Crackling noise technique listens to nanoquakes in materials

28 Sep 2023 Isabelle Dumé

Sensitive instrument: The scanning probe microscope (SPM) in Jan Seidel’s group at UNSW, Sydney, used to study novel and 2D materials. (Courtesy: FLEET)

A new microscopy technique to measure “crackling noise” on the nanoscale could have a wide range of applications, from helping researchers better understand weak spots in metals to investigating biological structures such as kidney stones so they can be destroyed without the need for major surgery.

When a material is put under stress or strain, it triggers a series of atomic processes that can change a smooth motion such as a simple compression into a sequence of jerky ones. The result is a phenomenon known as crackling noise, which sounds rather like a creaking door but occurs in avalanche-like cascades that span many size scales and follow universal power laws.

 

Demon quasiparticle is detected 67 years after it was first proposed

04 Sep 2023

Lurking for decades: researchers have discovered Pines' demon, a collection of electrons in a metal that behaves like a massless wave. It is illustrated here as an artist’s impression. (Courtesy: The Grainger College of Engineering/University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign)

For nearly seven decades, a plasmon known as Pines’ demon has remained a purely hypothetical feature of solid-state systems. Massless, neutral and unable to interact with light, this unusual quasiparticle is reckoned to play a key role in certain superconductors and semimetals. Now scientists in the US and Japan say they have finally detected it while using specialized electron spectroscopy to study the material strontium ruthenate.

 

Antimatter does not fall up, CERN experiment reveals

27 Sep 2023 Hamish Johnston

Going down: ALPHA-g’s barrel scintillator being assembled at CERN. (Courtesy: CERN)

Antimatter does not “fall up”, but rather responds to the gravitational pull of the Earth in much the same way as normal matter. That is the conclusion of physicists working on the ALPHA-g experiment at CERN, who have made the first direct observation of free-falling antimatter atoms.

The experiment helps rule out the idea that a difference in their responses to gravity is somehow responsible for the fact that there is much more matter than antimatter in the visible universe. However, the measurement still leaves open the tantalizing, but very unlikely, possibility that antimatter and matter react slightly differently to gravity.

 

Scanning the seabed with lasers could inform the search for extraterrestrial intelligence

28 Sep 2023 Hamish Johnston

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast looks at how studying the deep-ocean floor could help scientists who are scanning the cosmos for signs of intelligent life. Our guest is Pablo Sobron of the SETI Institute and Impossible Sensing, who explains how the Laser Divebot spectrometer is shedding light on the biochemistry of the seafloor – and what this information tells us about the biodiversity of the oceans and how life could emerge elsewhere in the universe.

 

Are giant galaxy clusters defying standard cosmology?

27 Sep 2023

The El Gordo galaxy cluster, as imaged in the infrared by the JWST's NIRCam. (Courtesy: NASA/ESA/CSA)

The existence of a massive galaxy cluster known as El Gordo is not compatible with standard theories of cosmology, say astrophysicists in the UK and Germany. Based on recent Hubble Space Telescope observations and their own simulations, the researchers claim that the cluster’s formation would be better described by an alternative theory of gravity known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics, or MOND.

 

Rethinking physics: Silvia Vignolini on succeeding at the boundary between disciplines

26 Sep 2023

Silvia Vignolini, a physicist who studies natural photonic structures, talks to Julianna Photopoulos about working across traditional scientific boundaries, co-founding start-up companies, and setting up a new department from scratch

Breaking boundaries Silvia Vignolini works on “structured light” in natural systems, which requires an expertise in not just physics but chemistry and biology too. (Courtesy: Sebastian Rost Fotografie)

“I always preferred science or maths over other subjects in school,” says Silvia Vignolini, “but I had no idea what a physicist actually did.” Growing up in a small town outside Florence, Italy, Vignolini’s father in fact wanted her to study a subject that would lead to “a proper job” and her route into physics occurred rather by chance. “I had a great chemistry teacher, who would make us read science books and present them to the class.”

