The risks of low-speed impacts with liquids

When a solid object hits a liquid, the impact produces shock waves: a process that has long occupied engineers due to its implications for design of hydraulic systems or motors. KAUST researchers now show that impacts at speeds lower than expected can still induce these damaging shock waves.

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Scientists uncover how the shape of melting ice depends on water temperature

A team of mathematicians and physicists has discovered how ice formations are shaped by external forces, such as water temperature. Its newly published research may offer another means for gauging factors that cause ice to melt.

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Researchers develop improved quantum gate testing method

The development of quantum technology is currently one of the most popular frontiers of advanced science, and is considered as a significant indicator of a country's sci-tech level. On a structural basis, a quantum computer consists of multiple quantum gates. Fault-tolerant quantum computation requires high-fidelity operation on the gates, stressing the priority of developing a reliable and efficient way to examine the fidelity of prepared quantum gates.

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Novel strategy provides simple solution for stellarator permanent magnet design

Researchers led by Prof. Xu Guosheng from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science (HFIPS) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have recently demonstrated a novel "two-step" magnet design strategy to design advanced stellarator with standardized permanent magnet blocks and simple coils. Related results were published on Cell Reports Physical Science.

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Improving print quality by using surfactants

Have you ever spilled coffee onto a table? If so, you have probably noticed that the resulting stain is not nicely uniform but has a notable ring around it. This forgettable oddity is daily business in the printing industry, where such a drying pattern is detrimental to the final quality. Mechanical engineer Ruben van Gaalen investigated this problem by focusing on a promising solution: the use of surfactant molecules.

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Using lanthanide–lanthanide bonds to create more powerful permanent magnets

A team of researchers affiliated with a large number of institutions in the U.S. reports a way to use lanthanide–lanthanide bonds to create more powerful permanent magnets. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes a technique to forge several kinds of lanthanide bonds for use in magnets. Lanthanides are the 15 metallic chemical elements numbered 57 to71.

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Study probes the planet's turbulent past to explain where oceans came from

The origin of water on our planet is a hot question: Water has immense implications for plate tectonics, climate, the origin of life on Earth, and potential habitability of other Earth-like planets. In a recent study in Physical Review Letters, a Skoltech professor and his Chinese colleagues suggest a chemical compound that—although now extinct—could have preserved water deep underground in the violent era when massive collisions must have evaporated the Earth's surface water.

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Physicist solves century old problem of radiation reaction

A Lancaster physicist has proposed a radical solution to the question of how a charged particle, such as an electron, responded to its own electromagnetic field.

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Studying the big bang with artificial intelligence

It could hardly be more complicated: tiny particles whir around wildly with extremely high energy, countless interactions occur in the tangled mess of quantum particles, and this results in a state of matter known as "quark-gluon plasma". Immediately after the Big Bang, the entire universe was in this state; today it is produced by high-energy atomic nucleus collisions, for example at CERN.

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Sunlight could be used to power lasers

Sunlight, one of the planet's most abundant sources of renewable energy, could be used to power lasers, according to a study from Heriot-Watt University.

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How to predict future nuclear power requirements

Nuclear reactors will be needed to transition to a low-carbon future but they are time-consuming and expensive to plan and build, so getting a head start on future requirements is key. Marc Ernoult of Paris-Saclay University, Orsay, France and his co-workers have produced a model that takes into account the 'deep uncertainties' of our nuclear future and potential abrupt changes in resource need. This work has been published in the EDP Sciences journal EPJ Nuclear Sciences & Technologies.

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Fastest-ever study of how electrons respond to X-rays performed

A study of electron dynamics timed to millionths of a billionth of a second reveals the damage radiation can do on a molecular level.

