Dedicated to the wonder of discovery
It is well known that adding a layer of padding behind a hard surface can shield things inside from shocks and vibrations.
Engineers call this a sandwich core since it consists of multiple layers of different materials sandwiched together.
The sandwich cores are used in helmets, body armour, and to protect vehicles from impacts, blasts, and crashes. [Read more…] about Abu Dhabi scientists discover new ‘metamaterial shapes’ that promise safer shielding
Quantum batteries are a new class of energy storage devices that operate according to the principles of quantum physics, the science that studies the infinitely small where the laws of classical physics do not always apply.
Tersilla Virgili of the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies of the National Research Council (Cnr-Ifn) and Giulio Cerullo of the Physics Department of the Politecnico di Milano have shown that it is possible to manufacture a type of quantum battery where the charging power increases faster by increasing the battery capacity.
The work, carried out together with other international research groups, was published in Science Advances. [Read more…] about Milan university develops ‘super fast quantum battery’
Range anxiety, the fear of running out of power before being able to recharge an electric vehicle, may be a thing of the past, according to a team of Penn State engineers who are looking at lithium iron phosphate batteries that have a range of 250 miles with the ability…
At the beginning of 2020, for the first time ever, renewable energy was able to cover more than half of the electricity consumed in Germany. But the more important renewable energy sources become, the more urgent is the need to store the electricity produced in this way. Green energy could…By Taylor Kubota, Stanford News Service
A team of researchers including ones from Stanford and Google have created and observed a new phase of matter, popularly known as a time crystal.
There is a huge global effort to engineer a computer capable of harnessing the power of quantum physics to carry out computations of unprecedented complexity. While formidable technological obstacles still stand in the way of creating such a quantum computer, today’s early prototypes are still capable of remarkable feats.
For example, the creation of a new phase of matter called a “time crystal.” Just as a crystal’s structure repeats in space, a time crystal repeats in time and, importantly, does so infinitely and without any further input of energy – like a clock that runs forever without any batteries. The quest to realize this phase of matter has been a longstanding challenge in theory and experiment – one that has now finally come to fruition.
In research published Nov. 30 in Nature, a team of scientists from Stanford University, Google Quantum AI, the Max Planck Institute for Physics of Complex Systems and Oxford University detail their creation of a time crystal using Google’s Sycamore quantum computing hardware. [Read more…] about Stanford physicists observe ‘new phase of matter’ while helping to create ‘time crystals’ with quantum computers
The oil industry, pharmaceutical companies and bioreactor manufacturers all face one common enemy: bubbles. Bubbles can form during the manufacturing or transport of various liquids, and their formation and rupture can cause significant issues in product quality.
Inspired by these issues and the puzzling physics behind bubbles, an international scientific collaboration was born. Stanford University chemical engineer Gerald Fuller along with his PhD students Aadithya Kannan and Vinny Chandran Suja, as well as visiting PhD student Daniele Tammaro from the University of Naples, teamed up to study how different kinds of bubbles pop.
The researchers were particularly interested in bubbles with proteins embedded on their surfaces, which is a common occurrence in the pharmaceutical industry and in bioreactors used for cell culture. In an unanticipated result, the researchers discovered that the protein bubbles they were studying opened up like flowers when popped with a needle. [Read more…] about Stanford researchers use high-speed cameras to reveal bubbles popping like blooming flowers
As the Parker Solar Probe ventures closer to the sun, we are learning new things about our home star.
In a new study, physicists led by the University of Iowa report the first definitive measurements of the sun’s electric field, and how the electric field interacts with the solar wind, the fast-flowing current of charged particles that can affect activities on Earth, from satellites to telecommunications.
The physicists calculated the distribution of electrons within the sun’s electric field, a feat made possible by the fact that the Parker Solar Probe jetted within 0.1 astronomical units (AU), or a mere 9 million miles, from the sun – closer than any spacecraft has approached. [Read more…] about Physicists describe sun’s electric field
Isaac Newton may have met his match. For centuries, engineers have relied on physical laws – developed by Newton and others – to understand the stresses and strains on the materials they work with. But solving those equations can be a computational slog, especially for complex materials.