 

Improved electrospray deposition technique could bring jab-free vaccinations

26 Sep 2023 Isabelle Dumé

Pink treatment: Dyed DNA vaccine coated on a microneedle array by efficient electrospray deposition. (Courtesy: Sarah H Park/Rutgers School of Engineering)

A new and highly accurate electrospray technique could be used to create coatings of biomaterials and bioactive compounds for medical applications such as vaccinations. The technique, which was developed by researchers at Rutgers University in the US, is better at targeting the region being sprayed than existing methods and provides increased control over the electrical discharge of the charged particles being deposited. The result is that more of the spray ends up coating the area of interest.

 

Materials science: the rule of three that guides its development

18 Sep 2023 Robert P Crease

From cement and glass to plastics and rare earths, materials come in all shapes and sizes. Hardly surprising, then, that materials-science institutions aren’t easy to pin down, explains Robert P Crease

Complex topic Materials come in all shapes, types and sizes – and so do the journals, labs and institutes covering them. (Courtesy: iStock/SolStock)

“To paraphrase Shakespeare,” Daniel Ucko told me, “some periodicals are born as materials science journals, some achieve it, and some have materials science thrust upon them.”

 

Towering egos and careening space junk: why the new era of space exploration is a disaster in the making

20 Sep 2023 Margaret Harris

Margaret Harris reviews Astrotopia: the Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race by Mary-Jane Rubenstein

Leave no trace? The lunar rover and flag from NASA’s Apollo 16 mission are among an estimated 200,000 kg of items the Apollo astronauts left on the Moon. (Courtesy: NASA)

The list of items the Apollo astronauts left on the Moon is long, surreal and disturbing. In addition to the plaque announcing that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin “came in peace for all mankind”, it includes six American flags, two golf balls, a Bible and a nauseating 96 bags of faeces, urine and vomit. All told, the one-dozen men who walked on the Moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s left behind an estimated 200,000 kg of rubbish. Throw in a handful of Soviet craft, the Chinese rover Yutu-2, and the (probably) dead tardigrades from a failed 2019 Israeli mission, and the situation becomes clear: the Moon is a mess, and landing more people on it is only going to make it worse.

 

Strange metals reveal their secrets

14 Sep 2023 Isabelle Dumé

A new theory explains the unusual behaviour of strange metals, considered one of the greatest open challenges in condensed-matter physics. (Courtesy: Lucy Reading-Ikkanda/Simons Foundation)

The first universal theory of strange metals could help explain why they behave so oddly – for example, why they resist the flow of electrons more than ordinary metals such as gold or copper. The new theory, developed by researchers at the Flatiron Institute in New York City and Harvard University, both in the US, takes into account two properties of strange metals: the quantum entanglement of their electrons and the non-uniform arrangement of their atoms. The work could advance our understanding of high-temperature superconductors and other correlated quantum materials.

 

Estimates of water ice on the Moon get a ‘dramatic’ downgrade

22 Sep 2023 Margaret Harris

A shadowy harbour: Because the Sun strikes the Moon at such a low angle at its poles, sunlight never reaches the floors of some deep craters. These permanently shadowed regions trap volatile chemicals such as water ice, but the latest study shows they formed more recently than was previously thought, so current estimates of water ice on the Moon may be too high. (Courtesy: NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio)

New estimates by planetary scientists in the US suggest that the Moon contains significantly less water ice than was previously thought. As well as providing insights into the Moon’s history and composition, the findings have implications for plans to establish a long-term human presence on the lunar surface or use the Moon as a base for crewed missions to other solar-system bodies.

 

Astrophysicist uses X-rays to explore the universe, heat pumps could prevent potholes  

21 Sep 2023 Hamish Johnston

This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features a wide-ranging conversation with the astrophysicist Victoria Grinberg, who is a liaison scientist at the European Space Agency (ESA).

Based at ESA’s European Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands, Grinberg explains how X-ray observatories are being used to study some of the most violent environments in the universe – the regions around black holes and neutron stars. She also chats about her enthusiasm for science communication and how she has revived her childhood love of drawing by doing scientific illustrations.

