physicists make the first direct observations of a glass relaxing into a supercooled liquid

16 Aug 2023 Isabelle Dumé

AFM snapshot showing the formation and progression of local wrinkles induced by the transformation of the middle organic glass layer into a supercooled liquid. Courtesy: J Rodríguez-Viejo

The first direct, real-time observations of an ultrastable glass as it “relaxes” into a supercooled liquid have enabled researchers to quantify a previously mysterious process known as the glass transition. This transition plays a crucial role in numerous fields, including biomedical cryopreservation, drug synthesis, electronic device manufacture and tissue engineering to cite but a few examples. The work could also have implications for solar cells, which often have a coating of patterned glass.

 

Take an armchair tour of the universe with this sightseer’s guide

30 Aug 2023

Clár-Bríd Tohill reviews Under Alien Skies: A Sightseer’s Guide to the Universe by Philip Plait

Distant wonders Philip Plait’s new book imagines what future space travellers might experience on distant exoplanets. (Courtesy: NASA/JPL)

As an astronomer, I am passionate in learning more about our place in the universe. As part of this I often give public talks and organize science outreach events. The people who come to them – no matter their age – almost always have the same wonder and awe when it comes to the cosmos. It is, after all, only human to want to learn more about the place we call home.

 

Ferroelectric polymer goes elastic

31 Aug 2023 Isabelle Dumé

Stretchy ferroelectrics: a) A new ferroelectric material combines elasticity with relatively high crystallinity. b) The unstrained material. c) The elastic ferroelectric under 70% strain. (Courtesy: NIMTE)

Although polymers are usually flexible, polymer-based ferroelectric materials tend to be rigid. Adding a small amount of crosslinking material can change that, however, and researchers at China’s Ningbo Institute of Materials Technology and Engineering (NIMTE) say that their new “elastic ferroelectrics” are resilient and flexible enough for use in wearable electronics and implantable medical devices.

 

Memristors make versatile artificial synapses for neuromorphic computing

29 Aug 2023 Margaret Harris

Artificial synapse: A photo of the memristor, which is a potential candidate for a synapse in a versatile neuromorphic computing device. (Courtesy: Le Zhao)

Most modern computers – from primitive room-filling behemoths like the ENIAC to the smartphone in your pocket – are built according to a set of principles laid out by the mathematician John von Neumann in 1945. This von Neumann architecture, as it is known, incorporates many familiar elements, including a central processing unit, a memory for storing data and instructions, and input and output devices. Despite its ubiquity, though, von Neumann’s model is not the only way of building a computer, and for some applications, it is not the most desirable, either.

 

New 2.5-dimensional structures observed in twisted graphite hybrids

30 Aug 2023 Isabelle Dumé

A University of Washington-led team has discovered that, by stacking a sheet of graphene onto bulk graphite at a small twist angle (top), “exotic” properties present at the graphene-graphite interface (yellow) can bleed down into the graphite itself. Courtesy: Ellis ThompsonWhen two sheets of graphene are placed on top of each other and slightly twisted, their atoms form a moiré pattern, or superlattice. At the so-called “magic” twist angle of 1.08°, something unusual happens: the weak van der Waals (vdW) coupling between atoms in adjacent layers modifies the atoms’ electronic states and transforms the material from a semimetal to a superconductor. The study of such twist-related electronic effects is known as “twistronics”, and it also includes phenomena such as correlated insulator states that appear at different degrees of misalignment.

 

Cement-based supercapacitor makes a novel energy storage system

25 Aug 2023 Isabelle Dumé

Since the new “supercapacitor” concrete would retain its strength, a house with a foundation made of this material could store a day’s worth of energy produced by solar panels or windmills, and allow it to be used whenever it’s needed. (Courtesy: Franz-Josef Ulm, Admir Masic and Yang-Shao Horn)

A new cost-effective and efficient supercapacitor made from carbon black and cement could store a day’s worth of energy in the concrete foundation of a building or provide contactless recharging for electric cars as they travel across it. The device could also facilitate the use of renewable energy sources such as solar, wind and tidal power, according to the researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Wyss Institute, both in the US, who developed it.

 

Can state-of-the-art linacs boost the uptake of 4D-CBCT in radiotherapy?