MIT researchers have developed a technique to quickly determine certain properties of a material, like stress and strain, based on an image of the material showing its internal structure.
The approach could one day eliminate the need for arduous physics-based calculations, instead relying on computer vision and machine learning to generate estimates in real time. [Read more…] about New AI tool calculates materials’ stress and strain based on photos
In a world-first, researchers from the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) have captured an image showing the internal orbits, or spatial distribution, of particles in an exciton – a goal that had eluded scientists for almost a century.
Excitons are excited states of matter found within semiconductors – a class of materials that are key to many modern technological devices, such as solar cells, LEDs, lasers and smartphones.
“Excitons are really unique and interesting particles; they are electrically neutral which means they behave very differently within materials from other particles like electrons. Their presence can really change the way a material responds to light,” said Dr. Michael Man, co-first author and staff scientist in the OIST Femtosecond Spectroscopy Unit. [Read more…] about Scientists capture first ever image of an electron’s orbit within an exciton
Researchers at Aalto University have developed a new device for spintronics. The results have been published in the journal Nature Communications, and mark a step towards the goal of using spintronics to make computer chips and devices for data processing and communication technology that are small and powerful.
Traditional electronics uses electrical charge to carry out computations that power most of our day-to-day technology. However, engineers are unable to make electronics do calculations faster, as moving charge creates heat, and we’re at the limits of how small and fast chips can get before overheating.
Because electronics can’t be made smaller, there are concerns that computers won’t be able to get more powerful and cheaper at the same rate they have been for the past 7 decades. This is where spintronics comes in. [Read more…] about New nanoscale device for spin technology
From microwave ovens to Wi-Fi connections, the radio waves that permeate the environment are not just signals of energy consumed but are also sources of energy themselves. An international team of researchers, led by Huanyu "Larry" Cheng, Dorothy Quiggle Career Development Professor in the Penn State Department of Engineering Science…The dynamics of the neural activity of a mouse brain behave in a peculiar, unexpected way that can be theoretically modeled without any fine tuning, suggests a new paper by physicists at Emory University. Physical Review Letters published the research, which adds to the evidence that theoretical physics frameworks may aid in the understanding of large-scale brain activity.
“Our theoretical model agrees with previous experimental work on the brains of mice to a few percent accuracy – a degree which is highly unusual for living systems,” says Ilya Nemenman, Emory professor of physics and biology and senior author of the paper.
The first author is Mia Morrell, who did the research for her honors thesis as an Emory senior majoring in physics. She graduated from Emory last year and is now in a post-baccalaureate physics program at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. [Read more…] about Physicists develop theoretical model for neural activity of mouse brain
Artificial intelligence has arrived in our everyday lives – from search engines to self-driving cars. This has to do with the enormous computing power that has become available in recent years. But new results from AI research now show that simpler, smaller neural networks can be used to solve certain…
Because corporations and governments rely on computers and the internet to run everything from the electric grid, healthcare, and water systems, computer security is extremely important to all of us. It is increasingly being breached: Numerous security hacks just this past month include the Colonial Pipeline security breach and the…When the Electron Ion Collider received the go-ahead in January 2020, it became the only new major accelerator in the works anywhere in the world.
“All the stars aligned,” said Elke-Caroline Aschenauer, Brookhaven National Laboratory Staff Scientist and a leader in developing the EIC plans. “We have the technology to build this unique particle accelerator and detector to do the measurements that, together with the underlying theory, can for the first time provide answers to longstanding fundamental questions in nuclear physics.”
The EIC isn’t the only Brookhaven project poised to reshape nuclear and particle physics. Forthcoming data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider could finally detect the elusive chiral magnetic effect. Meanwhile, planned accelerators could run on sustainable energy, a drastic departure from today’s machines. [Read more…] about The Electron Ion Collider is a glimpse into the future of particle accelerators