 

Novel machine learning approach reveals the hidden origins of cancers

18 Sep 2023 Shriram Rajurkar

Cancer classification Researchers at MIT and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have created a computational model that analyses the sequence of about 400 genes and uses that information to predict where a given tumour originated in the body. (Courtesy: iStock, MIT News)

Radiology and pathology assessments are the gold standard for diagnosing cancer. But for a small percentage of cancer cases these techniques fail to locate the primary site of a metastatic tumour, which is then classified as a cancer of unknown primary (CUP).

 

‘Alice rings’ spotted in a Bose-Einstein condensate

20 Sep 2023

Mirror image: artistic illustration of an Alice ring, which researchers have just observed for the first time in nature. (Courtesy: Heikka Valja/Aalto University)

In Lewis Carroll’s novel, Through the Looking-Glass, Alice encounters a mirror-like portal to a world where the rules of reality are reversed. In the 1980s, the story inspired the name for a ring-like vortex, which is predicted to emerge as monopoles decay. This “Alice ring” then flips the charges of any other monopoles that pass through it.

Now, for the first time, these Alice rings have been observed in the lab by researchers in the US and Finland. Their experiment involves ultracold atoms and it could shed light on fundamental processes in particle physics and cosmology.

 

Gravitational waves could reveal dark matter transforming neutron stars into black holes

19 Sep 2023

Transformation: neutron stars could gather dark matter that turns them into small black holes.(Courtesy: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Conceptual Image Lab)

A team of theoretical physicists in India has shown that gravitational waves could reveal the role that dark matter could play in transforming neutron stars into black holes.

 

Newly observed oxygen-28 nucleus fails ‘double magic’ test

12 Sep 2023

Isotope factory: The Radioactive Isotope Beam Factory (RIBF) at RIKEN in Wako, Japan, provided the ion beam used to create the first oxygen-28 atoms. (Courtesy: RIKEN)

Scientists in Japan have become the first to observe the super-heavy oxygen isotopes oxygen-27 (27O) and oxygen-28 (28O). The latter packs a whopping 20 neutrons into its nucleus alongside its eight protons and was a candidate for “double magic” status, meaning it was thought to be especially stable. However, a team at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and RIKEN found that this was not the case. The discovery should help us improve upon current theories of nuclear structure and could have implications for the physics of neutron stars.

 

The Quantum Mpemba effect hints at faster quantum computers

13 Sep 2023 Anna Demming

Two cool(ing) cats: Two systems of quantum dots connected to a heat bath (represented here by cats), one with a current flowing and the other in an equilibrium state, experience a "crossing" as the quantum dot relaxes towards a steady state. (Courtesy: KyotoU/Hisao Hayakawa)

When the Tanzanian schoolboy Erasto Mpemba asked a visiting lecturer why hot water freezes faster than cold, he could not have guessed that his observation – made while making ice-cream – would draw the attention of some of the world’s greatest physicists. The phenomenon is now known as the Mpemba effect, but variants of it have baffled philosophers and physicists since the days of Aristotle, and it has subsequently been observed in other contexts, including magnetic systems that display colossal magnetoresistance and colloidal beads falling through the path of optical tweezers.

Light waves made to collide as if they were massive objects

14 Sep 2023 Isabelle Dumé

Incoming: Schematic drawing of a photon collision at a time interface, which is a metamaterial that can undergo abrupt and large changes in its electromagnetic properties. (Courtesy: Anna Umana, Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center)

Photons can collide as if they were massive objects thanks to metamaterials known as time interfaces that undergo abrupt changes in their optical properties. This is the finding of researchers at the City University of New York, US, who say their work could have applications in wireless communications, imaging and energy harvesting technologies.

