Phys.org May 10, 2022 Analyzing data from NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) mission and ESA’s Swarm satellites, an international team of researchers (USA – UC Berkeley, University of Colorado, Germany) found that in the hours after the eruption, hurricane-speed winds and unusual electric currents formed in the ionosphere. Upon reaching the ionosphere and the edge of space, ICON clocked the windspeeds at up to 450 mph. After the eruption, the equatorial electrojet surged to five times its normal peak power and dramatically flipped direction, flowing westward for a short period. According to the researchers this is something we’ve only previously […]
Scientists discover a vast, salty groundwater system under the Antarctica ice sheet
Phys.org May 6, 2022 West Antarctic was an ocean before it was an ice sheet. So the bedrock below the ice sheet is covered with a thick layer of sediments. A team of researchers in the US (Colorado Schools of Mines, Scripps Institution of Oceanography) has found a huge amount of groundwater, including saltwater from the ocean in the thick layer of sediments. They suggested that there is a column of water about 220 to 820 meters (700 to 2,700 feet) deep. They estimated that most of this salty water arrived in the past 10,000 years, based on how much […]
Ultrafast ‘camera’ captures hidden behavior of potential ‘neuromorphic’ material
Phys.org May 9, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (Brookhaven National Laboratory, Duke University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory) captured the hidden trajectory of atomic motion of vanadium dioxide (VO2) as it transitioned from an insulator to a metal in response to a pulse of light. Vanadium dioxide exhibits an insulator-metal transition near room temperature in which a small voltage or current can produce a large change in resistivity with switching that can mimic the behavior of both neurons and synapses. Those are the signals produced by electrons scattering off the atoms of the vanadium dioxide sample as atoms […]
Uncovering the key to safer energy storage devices that avoid thermal runaway
Phys.org May 9, 2022 Researchers in South Korea investigated the thermal properties of electric double-layer capacitors (EDLCs) for a technical foundation in thermal measurement and revealed significant information. The reversible entropy and free energy changes in the EDLCs caused dynamic changes in the effective heat capacity of the electrodes, which were monitored in real-time during charge and discharge operations. In an EDLC with a 6 M KOH electrolyte, the effective heat capacities of the positive and negative electrodes with a varying voltage from 0 to 1 V were estimated to decrease by approximately 9.14% and 3.91%, respectively. This polarization dependence […]
Top 10 Science and Technology Inventions for the Week of May 6, 2022
01. Building a better quantum bit: New qubit breakthrough could transform quantum computing 02. Direct printing of nanodiamonds at the quantum level 03. Discovery of the one-way superconductor, thought to be impossible 04. A ‘beyond-quantum’ equivalence principle for superposition and entanglement 05. Thin quantum wires work better with less insulating coatings 06. A simpler approach for creating quantum materials 07. Hydrogen-tuned topological insulators may lead to new platforms in sustainable quantum electronics 08. Photons can enable real-time physical random bit generation for information security app 09. Perovskite photovoltaics for a greener Internet-of-Things 10. Zero-index metamaterials offer new insights into the […]
A ‘beyond-quantum’ equivalence principle for superposition and entanglement
Phys.org May 2, 2022 An international team of researchers (France, Germany, Spain) has discovered a new connection between superposition and entanglement that does not assume that quantum theory is correct. They proved that given any two general probabilistic theories (GPTs) the following are equivalent: (i) each theory is nonclassical, (ii) each theory satisfies a strong notion of incompatibility equivalent to the existence of “superpositions” and (iii) the two theories can be entangled, in the sense that their composite exhibits either entangled states or entangled measurements. Intuitively, in the post-quantum GPT setting, a superposition is a set of two binary ensembles […]
Building a better quantum bit: New qubit breakthrough could transform quantum computing
Phys.org May 4, 2022 A team of researchers in the US (Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, research organization, MIT, University of Chicago, National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Florida State University, Washington University) trapped an electron on an ultrapure solid neon surface in a vacuum. After building their platform, the team performed real-time qubit operations using microwave photons on a trapped electron and characterized its quantum properties. These tests demonstrated that solid neon provided a robust environment for the electron with very low electric noise to disturb it. By using a chip-scale superconducting resonator the team was able to […]
Direct printing of nanodiamonds at the quantum level
Nanowerk May 4, 2022 The quantum defects in nanodiamonds, such as nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers, are emerging as promising candidates for nanoscale sensing and imaging, and the controlled placement with respect to target locations is vital to their practical applications. Researchers in Hong Kong have developed on-demand electrohydrodynamic printing of nanodiamonds containing NV centers with high precision control over quantity and position. After thorough characterizations of the printing conditions, they showed that the number of printed nanodiamonds can be controlled at will, attaining the single-particle level precision. This printing approach enables positioning NV center arrays with a controlled number directly on […]
Discovery of the one-way superconductor, thought to be impossible
Nanowerk April 27, 2022 Showing magnetic-field-free, single-directional superconductivity with Josephson coupling, it would serve as the building block for next-generation superconducting circuit technology. An international team of researchers (Germany, China, the Netherlands, USA – Princeton University, Johns Hopkins University) has fabricated an inversion symmetry breaking van der Waals heterostructure of NbSe2/Nb3Br8/NbSe2. They demonstrated that even without a magnetic field, the junction can be superconducting with a positive current while being resistive with a negative current. The ΔIc behaviour (the difference between positive and negative critical currents) with magnetic field is symmetric and Josephson coupling is proved through the Fraunhofer pattern. […]
Dual membrane offers hope for long-term energy storage
Science Daily May 3, 2022 Polysulfide-air redox flow batteries demonstrated great potential for long-duration energy storage technologies that can be deployed at grid scale. However, the crossover of polysulfide is one significant challenge. Researchers in the UK have developed a stable and cost-effective alkaline-based hybrid polysulfide-air redox flow battery where a dual-membrane-structured flow cell design mitigates the sulfur crossover issue. Moreover, combining manganese/carbon catalyzed air electrodes with sulfidated Ni foam polysulfide electrodes, the redox flow battery achieves a maximum power density of 5.8 mW cm−2 at 50% state of charge and 55 °C. Compared with the best results obtained to date […]