29 Aug 2023

Simulated scans Reconstructed CBCT images with variable and static angular gaps, using various reconstruction algorithms. (Courtesy: CC BY 4.0/Med. Phys.10.1002/mp.16585)

Four-dimensional cone-beam computed tomography (4D-CBCT) is an imaging technique employed during radiotherapy to help ensure the safe and accurate delivery of therapeutic radiation. Using the on-board kilovoltage imager found on most linear accelerator (linac) gantries, 4D-CBCT acquires X-ray projections and then groups the images into respiratory phase bins (usually 10 phases) to create a respiratory-correlated CBCT image. In this way, 4D-CBCT can capture breathing patterns and track the movement of the targeted tumour and nearby organs.

 

Partially-submerged objects experience more drag than expected

 

Nanowire scaffold supports artificial heart tissue

22 Aug 2023

Organoid scaffold: the silicon-based nanowires accelerated the development of stem cells into healthy, well-functioning tissue in rate hearts. (Courtesy: iStock/gimbat)

Using a scaffold made from conductive silicon nanowires, researchers in the US have developed artificial heart tissue that they say could be readily transplanted into natural tissue. Led by Ying Mei at Clemson University, the team hopes its technique could be a game changer in the global effort to treat heart disease.

 

Atomic quantum processors make their debut

27 Apr 2022

Neutral result: Entangled atoms form the basis of two new quantum processors. (Courtesy: iStock/Pobytov)

The first quantum processors that use neutral atoms as qubits have been produced independently by two US-based groups. The result is a milestone because atomic quantum computers may be easier to scale up than devices based on superconducting circuits or trapped ions – the two technologies that have dominated so far.

The first qubits were demonstrated in 1995 in trapped ions by David Wineland, Chris Monroe and colleagues at NIST in Boulder, Colorado, US. More recently, companies such as Google and IBM have produced computers using solid-state superconducting qubits, with the 127-qubit IBM Eagle processor currently regarded as the most powerful. However, as quantum computers have grown ever larger, this platform has encountered problems.

 

Quantum superchemistry emerges in the laboratory

23 Aug 2023

Atoms and molecules: Cheng Chin (r) and postdoctoral researcher Zhendong Zhang in the University of Chicago laboratory where they and colleagues observed the first evidence of quantum superchemistry. (Courtesy: John Zich/University of Chicago)

Chemical reactions are like a dance between atoms and molecules. As the dancers bounce into each other, they may react to form new combinations, or they may not. The whole process is incredibly complex and unpredictable, with many possible outcomes.

 

Zircons, plate tectonics and the mystery of life

22 Aug 2023 James Dacey

Magnetic data locked in ancient crystals suggest that life may have emerged long before the Earth’s tectonic plates started moving. If the finding holds true, it would overturn the conventional notion that tectonic shifts were a pre-requisite for life, as James Dacey explains

Moving question Plate tectonics – the horizontal movement and interaction of large plates on Earth’s surface – is considered vital to sustaining life. But new research indicates it was not happening 3.4 billion years ago, long after life on Earth emerged. (Courtesy: University of Rochester/illustration by Michael Osadciw)

 

Machine learning brings sharpness and colour to thermal images

19 Aug 2023

Clearer picture: illustration of a HADAR image of a tree made by combining thermal physics, infrared imaging and machine learning. (Courtesy: Purdue University)

A thermal imaging system that uses machine learning to disentangle the information contained in infrared images has been unveiled by researchers at Purdue University in the US. Dubbed HADAR, the system could allow passive thermal imagers to create images that appear as if they were taken in broad daylight – according Zubin Jacob and colleagues.

 

Evolution may explain the values of the fundamental constants

23 Aug 2023

Essential for life: this illustration shows how fundamental constants of nature set the fundamental lower limit for liquid viscosity. (Courtesy: thehackneycollective.com)

The values of the fundamental physical constants – seemingly fine-tuned for the emergence of nuclear matter and ultimately life – might not have been fixed at the universe’s outset but instead changed over time through a process akin to biological evolution. That is the hypothesis of a physicist in the UK, who has shown that life-friendly limits on fluid viscosity and diffusion impose constraints on the constants’ values. Having found that those constraints go beyond the requirements of stellar nucleosynthesis, he conjectures that the conditions needed for fluid motion in and among living cells could have emerged later on in cosmic history.

 

Astronomers protest at International Astronomical Union’s updated code of conduct on harassment

22 Aug 2023 Michael Banks

Researchers claim that the new IAU code of conduct offers a safe space for harassers. (Courtesy: iStock/PonyWang)

Astronomers have voiced their concern over an update by the International Astronomical Union (IAU) to its harassment policy, which they say helps to provide a safe space for harassers. The changes to the code were announced last week in an e-mail sent to IAU members from its president, Debra Elmegreen. The e-mail said that the IAU’s executive committee had modified its 13-page code of conduct to include a “substantive change” to its harassment policy.