 

Challenging the space industry’s attitudes towards diversity, the ‘wild boar paradox’ explained

14 Sep 2023 Hamish Johnston

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, the science journalist Anna Demming meets four people who are trying to change the space industry’s attitudes towards diversity. She is joined by Franco Labia, who is founder of the Space Pride charity, which celebrates the LGBTQIA+ community in the global space sector; Rynee Fandora, who is co-lead of the International Astronautical Federation’s LGBTQ+ working group; Dhanisha Sateesh, who is a member of the diversity and gender equality group at the Space Generation Advisory Council; and Neela Rajendra, who is chief inclusion officer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

 

Earth-sized planet could be lurking at the edge of the solar system, simulations suggest

14 Sep 2023

Strange motion: the minor planet Sedna – shown in this artist’s impression – was one of the TNOs studied by Lykawka and Ito. (Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech/R. Hurt (SSC-Caltech))

A hidden planet with a mass about 1.5–3 times that of Earth could be lurking at the edge of the solar system, according to computer simulations done by researchers in Japan. Kindai University’s Patryk Sofia Lykawka and Takashi Ito at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan have found that the unexplained properties of some solar system bodies could be evidence for the planet, which would orbit about 200 au from the Sun (200 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun).

 

Andromeda galaxy photograph bags Royal Observatory Greenwich prize

14 Sep 2023 Michael Banks

Andromeda, Unexpected (Courtesy: Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner and Yann Sainty)

Amateur astronomers Marcel Drechsler, Xavier Strottner and Yann Sainty have beaten thousands of amateur and professional photographers from around the world to win the 2023 Astronomy Photographer of the Year.

The image – Andromeda, Unexpected – was taken near Nancy, France, and captures a huge plasma arc next to the Andromeda galaxy (M31), which is the closest spiral galaxy to the Milky Way.

 

Where radiation physics meets radiobiology: opening up diverse career paths for students 

11 Sep 2023 Sponsored by Department of Oncology, University of Oxford

Targeting the talent pipeline: the University of Oxford’s new MSc in Medical Physics with Radiobiology gets under way this month, with applications now open for the 2024/25 academic year. Above: a medical physicist demonstrates the rotating gantry of a radiotherapy linac during a clinical visit. (Courtesy: Tom Whyntie/University of Oxford)

Physics for patients, physics for health, physics for good: that’s the high-level career opportunity that awaits students heading to the University of Oxford, UK, this September to take up their places on the newly launched MSc in Medical Physics with Radiobiology. This one-year, full-time master’s programme is tailored for graduate scientists intent on pursuing a professional pathway in medical physics – from a clinical or academic research perspective – as well as related roles that require an in-depth understanding of medical physics (radiation protection and security, for example, or product development and engineering functions within the specialist technology companies serving the medical imaging and radiotherapy communities).

 

Mathematics makes sense in the modern world

31 Aug 2023 Hamish Johnston

Today, it can seem that we are adrift in a swirling sea of claims and counterclaims designed to prod and provoke. So, how can a person make sense of this barrage of information? According to this week’s guest, a good grasp of some fundamental mathematical principles can make a huge difference when it comes to understanding the world around us.

 

Heart-inspired pump boosts energy efficiency

09 Sep 2023

Going with the flow: Björn Hof in his lab. (Courtesy: Nadine Poncioni/ISTA)

Pumping patterns that mimic the human heartbeat can drastically reduce turbulence in a fluid that is pumped through pipes, researchers in Austria have discovered. Through a simple set of experiments, Björn Hof and colleagues at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria showed how pumping pulses interspersed with rest periods could lead to the development of far more efficient pumping techniques.

 

Dry scroll pumps: Energy efficiency ensures sustainability is aligned with cost reduction

11 Sep 2023 Sponsored by Pfeiffer Vacuum

Pfeiffer Vacuum, a global manufacturer of specialist vacuum pumps, systems and components, is prioritizing ease of use, energy efficiency and low-noise operation in its HiScroll pump portfolio

Sustainable thinking: innovative product design and optimized manufacturing processes help to reduce material waste during the assembly and servicing of the HiScroll series of dry scroll pumps. (Courtesy: Pfeiffer Vacuum)

The HiScroll family of dry scroll vacuum pumps from Pfeiffer Vacuum, Germany, is nothing if not versatile.

