Lifeboat Foundation

Opening new possibilities for quantum sensors, atomic clocks and tests of fundamental physics, JILA researchers have developed new ways of “entangling” or interlinking the properties of large numbers of particles. In the process they have devised ways to measure large groups of atoms more accurately even in disruptive, noisy environments.

The new techniques are described in a pair of papers published in Nature. JILA is a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado Boulder.

“Entanglement is the holy grail of measurement science,” said Ana Maria Rey, a theoretical physicist and a JILA and NIST Fellow. “Atoms are the best sensors ever. They’re universal. The problem is that they’re quantum objects, so they’re intrinsically noisy. When you measure them, sometimes they’re in one energy state, sometimes they’re in another state. When you entangle them, you can manage to cancel the noise.”

Chinese researchers are working on ways to develop their own semiconductor lithography process to compete with ASML.

Researchers at Tsinghua University are working to bring microchip production to China to bypass US sanctions, reports the South China Morning Post.

Continue reading “China plans giant particle accelerator-powered chip factory” »

Scientists from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena and the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, both Germany, have successfully developed nanomaterials using a so-called bottom-up approach. As reported in the journal ACS Nano, they exploit the fact that crystals often grow in a specific direction during crystallization. These resulting nanostructures could be used in various technological applications.

“Our structures could be described as worm-like rods with decorations,” explains Prof. Felix Schacher. “Embedded in these rods are spherical nanoparticles; in our case, this was silica. However, instead of silica, conductive nanoparticles or semiconductors could also be used—or even mixtures, which can be selectively distributed in the nanocrystals using our method,” he adds. Accordingly, the range of possible applications in science and technology is broad, spanning from information processing to catalysis.

“The primary focus of this work was to understand the preparation method as such,” explains the chemist. To produce nanostructures, he elaborates, there are two different approaches: larger particles are ground down to nanometer size, or the structures are built up from smaller components.

Imagine trying to tune a radio to a single station but instead encountering static noise and interfering signals from your own equipment. That is the challenge facing research teams searching for evidence of extremely rare events that could help understand the origin and nature of matter in the universe. It turns out that when you are trying to tune into some of the universe’s weakest signals, it helps to make your instruments very quiet.

Around the world, more than a dozen teams are listening for the pops and electronic sizzle that might mean they have finally tuned into the right channel. These scientists and engineers have gone to extraordinary lengths to shield their experiments from false signals created by cosmic radiation. Most such experiments are found in very inaccessible places—such as a mile underground in a nickel mine in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, or in an abandoned gold mine in Lead, South Dakota—to shield them from naturally radioactive elements on Earth. However, one such source of fake signals comes from natural radioactivity in the very electronics that are designed to record potential signals.

Channeling light from one location to another is the backbone of our modern world. Across deep oceans and vast continents, fiber optic cables transport light containing data ranging from YouTube clips to banking transmissions—all within fibers as thin as a strand of hair.

University of Chicago Prof. Jiwoong Park, however, wondered what would happen if you made even thinner and flatter strands—in effect, so thin that they’re actually 2D instead of 3D. What would happen to the light?

Through a series of innovative experiments, he and his team found that a sheet of glass crystal just a few atoms thick could trap and carry light. Not only that, but it was surprisingly efficient and could travel relatively long distances—up to a centimeter, which is very far in the world of light-based computing.

Peter Atkins, James Ladyman, and Joanna Kavenna argue over the existence of physical reality.

Watch the full debate at https://iai.tv/video/the-world-that-disappeared?utm_source=Y…escription.

Continue reading “Is physical reality a hoax | Peter Atkins, James Ladyman, Joanna Kavenna” »

Astronomers say they have spotted evidence of stars fuelled by the annihilation of dark matter particles. If true, it could solve the cosmic mystery of how supermassive black holes appeared so early.

By Jonathan O’Callaghan

“If you can get up to a watt per square meter, it would be very attractive from a cost perspective,” Assawaworrarit says.

The invention taps into a source of energy that’s easily overlooked

The Earth is constantly receiving a tremendous amount of energy from the Sun, to the tune of 173,000 terrawatts. Clouds, particles in the atmosphere, and reflective surfaces like snow-covered mountains immediately reflect 30 percent of that energy out into space. The rest of it ends up warming the land, oceans, clouds, atmosphere, and everything else on the planet.

A research team led by Prof. Wang Qun from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has made significant progress in the theoretical study of vector meson spin physics, specifically regarding the intriguing behavior of ϕ mesons generated during collisions between gold nuclei.

Their results, published in Physical Review Letters, titled “Spin Alignment of Vector Mesons in Heavy-Ion Collisions,” represent a significant milestone that challenges conventional theoretical models.

Vector fields are an effective representation of strong interactions between exotic quarks. In the hadronization phase of relativistic heavy-ion collisions, where chiral symmetry is spontaneously broken, the strongly interacting matter can be described by quarks and by the SU pseudo-Goldstone boson field surrounding the quarks.