01. Scientists discover laser light can cast a shadow 02. Idea thieves tend to target early concepts, experiments find 03. How can electrons split into fractions of themselves? 04. Novel AI algorithm captures photons in motion 05. Scientists find a new way of entangling light and sound 06. Team creates world’s first tunable-wavelength blue semiconductor laser 07. MIT physicists predict exotic form of matter with potential for quantum computing 08. Experts warn of political risks in Antarctic curtain geoengineering proposal 09. Light-matter interaction reveals new paradigm of quantum information technology 10. Scientists call for global action on microbial climate solutions […]
Can robots learn from machine dreams?
MIT News November 19, 2024 Fast and accurate physics simulation is an essential component of robot learning, where robots can explore failure scenarios that are difficult to produce in the real world and learn from unlimited on-policy data. Yet, it remains challenging to incorporate RGB-color perception into the sim-to-real pipeline that matches the real world in its richness and realism. Researchers at MIT trained a robot dog in simulation for visual parkour. They proposed a way to use generative models to synthesize diverse and physically accurate image sequences of the scene from the robot’s ego-centric perspective. They presented demonstrations of […]
Climate scientists argue that 1000-year sequestration strategies must be used to meet climate goals
Phys.org November 13, 2024 The scientifically recognized definition of Carbon Dioxide Removal requires removed atmospheric CO2 to be stored “durably”; however, it remains unclear what is meant by durably, and interpretations have varied from decades to millennia. An international team of researchers (Switzerland, USA – UC Berkeley) used a reduced-complexity climate model to examine the effect of Carbon Dioxide Removal with varying CO2 storage durations. They found that storage duration substantially affects whether net zero emissions achieve the desired temperature outcomes. With a typical 100-year storage duration, net zero CO2 emissions with 6 GtCO2 per year residual emissions would result […]
Experts warn of political risks in Antarctic curtain geoengineering proposal
Phys.org November 18, 2024 Should current unmitigated emissions continue, there is a growing chance of collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, one of the planetary climate tipping points at the greatest risk of being crossed. Such a collapse would subject the world to an increase of several metres in average global sea-level rise over just a few centuries. There is an academic debate about the potential of supporting glacial stability through artificial infrastructures such as an undersea ‘curtain’. However, this ‘ice sheet conservation’ would come with significant yet unforeseeable technical and environmental risks. Researchers in the UK argued that […]
How can electrons split into fractions of themselves?
MIT News November 18, 2024 Recent experiments on the moiré structure formed by pentalayer rhombohedral graphene aligned with a hexagonal boron nitride substrate report the discovery of a zero-field fractional quantum Hall effect. These “(fractional) quantum anomalous Hall” [(F)QAH] phases occur for one sign of a perpendicular displacement field, and correspond, experimentally, to full or partial filling of a valley polarized Chern-1 band. Such a band is absent in the noninteracting band structure. Researchers at MIT showed that electron-electron interactions play a crucial role, and presented microscopic theoretical calculations demonstrating the emergence of a nearly flat, isolated, Chern-1 band and […]
Idea thieves tend to target early concepts, experiments find
Phys.org November 20, 2024 Creators often encounter the threat of idea theft, which can discourage them from sharing their ideas and receiving vital feedback. A team of researchers in the US (University of Virginia, Cornell University) explored the psychology behind creators’ attempts to strategically manage idea sharing. Across three studies, they found that creators mis-predict the preferences of idea thieves, such that idea thieves prefer to steal ideas in earlier stages of development than creators expect. They found this difference was driven by creators’ tendency to underestimate how much idea thieves attend to moral concerns while deciding when to steal […]
Invisible touch: Researchers give AI the ability to feel and measure surfaces
Phys.org November 18, 2024 Researchers at Stevens Institute explored a novel approach to surface roughness metrology utilizing a single pixel, raster scanning single photon counting LiDAR system. It used a collimated laser beam in picosecond pulses to probe a surface, capturing the changes of back-scattered photons from different points on the surface into a single mode fiber, and counted them using a single photon detector. The back-scattered photons carried speckle noise produced by the rough surface, and the variation in photon counts over different illumination points across the surface becoming a good measure of its roughness. By analyzing the variation […]
Light-matter interaction reveals new paradigm of quantum information technology
Phys.org November 19, 2024 Researchers in the Republic of Korea investigated Coulomb exchange between distinct electron–hole modes and Floquet states, in two-dimensional semiconductors through a theoretical description of time-resolved and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (tr-ARPES) in an extended Haldane model that included the electron–hole Coulomb interaction. Two branches of novel quantum states were found in the form of bosonic exciton–Floquet composites, which resulted from exchange coupling due to the Coulomb interaction. tr-ARPES could be directly employed for the density matrix element of the biparticle subsystem of photoelectron and hole, and electron–hole entanglement and information could be further explored. According to the […]
MIT physicists predict exotic form of matter with potential for quantum computing
MIT News November 18, 2024 Based on the recent discovery of fractional quantum anomalous Hall states in moiré systems, researchers at MIT studied a family of moiré systems, skyrmion Chern band models, which could be realized in two-dimensional semiconductor-magnet heterostructures and capture the essence of twisted transition metal dichalcogenide homobilayers. Using many-body exact diagonalization they showed that, despite strong Berry curvature variations in momentum space, the non-Abelian Moore-Read state could be realized at half filling of the second miniband. According to the researchers, their results demonstrate the feasibility of non-Abelian fractionalization in moiré systems without Landau levels and shed light […]
New ion speed record holds potential for faster battery charging and biosensing
Phys.org November 19, 2024 Organic mixed ionic-electronic conductors (OMIECs) have better properties than inorganic counterparts for biosensing, soft-robotics, neuromorphic computing, and smart medicine. However, slow ion transport relative to charge transport in these materials is a limiting factor. Researchers at Washington State University demonstrated that hydrophilic molecules local to an interfacial OMIEC nanochannel could accelerate ion transport with ion mobilities surpassing electrophoretic transport by more than an order of magnitude. Ion access to the interfacial channel could be gated through local surface energy. They applied the mechanism in a novel sensing device, which electronically detected and characterized chemical reaction dynamics […]