 

Supersonic cracks break classical speed limit

24 Aug 2023 Isabelle Dumé

Snapshot of the material deformations formed by a single rapidly propagating crack moving left to right. (Courtesy: Meng Wang, Hebrew University)

Tensile cracks in brittle elastic materials can spread faster than the speed of sound – and faster than the laws of classical fracture mechanics say is possible. The new fracture mode was discovered by a team at the Racah Institute of Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and could overturn traditional pictures of what happens when things break.

 

Fermionic quasiparticles caught slowly ‘disappearing’ for the first time

11 Sep 2023 Isabelle Dumé

A quasiparticle composed of localized and mobile electrons, here broken up by an ultrashort light pulse. Courtesy: University of Bonn

Researchers have directly observed fermionic quasiparticles slowly “disappearing” for the first time. This vanishing act took place near a quantum phase transition in a so-called heavy-fermion compound. As well as advancing our understanding of the stability of fermionic quasiparticles, such transitions could have applications in quantum information technology.

 

India launches its first mission to the Sun

04 Sep 2023 Michael Banks

Solar bound: The Aditya-L1 mission will study solar activity, such as coronal mass ejections, and the effect the Sun can have on space weather on Earth (courtesy: ISRO)

The Indian space agency, ISRO, successfully launched the country’s first mission to the Sun on Saturday. The Aditya-L1 mission took off from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota in the state of Andhra Pradesh at 11:50 local time via a PSLV rocket.

 

Quantum-safe cryptography: why we need it now

07 Sep 2023 Hamish Johnston

Cryptography keeps our messages secret, our bank transactions secure, and our data safe from hackers — but there is a threat looming on the horizon. Most cryptographic systems used today are based on computational assumptions that could be resigned to history by quantum computers.

The upshot is that quantum computers of the future could be used to crack cryptographic systems. And what is more, messages sent securely today could be decrypted in the future.

 

Metasurfaces simplify optical sensing systems

24 Aug 2023 Hamish Johnston

Conventional optical systems such as those found in cameras and microscopes use curved lenses to bend and focus light. As a result, these systems tend to be bulky and difficult to miniaturize for use in systems where space is at a premium – such as smartphones.

Flat, thin optical components based on metasurfaces offer a solution to this miniaturization problem by replacing multiple conventional lenses with a single metalens. In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast our guest is the co-founder and CEO of Metalenz, a US-based company that has commercialized optical metasurface technology.

 

Iron oxide nanoparticles boost the contrast in low-field MRI scanners

07 Sep 2023

Exploring MRI contrasts NIST researcher Samuel Oberdick and colleagues tested iron oxide nanoparticles at low-strength magnetic fields. Nanoparticles inside a liquid solution (pictured here) are pulled toward the magnet through a combination of magnetic interactions and surface tension. (Courtesy: R Wilson/NIST)

Portable, low-field (1–100 mT) MRI systems that can safely perform scans outside a dedicated MRI suite could revolutionize the use of this diagnostic imaging modality. In addition to alleviating the need for an expensive, MRI-dedicated imaging room, low-field scanners cost far less and require less space and power than traditional MRI scanners that rely on cryogenic superconducting magnets. Such cost advantages make it feasible to deploy low-field MRI scanners in economically challenged hospitals and clinics, while their portability may enable installation in ambulances or portable vans serving remote communities.

 

Quantum anomalous Hall insulator carries current in its interior, not just its edges

08 Sep 2023 Isabelle Dumé

Where the current flows: Schematic of a SQUID pickup loop imaging stray magnetic fields above a Hall bar sample of dimensions 200 × 75 μm. (Courtesy: Adapted from G M Ferguson et al. Direct visualization of electronic transport in a quantum anomalous Hall insulator. Nat. Mater. 22, 1100–1105 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-023-01622-0)

Insulators are not, by definition, good carriers of electrical current, but researchers in the US have discovered that a special type of insulator known as a quantum anomalous Hall insulator can nevertheless support electrical current within its interior. This surprising result – current was only thought to flow along the edges of such materials – could aid the development of next-generation quantum devices based on so-called topological insulators.