How Space Pride is campaigning for change in the space sector

24 Aug 2023 Anna Demming

Anna Demming describes how a new charity called Space Pride wants to challenge the space industry’s outdated attitudes to diversity by hosting a fashion gala at a major space congress in Milan next year

Space for all Created by Rania Djojosugito and Khushi Shah, this artwork aims to represent people from all walks of life and a digital version of it will be on board SpaceX’s lunar lander, which is scheduled for launch in early 2024. (Courtesy: Rania Djojosugito, Khushi Shah and Space Pride)

Milan is a city synonymous with fashion, where designers and haute couture descend every September for its annual fashion week. Shortly after next year’s event, however, Milan will host another cultural milestone – the first Space Pride Fashion Gala. Running from 14 to 18 October 2024, the event promises to be “an out-of-this-world Pride parade” that builds on the latest advances in “technofabrics” – material that incorporate technology or functionality into a traditional textile.

 

Jet of frozen hydrogen provides a renewable target for laser-accelerated protons

23 Aug 2023

Snapshots of the hydrogen jet Shadowgraphs at the time of impact of the high-intensity laser pulse on the jet of hydrogen. A weaker light pulse sent in advance deliberately changed the hydrogen jet into three different initial states. (Courtesy: © HZDR)

Scientists generated the first petawatt laser pulse in the 1990s. In the decades that followed, lasers that produce petawatt-level power were built – equivalent to one quadrillion (1015) watts, or a significant fraction of the energy Earth receives from the Sun in a short amount of time.

 

A projectile fusion reactor could generate much-needed medical isotopes

16 Aug 2023 Tami Freeman

Target optimization First Light’s Machine 3 is employed to launch projectiles at the ultrahigh speeds required to test fusion targets. Its successor, Machine 4, will be used to create ignition – a critical step towards self-sustaining fusion energy. (Courtesy: First Light Fusion)

Harnessing the power of nuclear fusion to generate electricity is a longstanding aspiration of the physics community. One company working towards this goal is UK-based First Light Fusion, which is using a technique called projectile fusion to create a simple, low-cost inertial fusion power plant.

 

Russia’s Luna 25 Moon probe crashes on landing

21 Aug 2023 Michael Banks

Crash landing: If successful, it would have been Russia’s first lunar landing in almost half a century (courtesy: NASA/USGS)

Russia’s first lunar mission in decades ended in failure on Saturday when the craft crashed into the Moon. The Russian space agency Roscosmos said it lost contact with the Luna 25 spacecraft as it was entering a pre-landing orbit. The agency said it would now investigate the reasons behind the crash.

 

Tiny probe measures deep-brain activity from inside a blood vessel

18 Aug 2023

Neural recording across the vessel wall A micro-endovascular probe (yellow) designed for insertion into straight (versus branched) blood vessels is preloaded into a flexible microcatheter (cyan) and selectively injected into the straight vessel by saline flow. (Courtesy: Anqi Zhang, Stanford University)

Brain–machine interfaces (BMIs) provide direct electrical communication between the brain and external electronic systems. As such, BMIs offer potential to restore impaired functionality in patients with paralysis or neurological disorders, by using brain activity alone to directly control prostheses or computer programs, for example, or to modulate nerve or muscle function.

 

Binary-star study favours modified gravity over dark matter

17 Aug 2023

Wide open question: binary-star observations back MOND.(Courtesy: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center/Chris Smith (USRA))

A new study of data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia space mission claims to have found evidence of gravity acting contrary to the predictions of Newton and Einstein, but not everyone agrees that this is the smoking gun for a theory of modified gravity.

Observations of galaxies and galaxy clusters show that the gravitational forces binding these structures together are greater than those expected from the matter they contain. This has led physicists to predict the existence of dark matter, which is a hypothetical material that is invisible but interacts with normal matter via gravity.

 

Predicting natural disasters using cosmic muons

15 Aug 2023 James Dacey

Muography

Every minute, up to 10,000 muons rain down on every square meter of the Earth’s surface, ghosting through our bodies as we go about our lives. Increasingly, scientists are using these subparticles – produced when cosmic rays collide with atoms high in the atmosphere – to help predict natural disasters.