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Worldwide coordinated search for dark matter

An international team of researchers with key participation from the PRISMA+Cluster of Excellence at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Helmholtz Institute Mainz (HIM) has published for the first time comprehensive data on the search for dark matter using a worldwide network of optical magnetometers. According to the scientists, dark matter fields should produce a characteristic signal pattern that can be detected by correlated measurements at multiple stations of the GNOME network. Analysis of data from a one-month continuous GNOME operation has not yet yielded a corresponding indication. However, the measurement allows the formulation of constraints on the characteristics of dark matter, as the researchers report in the journal Nature Physics.

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Study finds that black hole inner horizons can be charged or discharged

Black holes are intriguing and widely studied cosmic bodies with extremely high tidal forces, from which even light is unable to escape. While many studies predicted the existence of black holes, which have also recently been detected, many questions about these cosmic bodies remain unanswered.

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Quantum zeta epiphany: Physicist finds a new approach to a $1 million mathematical enigma

Numbers like π, e and φ often turn up in unexpected places in science and mathematics. Pascal's triangle and the Fibonacci sequence also seem inexplicably widespread in nature. Then there's the Riemann zeta function, a deceptively straightforward function that has perplexed mathematicians since the 19th century. The most famous quandary, the Riemann hypothesis, is perhaps the greatest unsolved question in mathematics, with the Clay Mathematics Institute offering a $1 million prize for a correct proof.

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Owl wing design reduces aircraft, wind turbine noise pollution

Trailing-edge noise is the dominant source of sound from aeronautical and turbine engines like those in airplanes, drones, and wind turbines. Suppressing this noise pollution is a major environmental goal for some urban areas.

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Using time dilation to measure curvature of space-time

A team of researchers working at Stanford University has used time dilation in an atomic fountain to measure the curvature of space-time. In their study, reported in the journal Science, the group used the fountain as an interferometer to measure atomic wave packet changes that corresponded to phase shifts. Albert Roura,with the German Aerospace Center's Institute of Quantum Technologies published a Perspective piece in the same journal issue outlining the work by the team in California.

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New study shows novel crystal structure for hydrogen under high pressure

Elements in the periodic table can take up multiple forms. Carbon, for example, exists as diamond or graphite depending on the environmental conditions at the time of formation. Crystal structures that have been formed in ultra-high-pressure environments are particularly important as they provide clues to the formation of planets. However, recreating such environments in a laboratory is difficult, and materials scientists often rely on simulation predictions to identify the existence of such structures.

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Crunching multiverse to solve two physics puzzles at once

The discovery of the Higgs boson was a landmark in the history of physics. It explained something fundamental: how elementary particles that have mass get their masses. But it also marked something no less fundamental: the beginning of an era of measuring in detail the particle's properties and finding out what they might reveal about the nature of the universe.

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New insight into the internal structure of the proton

While the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is well known for smashing protons together, it is actually the quarks and gluons inside the protons—collectively known as partons—that are really interacting. Thus, in order to predict the rate of a process occurring in the LHC—such as the production of a Higgs boson or a yet-unknown particle—physicists have to understand how partons behave within the proton. This behavior is described in parton distribution functions (PDFs), which describe what fraction of a proton's momentum is taken by its constituent quarks and gluons.

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Using ion soft landing to solve hard energy problems

Every technology that runs our world requires energy on demand. Energy must be stored and be accessible to power electronic devices and light buildings. The wide range of devices that require energy on demand has led to the development of numerous strategies for storing energy.

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Information processing constrains how E. coli bacteria navigate chemical gradients

Living organisms adapt their behavior and movements based on information they acquire from their surrounding environment. But oftentimes this information is imperfect, and the organism needs to act under uncertainty. So, does imperfect information limit an organism's performance at specific tasks?

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Artificially altered material could accelerate neuromorphic device development

Neuromorphic devices—which emulate the decision-making processes of the human brain—show great promise for solving pressing scientific problems, but building physical systems to realize this potential presents researchers with a significant challenge. An international team has gained additional insights into a material compound called vanadium oxide, or VO2, that might be the missing ingredient needed to complete a reliable neuromorphic recipe.

