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Researchers have captured the signal of neutrinos from a nuclear reactor using a water-filled neutrino detector, a first for such a device.

In a mine in Sudbury, Canada, the SNO+ detector is being readied to search for a so-far-undetected nuclear-decay process. Spotting this rare decay would allow researchers to confirm that the neutrino is its own antiparticle (see Viewpoint: Probing Majorana Neutrinos). But while SNO+ team members prepare for that search, they have made another breakthrough by capturing the interaction with water of antineutrinos from nuclear reactors [1]. The finding offers the possibility of making neutrino detectors from a nontoxic material that is easy to handle and inexpensive to obtain, key factors for use of the technology in auditing the world’s nuclear reactors (see Feature: Neutrino Detectors for National Security).

The SNO+ detector was inherited from the earlier Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) experiment. Today the detector is filled with a liquid that lights up when charged particles pass through it. But in 2018, to calibrate the detector’s components and to characterize its intrinsic radioactive background signal after the experiment’s upgrade, it contained water. The antineutrino signal was observed when, after completing those measurements, the researchers took the opportunity to carry out additional experiments before the liquid was switched out.

Simulations and an experiment aboard the International Space Station show that changes in the system’s repulsive forces are behind the alignment of particles embedded in an electrified plasma.

“If we could see the air we fly in, we wouldn’t,” is a common saying among glider pilots. The invisible turbulent pockets that accompany soaring thermals present hazards to small aircraft, but today’s observational tools struggle to measure such wind features at high spatial resolutions over large distances. Now Yunpeng Zhang of the University of Science and Technology of China and his colleagues demonstrate how adapting a remote-sensing technology called pulsed coherent Doppler lidar (PCDL) enables long-range wind detection with submeter resolution [1].

PCDL senses wind speeds by detecting the frequency shift when a laser pulse scatters off dust particles in the air. By measuring the time taken for this scattered light to return to the detector, the technique allows wide-region profiling of wind speeds. This large-scale sampling comes at the cost of measurement precision, however. Measuring the laser’s travel time requires short-duration pulses, but short pulses transmit little total energy for a given laser power, and this energy is necessarily dispersed over a wide frequency range.

To avoid this trade-off, Zhang and his colleagues imprinted a phase-modulation pattern within each transmitted pulse using an electro-optic modulator. This pattern broke the link between pulse duration and spatial resolution, allowing a more flexible pulse duration. As a result, their setup achieved a spatial resolution of 0.9 m at a distance of 700 m (compared to a 3-m resolution at 300 m for a conventional instrument) and was able to detect the wind from an electric fan on a rooftop 329 m away.

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are cylindrical tube-like structures made of carbon atoms that display highly desirable physical properties like high strength, low weight, and excellent thermal and electrical conductivities. This makes them ideal materials for various applications, including reinforcement materials, energy storage and conversion devices, and electronics.

Despite such immense potential, however, there have been challenges in commercializing CNTs, such as their incorporation on plastic substrates for fabricating flexible CNT-based devices. Traditional fabrication methods require carefully controlled environments such as high temperatures and a clean room. Further, they require repeat transfers to produce CNTs with different resistance values.

More direct methods such as laser-induced forward transfer (LIFT) and thermal fusion (TF) have been developed as alternatives. In the LIFT method, a laser is used to directly transfer CNTs onto substrates, while in TF, CNTs are mixed with polymers that are then selectively removed by a laser to form CNT wires with varying resistance values.

Imagine a sheet of material just one layer of atoms thick—less than a millionth of a millimeter. While this may sound fantastical, such a material exists: it is called graphene and it is made from carbon atoms in a honeycomb arrangement. First synthesized in 2004 and then soon hailed as a substance with wondrous characteristics, scientists are still working on understanding it.

Postdoc Areg Ghazaryan and Professor Maksym Serbyn at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) together with colleagues Dr. Tobias Holder and Professor Erez Berg from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel have been studying graphene for years and have now published their newest findings on its superconducting properties in a research paper in the journal Physical Review B.

“Multilayered graphene has many promising qualities ranging from widely tunable band structure and special optical properties to new forms of superconductivity—meaning being able to conduct electrical current without resistance,” Ghazaryan explains.

While tunneling reactions are remarkably hard to predict, a group of researchers were able to experimentally observe such an effect, marking a breakthrough in the field of quantum chemistry.

Tunnel Effect

Continue reading “Breakthrough in Quantum Chemistry: Tunnel Effect Experimentally Observed in Molecules” »

If you’re a massless particle, you must always move at light speed. If you have mass, you must go slower. So why aren’t any neutrinos slow?

The novel method could form a crucial part of NASA’s plans to establish a permanent human presence on the moon.

You may not know that lunar dust poses a real problem to NASA as it aims to establish a permanent crew presence on the moon with its upcoming Artemis missions.

Continue reading “New liquid nitrogen spray could help NASA solve its lunar dust problem” »

The supernova is so old that it is believed to have been described in a passage of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”

A group of scientists has shed new light on a star that exploded in a supernova more than 450 years ago, blasting particles out into space at close to the speed of light.

Now, astronomers have used NASA’s Imaging X-ray Polarimetry to study the incredibly long-lasting aftereffects of the supernova called Tycho.

Continue reading “NASA sheds light on a massive supernova dating back to Middle Ages” »