 

‘Room-temperature superconductor’ LK-99 fails replication tests

15 Aug 2023 Margaret Harris

Replication attempt: A sample of the alleged room-temperature ambient-pressure superconductor LK-99 synthesized by a team at Charles University in Prague, Czechia. (Courtesy: Ross Colman)

Independent researchers have found no evidence of room-temperature superconductivity in a modified form of lead apatite, dashing hopes of a technological breakthrough. The material came to public attention in July after two Korean scientists, Sukbae Lee and Ji-Hoon Kim, together with colleagues in Korea and the US, claimed it could conduct electricity without resistance at ambient pressure and temperatures. Subsequent attempts at replicating their results have come up short, however, and some experts believe the tantalizing finding may have been due to impurities in the supposedly superconducting sample.

 

Αχτίδα ελπίδας για τη θεραπεία του καρκίνου του αίματος: Εντυπωσιακά αποτελέσματα από πειραματικά ανοσοθεραπευτικά φάρμακα

🕛 χρόνος ανάγνωσης: 2 λεπτά

επόμενο άρθρο

καρκίνος/unsplash

Οι πρωτοποριακές δοκιμές φαρμάκων για τον καρκίνο δίνουν «απίστευτα εντυπωσιακά» αποτελέσματα, με τους βαριά πάσχοντες να βρίσκονται σε ύφεση για μήνες και χρόνια, σύμφωνα με ένα κορυφαίο νοσοκομείο.

Σύμφωνα με το Christie NHS Foundation Trust στο Μάντσεστερ, στις κλινικές δοκιμές για τους καρκίνους του αίματος, όπως το μυέλωμα, η συντριπτική πλειοψηφία των ασθενών ανταποκρίθηκε καλά στη θεραπεία, με τους σοβαρά ασθενείς να πετυχαίνουν ύφεση για μήνες και χρόνια.

Το βρετανικό ίδρυμα διεξάγει περίπου 30 κλινικές δοκιμές για τον καρκίνο του αίματος, συμπεριλαμβανομένων πέντε για το μυέλωμα, μια ασθένεια που αναπτύσσεται από κύτταρα πλάσματος στο μυελό των οστών.

 

Επιστήμονες στα «χνάρια» μιας άγνωστης, πέμπτης δύναμης της Φύσης

Θα χρειαστούν περισσότερα δεδομένα για να επιβεβαιωθούν τα αποτελέσματα, αλλά μια επαλήθευσή τους θα μπορούσε να σημάνει μια πραγματική επανάσταση στη φυσική

1' 42" χρόνος ανάγνωσης

SHUTTERSTOCK

Newsroom11.08.2023 • 17:10

Κοινοποίηση

Επιστήμονες είναι πιθανό να βρίσκονται στα πρόθυρα της ανακάλυψης μιας πέμπτης δύναμης της Φύσης.

Σύμφωνα με την τρέχουσα αντίληψη, υπάρχουν τέσσερις θεμελιώδεις δυνάμεις στη φύση: η βαρυτική, η ηλεκτρομαγνητική δύναμη, οι ισχυρές και ασθενείς πυρηνικές δυνάμεις.

 

Shapes are programmed to roll along specific downhill paths

14 Aug 2023 Hamish Johnston

On a roll: a 3D-printed trajectoid and its repeating downhill path (motion to the right) route. (Courtesy: Nature)

Researchers in South Korea and Switzerland have developed an algorithm that creates 3D objects that follow specific meandering paths as they roll downhill. They have also shown that their technique could be used to develop new control protocols for seemingly unrelated systems including quantum spins and the polarization of light.

 

Fiber-optic sensing system measures strain, temperature and vibration

09 Aug 2023

Good vibrations: the new sensing system uses interactions between photons and phonons to determine several properties of an optical fibre. (Courtesy: iStock/Gregory DUBUS)

Researchers in China have shown how measurements of strain, temperature and vibration can be made simultaneously on a single optical fibre. This could be used to create a fibre-based system to monitor a number of different physical parameters in infrastructure such as buildings, bridges and railways.

 

Brain bleed detection study wins AAPM’s MedPhys Slam

01 Aug 2023 Tami Freeman

Communication competition Organizers and winners of the 2023 MedPhys Slam. From left to right: Rachel Trevillian, Kelsey Bittinger, Jason Luce, Ellie Bacon, Aroon Pressram, Emilie Carpentier and Emily Thompson. (Courtesy: Sarah Aubert/AAPM STSC)

Launched in 2018, the MedPhys Slam is now an established feature of the AAPM Annual Meeting. The popular session is a communication competition in which students and trainees present their research projects in just three minutes using just three slides. The winners are selected by a panel of judges, all non-medical physicists, who assess the talks based on how well the speakers explain their research question, its significance and their methods.

