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Category: particle physics – Page 229

The discovery of new quantum materials with magnetic properties could pave the way for ultra-fast and considerably more energy-efficient computers and mobile devices. So far, these types of materials have been shown to work only in extremely cold temperatures. Now, a research team at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden are the first to make a device made of a two-dimensional magnetic quantum material work in room temperature.

Today’s rapid IT expansion generates enormous amounts of digital data that needs to be stored, processed, and communicated. This comes with an ever-increasing need for energy—projected to consume more than 30% of the world’s total energy consumption by 2050. To combat the problem, the research community has entered a new paradigm in . The research and development of two-dimensional quantum materials, that form in sheets and are only a few atoms thick, have opened new doors for sustainable, faster and more energy-efficient data storage and processing in computers and mobiles.

The first atomically thin material to be isolated in a laboratory was graphene, a single atom-thick plane of graphite, that resulted in the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. And in 2017, two-dimensional materials with magnetic properties were discovered for the first time. Magnets play a fundamental role in our everyday lives, from sensors in our cars and home appliances to and memory technologies, and the discovery opened for new and more for a wide range of technology devices.

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The mystery of ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs) and their astonishing brightness has been partially unraveled through a recent study utilizing NASA’s NuSTAR.

Scientists have long been perplexed by ultra-luminous X-ray sources (ULXs), cosmic objects that emit about 10 million times more energy than the Sun and appear to break the Eddington limit — a physical boundary that determines the maximum brightness of an object based on its mass. In a groundbreaking study published in The Astrophysical Journal, researchers have confirmed that these extraordinary light emitters surpass the Eddington limit, potentially due to their strong magnetic fields.

The effect of Eddington limit and magnetic fields

The Eddington limit plays a crucial role in determining the balance between the outward push of photons and the inward pull of an object’s gravity. When an object reaches the Eddington limit, its light pushes away any gas or material falling toward it, thus controlling its brightness. The study focused on the ULX M82 X-2, a neutron star that was found to be stealing about 9 billion trillion tons of material from a neighboring star annually. The researchers’ calculations confirmed that M82 X-2 exceeds the Eddington limit.

Continue reading “Ultra-luminous X-ray sources defy Eddington limit and unlock universal secrets” | >

The team created a vacuum chamber equipped with twin electrodes to simulate the coronal loop phenomenon.

Coronal loops are arcs of curving plasma that appear above the Sun’s surface. These loops are so powerful that they can travel up to 100,000 kilometers above the surface of the Sun and last for minutes to hours.

Understanding coronal loops.

NASA

Continue reading “Miniature solar flares made in lab offer insight into high-speed energetic particles” | >

Humongous Fungus, a specimen of Armillaria ostoyae, has claimed the title of world’s largest single organism. Though it features honey mushrooms above ground, the bulk of this creature’s mass arises from its vast subterranean mycelial network of filamentous tendrils. It has spread across more than 2,000 acres of soil and weighs over 30,000 metric tons. Yet I would contend that Humongous Fungus represents a mere microcosm of the world’s true largest organism, a creature that I will call Cyborg Earth. What is Cyborg Earth? Eastern religions have suggested that all life is fundamentally interconnected. Cyborg Earth represents an extension of this concept.

All across the globe, biological life thrives. Quintillions upon quintillions of biomolecular computations happen every second, powering all life. Mycoplasma bacteria. Communities of leafcutter ants. The Humongous Fungus. Beloved beagles. Seasonal influenza viruses. Parasitic roundworms. Families of Canadian elk. Vast blooms of cyanobacteria. Humanity. Life works because of complexity that arises from simplicity that in turn arises from whatever inscrutable quantum mechanical rules lay beneath the molecular scale.

All creatures rearrange atoms in various ways. Termites and beavers rearrange larger bunches of atoms than most organisms. As humans progressed from paleolithic to metalwork to industrialization and then to the space age, information revolution, and era of artificial intelligence, they learned to converse with the atoms around them in an ever more complex fashion. We are actors in an operatic performance, we are subroutines of evolution, we are interwoven matryoshka patterns, an epic chemistry.

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In the math of particle physics, every calculation should result in infinity. Physicists get around this by just ignoring certain parts of the equations — an approach that provides approximate answers. But by using the techniques known as “resurgence,” researchers hope to end the infinities and end up with perfectly precise predictions.

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Some classical computers have error correction built into their memories based on bits; quantum computers, to be workable in the future, will need error correction mechanisms, too, based on the vastly more sensitive qubits.

Cornell researchers have recently taken a step toward fault-tolerant quantum computing: they constructed a simple model containing exotic particles called non-Abelian anyons, compact and practical enough to run on modern quantum hardware. Realizing these particles, which can only exist in two dimensions, is a move towards implementing it in the real world.

Thanks to some creative thinking, Yuri Lensky, a former Bethe/Wilkins/Kavli Institute at Cornell (KIC) postdoctoral fellow in physics in the College of Arts and Sciences (A&S), collaborating with Eun-Ah Kim, professor of physics (A&S), came up with a simple “recipe” that could be used for robustly computing with non-Abelian anyons, including specific instructions for executing the effect experimentally on devices available today.

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Scientists at Kyoto University have developed an experimental method to examine ultra-light dark matter by observing its gravitational effects on visible matter. Using millimeter-wave sensing in cryogenic conditions, the team achieved experimental parameters for unexplored mass ranges of dark photon.

A photon is a particle of light. It is the basic unit of light and other electromagnetic radiation, and is responsible for the electromagnetic force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. Photons have no mass, but they do have energy and momentum. They travel at the speed of light in a vacuum, and can have different wavelengths, which correspond to different colors of light. Photons can also have different energies, which correspond to different frequencies of light.

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A team of researchers designed a two-dimensional photonic time crystal that they say could have applications in technologies like transmitters and lasers.

Despite their name, photonic time crystals have little in common with time crystals, a phase of matter first proposed in 2012 and observed several years later. The fundamental commonality is that both crystals have structural patterns over time, but time crystals are quantum materials—the atoms are suspended in quantum states—while photonic time crystals are artificial materials not found in nature and they are not necessarily suspended in quantum states.

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