity to flow without resistance. One team is researching superconductors using the Summit supercomputer. The team found that negative particles in the superconductors interact strongly with the smallest units of light in the materials. This interaction leads to sudden changes in the…
An international study, published in ACS Nano, has demonstrated an unprecedented level of control of the optical properties of graphene. The work has promising applications in different technological fields ranging from photonics to telecommunications. Graphene is the thinnest material ever produced, with the thickness of a single atomic layer, thinner than a billionth of a meter, it is able to efficiently absorb light from the visible to the infrared through the photoexcitation of its charge carriers. After light absorption, its…
Qubits, the building blocks of quantum computers, can be made from many different technologies. One way to make a qubit is to trap a single neutral atom in place using a focused laser, a technique that won the Nobel Prize in 2018. But to make a quantum computer out of neutral atom qubits, many individual atoms must be trapped in place by many laser beams. So far, these arrays have only been constructed from atoms of a single element, out…
Magnetic excitations for information transfer without heat loss. Just as electrons flow through an electrical conductor, magnetic excitations can travel through certain materials. Such excitations, known in physics as “magnons” in analogy to the electron, could transport information much more easily than electrical conductors. An international research team has now made an important discovery on the road to such components, which could be highly energy-efficient and considerably smaller. At present the transport and control of electrical charges forms the basis…
The new review paper on magnetic topological materials of Andrei Bernevig, Princeton University, USA, Haim Beidenkopf, Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and Claudia Felser, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids, Dresden, Germany, introduces the new theoretical concept that interweave magnetism and topology. It identifies and surveys potential new magnetic topological materials, mentions their possible future applications in spin and quantum electronics and as materials for efficient energy conversion. The review discusses the connection between topology, symmetry and magnetism…
New experimental finding reveals the potential of plasma as energy booster for high-rate accelerators. An international team of researchers led by DESY scientists has demonstrated for the first time at the FLASHForward experiment that in principle it is possible to operate plasma accelerators at the repetition rates desired by particle physicists and photon scientists. This opens the opportunity to utilise such high-gradient accelerators as booster stages in existing high-repetition-rate facilities, such as the large-scale X-ray free-electron lasers FLASH and European…
Water is an abundant and essential compound, found everywhere on earth. Yet despite its familiarity and simple structure, water displays many unusual physical properties. For more than a century, scientists have turned their attention to the study of water, attempting to better interpret its structure. An international team of researchers, led by a scholar from Hiroshima University, has developed a procedure allowing them to reproduce the double peak feature of x-ray emission spectroscopy (XES) spectra in liquid water. The study…
In order to detect water in the polar regions of the Moon, the Laser Zentrum Hannover e.V. (LZH) has developed a robust laser in the LUVMI-X project. Used in the project partners’ measuring instrument, the system has already been successfully tested on regolith samples. The probability of finding volatiles such as water on the moon is highest in the Polar Regions, as they are frozen. These substances can be detected, for example, using the “laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy” (LIBS) method. To…
A new method for broadband THz–fingerprint Raman spectroscopy at an ultrafast spectral rate enables synchronous measurement of two distinct types of vibrational signals, for dual-region sensitivity. Raman spectroscopy offers a powerful approach to chemical measurement. By directly probing molecular vibrations, it obtains chemical specificity without the need for chemical labels. Thanks to these virtues, it has become an indispensable tool in a diverse range of fields, including materials science, biology, pharmaceuticals, and food science. Broadband Raman vibrational spectra are commonly…
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