 

Body-based units of measurement offer advantages over standardized systems, speaking of Oppenheimer

10 Aug 2023 Hamish Johnston

For millennia, humans have used units of measurement based on aspects of the human body. Familiar examples include the fathom (arm span) and the qubit (forearm length). Our guest in this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast is the Finnish social scientist Roope Kaaronen, who has studied the development and use of body-based units in 186 cultures around the world.

 

Where do power surges occur in an electricity grid?

28 Jul 2023 Isabelle Dumé

The “principled maximum likelihood” approach: The intensity of the colours quantifies the likelihood that a node is the source of the disturbance. The left and middle panels correspond to standard method (namely taking the Fourier transform of time series) and the right panel is the method employed in this study. Courtesy: R Delabays

A new algorithm can identify where an electric current surge occurred in a power grid, potentially making it easier to avoid outages and subsequent equipment failures along transmission lines. The algorithm was developed by researchers from the University of Applied Sciences of Western Switzerland (HES-SO) and Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US, and it requires no previous knowledge of the grid’s global structure to pinpoint the source of damaging phenomena.

 

Our colourful world: an illustrated journey through the rainbow

09 Aug 2023 Michael Banks

Michael Banks and his son Henry, aged seven, review Can You Get Rainbows in Space? by Sheila Kanani, illustrated by Liz Kay

Curtains of light The book explains how the aurora is created by solar winds, and where you can go to see and photograph it. (Courtesy: Liz Kay)

Kids have an insatiable appetite for knowledge and love to ask questions, sometimes to the exasperation of parents and carers. Why is the sky blue? Why do leaves change colour from green to orange? Why is blood red, but our veins blue?

 

HAWC spots highest-energy photons from the Sun, deep colours keep their cool

04 Aug 2023 Hamish Johnston

Touching the sky: HAWC near the peak of the extinct Sierra Negra volcano

What are the highest energy photons (gamma rays) emitted by the Sun? Our star is powered by nuclear fusion and these reactions release energy on the order of megaelectronvolts, so naïvely, I would have thought that was the energy limit.

It turns out that the Sun also generates gamma rays by the acceleration of charged particles by its powerful magnetic fields — and when our star interacts with high energy cosmic rays. Indeed, stellar physicists believe that the highest energy gamma rays from the Sun are created by a combination of these two effects. High-energy cosmic-ray protons are deflected away from the surface of the Sun by the solar magnetic field. As these protons travel away from the star, they can collide with gas in the Sun’s atmosphere to create high-energy photons that can then continue on to Earth.

 

Connecting Aretha Franklin to the Manhattan project, Barbie and nuclear weapons, how to hear in space

11 Aug 2023 Hamish Johnston

Space jam: artist’s conception of sound waves tunnelling across a vacuum gap. (Courtesy: Zhuoran Geng and Ilari Maasilta)

If you are a fan of the music of the 1960s and 70s you have probably heard the name Tom Dowd. Born in New York City in 1925, Dowd was a recording engineer who worked with some of the biggest names of the era including Aretha Franklin, John Coltrane and Diana Ross. He died in 2002.

Now, the success of the film Oppenheimer has got music fans talking about his participation in the Manhattan Project. Dowd graduated from Stuyvesant High School (which has produced four Nobel laureates) age 16 and enrolled at Columbia University to study physics. At 18, he was drafted into the US army and contributed to the development of the atomic bomb by doing neutron beam research at Columbia.

 

Solving the mystery of the Alhambra’s purple gold

29 Oct 2022 James Dacey

Not born to the purple: discoloured muqarnas decorations within an arch leading to the entrance of the Hall of the Kings, which is part of the Palace of the Lions section of the Alhambra complex. Note the abundant remains of purple colour and gilded tin. (Courtesy: C Cardell and I Guerra/University of Granada, Spain)

Overlooking the city of Granada in southern Spain, the Alhambra palace and fortress is an icon of the Islamic Golden Age. Now, researchers at the University of Granada may have solved one of its modern mysteries: why sections of its gold decorations are turning purple.

