Lifeboat Foundation

An experiment in the United Kingdom has failed to find evidence of a particle meant to explain most of the universe’s mass. But the search isn’t over.

When cosmologists observe the way the universe expands, they find that present-day theories of matter can’t explain most of the universe’s energy. They call the unknown energy “dark energy,” and theorists have tried to explain it by proposing undiscovered particles and corresponding fields. Experiments have failed to find evidence of such particles, but in physics, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

A team of scientists from Ohio University, Argonne National Laboratory, Universitié de Toulouse in France and Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan led by Ohio Professor of Physics Saw-Wai Hla and Prof. Gwenael Rapenne from Toulouse developed a molecular propeller that enables unidirectional rotations on a material surface when energized.

In nature, molecule propellers are vital in many biological applications ranging from the swimming bacteria to intracellular transport, but synthetic molecular propellers, like what has been developed, are able to operate in harsher environments and under a precise control. This new development is a multiple component molecular propeller specially designed to operate on solid surfaces. This tiny propeller is composed of three components; a ratchet shape molecular gear as a base, a tri-blade propeller, and a ruthenium atom acting as an atomic ball bearing that connects the two. The size of the propeller is only about 2 nanometers (nm) wide and 1 nm tall.

“What is special about our propeller is its multi-component design that becomes chiral on the gold crystal surface, i.e. it forms right- or left-tilted gears,” said Hla. “This chirality dictates the rotational direction when energized.”

Researchers from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna have experimentally demonstrated what was previously only a theoretical possibility. Together with quantum physicists from the University of Science and Technology of China, they have succeeded in teleporting complex high-dimensional quantum states. The research teams report this international first in the journal “Physical Review Letters”.

In their study, the researchers teleported the quantum state of one photon (light particle) to another distant one. Previously, only two-level states (“qubits”) had been transmitted, i.e., information with values “0” or “1”. However, the scientists succeeded in teleporting a three-level state, a so-called “qutrit”. In quantum physics, unlike in classical computer science, “0” and “1” are not an ‘either/or’ – both simultaneously, or anything in between, is also possible. The Austrian-Chinese team has now demonstrated this in practice with a third possibility “2”.

Novel experimental method.

By Leah Crane

Some ideas about the quantum world appear to suggest there are many versions of you spread out across many parallel universes. Now, two scientists have formulated a proof that attempts to show this is really true.

The proof involves a fundamental construct in quantum mechanics called Bell’s theorem. This theorem deals with situations where particles interact with each other, become entangled, and then go their separate ways. It is what’s called a “no-go theorem”, one designed to show that some assumption about how the world works is not true.

For the first time, Chinese scientists have demonstrated the experiment of transferring quantum information in a 3D state.

Limited in a two-level state for a long time, the study paves the way to teleporting the complete quantum state of a particle, according to an article in American Physical Society a top peer-review journal.

According to Pan Jianwei, coauthor of the study known as the “father of quantum” in China, quantum teleportation is a new communication method to transfer quantum information – a particle’s quantum state in the micro-world.

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Before scientists discovered the new state of matter last week, we were basically all used to just three states of matter. After all, during our daily lives we encounter some variety of solids, liquids and gases. Solids hold a definite shape without a container, liquids conform to the shape of their container, and gases not only conform to a container, but also expand to fill it.

And there’s variety amidst these three: A crystalline solid, for example, has all its atoms lined up in exactly the precise order in perfect symmetry, while a quasicrystal solid fills all its space without the tightly regulated structure. Liquid crystals, which make up the visual components of most electronic displays, have elements of both liquids and crystal structures, as anyone who has ever pushed the screen of their calculator can confirm.

Under standard conditions on Earth, solids, liquids and gasses are the vast majority of what a person will experience in life. But that doesn’t mean there’s not a whole lot more beneath the surface.

ONE RING Scientists have created a new form of carbon consisting of 18 atoms arranged in a ring, illustrated here with data from an atomic force microscope. Bonds between atoms are alternately longer and shorter, giving the ring nine sides.

Excess heat given off by smartphones, laptops and other electronic devices can be annoying, but beyond that it contributes to malfunctions and, in extreme cases, can even cause lithium batteries to explode.

To guard against such ills, engineers often insert glass, plastic or even layers of air as insulation to prevent heat-generating components like microprocessors from causing damage or discomforting users.

Now, Stanford researchers have shown that a few layers of atomically thin materials, stacked like sheets of paper atop hot spots, can provide the same insulation as a sheet of glass 100 times thicker. In the near term, thinner heat shields will enable engineers to make electronic devices even more compact than those we have today, said Eric Pop, professor of electrical engineering and senior author of a paper published Aug. 16 in Science Advances.