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Manifolds in commonly used atomic fingerprints lead to failure in machine-learning four-body interactions

Atomic environment fingerprints, or structural descriptors, are used to describe the chemical environment around a reference atom. Encoding information such as bond-lengths to neighboring atoms or coordination numbers, these fingerprints are used, for example, as inputs in machine learning approaches or to eliminate redundant structures in structural searches  

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Evidence of a quantum phase transition without symmetry breaking in cerium-cobalt-indium 5

Over the past few decades, many condensed matter physicists have conducted research focusing on quantum phase transitions that are not clearly associated with a broken symmetry. One reason that these transitions are interesting is that they might underpin the mechanism of high-temperature superconductivity.

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Century-old assumption regarding neurons and brain activity disproven

According to the neuronal computational scheme, each neuron functions as an excitable element. The incoming electrical signals from connecting neurons are accumulated, and the neuron generates a short electrical pulse, a spike, when its threshold is crossed.

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The first topological acoustic transistor

Topological materials move electrons along their surface and edges without any loss, making them promising materials for dissipationless, high-efficiency electronics. Researchers are especially interested in using these materials as transistors, the backbone of all modern electronics. But there's a problem: Transistors switch electronic current on and off, but it's difficult to turn off the dissipationless flow of electrons in topological materials.

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Using mortar filled tennis balls to make structures more resistant to earthquakes

A team of researchers at ETH Zurich has found that discarded tennis balls can be used to create inexpensive seismic isolation bearings. They have written a paper describing their work and have posted it on the open access site Frontiers in Built Environment.

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Exploring growth within a confined space

Grow a tomato inside a square box, and you'll end up with a square tomato. It's an experiment that shows clearly how confinement can influence a body's evolving shape.

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Sustainable silk material for biomedical, optical, food supply applications

While silk is best known as a component in clothes and fabric, the material has plentiful uses, spanning biomedicine to environmental science. In Applied Physics Reviews, researchers from Tufts University discuss the properties of silk and recent and future applications of the material.

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Experimental quantum teleportation of propagating microwaves

The field of experimental quantum communication promises ways of efficient and unconditional secure information exchange in quantum states. The possibility of transferring quantum information forms a cornerstone of the emerging field of quantum communication and quantum computation. Recent breakthroughs in quantum computation with superconducting circuits trigger a demand for quantum communication channels between superconducting processors separated in space at microwave length frequencies. To pursue this goal, Kirill G. Fedorov, and a team of scientists in Germany, Finland and Japan demonstrated unconditional quantum teleportation to propagate coherent microwave states by exploring two-mode squeezing and analog feedforward across a distance of 0.42 m. The researchers achieved a teleportation fidelity of F= 0.689±0.004, which exceeded the asymptotic no-cloning threshold, preventing the use of classical error correction methods on quantum states. The quantum state of the teleported state was preserved to open the avenue towards unconditional security in microwave quantum communication.

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Black holes and dark matter—are they one and the same?

Primordial black holes created in the first instants after the Big Bang—tiny ones smaller than the head of a pin and supermassive ones covering billions of miles—may account for all of the dark matter in the universe.

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Breakthrough in the nonlinear generation of primordial gravitational waves

In a Physics Review Letters paper published on Dec 15th, an international research team, led by Cai Yifu, Professor of the University of Science and Technology of China, and his collaborators discovered the hypothetical possibility of resonantly generating primordial gravitational waves within the high energy physics when the universe was in the babyhood. The originally invisible gravitational wave signals can be amplified by parametric resonance by 4 to 6 orders of magnitude or even larger through this phenomenon, and then become likely to be probed by primordial gravitational wave detectors, hence, validating some theoretical models of the very early universe that are "inaccesible" in traditional observational windows.

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No, putting a spoon in an open bottle of champagne doesn't keep it bubbly, but there is a better way

At a recent tasting, I was presenting some sparkling wines from the Limoux region of France, a region that produced sparkling wines at least 100 years before wines from the Champagne region were well known.

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