 

Lined-up quantum dots become highly conductive

26 Jun 2023 Isabelle Dumé

In the lab: All experiments were performed in a controlled atmosphere (nitrogen glovebox) because the electronic properties of the quantum dot superlattices are currently very sensitive to oxygen and moisture. (Courtesy: SZ Bisri)

Assemblies of quantum dots tend to be highly disordered, but when the facets of these tiny semiconducting structures are lined up like soldiers on parade, something strange happens: the dots become very good at conducting electricity. This is the finding of researchers at the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan, who say that these ordered, quasi-two-dimensional “superlattices” of quantum dots could make it possible to develop faster and more efficient electronics.

 

MR spectroscopy maps brain glucose metabolism without requiring radiation

22 Jun 2023

Radiation-free imaging Pioneering MRI method captures brain glucose metabolism without the need to administer radioactive substances. (Courtesy: Medical University of Vienna)

Mapping the uptake of glucose in the brain and body provides clinicians with information about the metabolic dysfunction observed in conditions such as cancer, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease. This mapping is traditionally performed by administering radioactive substances that act as glucose analogues and can be visualized on medical images.

Dual-wavelength technology deactivates antibiotic-resistant bacterium

Dual-wavelength technology deactivates antibiotic-resistant bacterium

09 Aug 2023

Dual-light disinfection A combination of far-UVC and blue light can deactivate both antibiotic-resistant and antibiotic-sensitive E. coli strains. (Courtesy: AgResearch)

Scientists in New Zealand have combined two wavelengths of light to deactivate a bacterium that is invulnerable to some of the most widely used antibiotics in the world – paving the way for a potential disinfectant treatment to address the urgent problem of antimicrobial resistance.

Synergistic effect

 

Quantum computing could tackle radiotherapy’s intractable problems

10 Aug 2023 Tami Freeman

Attendees at the recent AAPM Annual Meeting learnt how quantum computers could potentially be employed to enhance radiation therapy

Processing power Radiation oncology could exploit two key properties of quantum computers: their vast storage capabilities and their ability to perform operations on multiple datasets simultaneously. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Bartlomiej K Wroblewski)

Quantum computing is a rapidly evolving technology offering the promise of exponentially greater computing power than that achievable by today’s classical computers. So could the field of medical physics exploit these emerging systems, and how best could such immense processing power be harnessed for clinical benefit?

 01 Aug 2023

The advent of laser cooling revolutionized the field of atomic physics, transforming atomic clocks and GPS technology and laying the foundations for quantum computing with atoms and ions. In the first of a three-part series, Chad Orzel tells the story of its early years

Bottled up An optical bottle holds a glass particle aloft at Bell Labs in June 1971. Laser light passing through a lens at the end of the glass tube is being bent by the triangular prism to focus on the transparent particle from below. Vibration from the cylinder above the prism is used to break a molecular attraction between the glass plate and the particle, freeing it to rise in the beam of light. The glass particle is a sphere about 25 microns in diameter. (Courtesy: Nokia Bell Labs, Nokia Corporation and AT&T Archives)

The idea that you can reduce an object’s temperature simply by shining light on it is gloriously counterintuitive. It even surprises physicists. The first time atomic physicist Hal Metcalf heard about the concept we now know as “laser cooling”, he was sure that the speaker – a young PhD student by the name of Bill Phillips – was talking nonsense. “In my best professorial manner, I lectured him and said ‘Look, if you put energy into the system, it can’t cool’,” recalls Metcalf, now a Distinguished Teaching Professor at Stony Brook University in New York, US. “And he said ‘Sit down, Metcalf, you’ve got some stuff to learn.’”

 

All-in-one chip combines laser and photonic waveguide for the first time

08 Aug 2023

All in one: A photo of the photonic integrated circuit. The chip was fabricated in layers, with the laser on top and the waveguides at the bottom. (Courtesy: Chao Xiang)

Researchers in the US have integrated ultralow-noise lasers and photonic waveguides onto a single chip for the first time. This long-sought-after achievement could make it possible to perform high-precision experiments with atomic clocks and other quantum technologies within a single integrated device, removing the need for room-sized optical tables in certain applications.

 

What’s the matter with condensed matter? Getting past the relative obscurity of solid-state physics in the public eye

08 Aug 2023

From the macroscopic to the microscopic physical properties of the world around us, condensed-matter and materials-science research have a huge impact on daily life. And yet, as James Kakalios highlights, the field remains on the periphery of popular-physics outreach – especially compared to astronomy and big science

Condensed matter everywhere Semiconductor wafers are divided up into blocks to make the integrated circuits, or chips, used in electronic devices. Hundreds of thousands of transistors can be fitted on a single chip and connected by conducting pathways. (Courtesy: Alfred Pasieka/Science Photo Library)