 

Here’s why Tesla’s Master Plan 3 makes a lot of sense for a sustainable future

03 Jul 2023 James McKenzie

James McKenzie is impressed by the latest plans for a sustainable future outlined by the Tesla electric-car company

Environmental vision Tesla's Master Plan Part 3 describes a future in which the world uses vehicles powered by electricity generated from renewable energy sources such as the Sun. (Courtesy: Tesla)

Whether it’s buying Twitter for $44bn, running SpaceX, or winning approval for a clinical trial of the Neuralink brain implant, the physicist-turned-business leader Elon Musk is never far from the headlines. He was again in the news earlier this year when he promised to use an investor’s day in March to lay out his vision for a “fully sustainable future” for Tesla – the electric-car company he’s been chief executive of since 2008. Musk also said he’d explain how Tesla would scale up the firm’s operations.

 

Green and novel: the future of energy generation

04 Sep 2023 James Dacey

Energy accounts for more than three-quarters of our greenhouse gas emissions globally each year. That’s not surprising, given the role of energy in almost every aspect of modern life. To stand any chance of hitting net zero climate targets, we need to accelerate the transition to greener forms of energy generation.

In this episode of the Physics World Stories podcast, Andrew Glester explores two novel forms of renewable-energy generation, both with the potential to scale and not suffer from issues of intermittency.READ MORE

 

Neutrino fluids in supernovae could point to new physics

06 Sep 2023

Fluid situation: composite image of the remnant of SN 1987A. Neutrinos from such supernovae could provide clues about physics beyond the Standard Model. (Courtesy: Alma/NASA/ESA)

Neutrinos created in exploding stars could point to physics beyond the Standard Model, according to calculations done by Po-Wen Chang and colleagues at Ohio State University in the US. Their work explains how a hypothetical interaction affects the pulse of neutrinos that is generated in a core-collapse supernova – something that could be seen in existing and future observations of supernovae.

 

Studies in astronauts could improve health in space and on Earth

06 Sep 2023 Tami Freeman

Science in space Astronaut Thomas Pesquet inserts blood samples for the MARROW study into the Minus Eighty-Degree Laboratory Freezer aboard the International Space Station. (Courtesy: NASA)

Life in space subjects the human body to extreme conditions – exposing astronauts to radiation, inducing fluid shifts and removing physical forces on the skeleton. Space flight can also cause haemolysis, the destruction of red blood cells, leading to “space anaemia”.

 

Materials absorb huge impacts by forcing water through nanopores

18 May 2021

High impact: illustration of the structure of a zeolitic imidazolate framework. (Courtesy: François-Xavier Coudert/CC BY 4.0)

A study of how water is forced into the nanoscopic pores of materials has led to the design of highly efficient energy absorbers that could find a range of applications including body armour.

The work was done by researchers in UK and Belgium, who have also developed a new set of guidelines for designing reusable, tailorable, and highly efficient energy absorbers.

 

Low-cost HPV test increases access to cervical cancer screening

30 Aug 2023 Shriram Rajurkar

Affordable cervical cancer testing The NATflow platform provides cost-effective screening for HPV infections. (Courtesy: Imran Vohra)

Cervical cancer remains a major public health challenge. According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, 604,000 new cases were diagnosed and 342,000 people died from cervical cancer in 2020. In high-income countries, screening with cytology and high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV) DNA testing has decreased the level of cervical cancer mortality. But in low- and middle-income countries, the burden of cervical cancer remains constant, due to the lack of established screening programmes.

 

Researchers ‘tattoo’ gold nanopatterns onto live cells

05 Sep 2023 Tami Freeman

Printing nanopatterns False-coloured gold nanodot array on a living fibroblast cell. (Courtesy: Kam Sang Kwok and Soo Jin Choi, Gracias Lab/Johns Hopkins University)

The ability to merge electronics and optical sensors with the human body at the single-cell level could one day enable remote monitoring and control of individual cells in real time. Advances in electronics fabrication have made it possible to create transistors and sensors with nanoscale resolution, while innovative nanopatterning techniques enable assembly of these devices on flexible substrates. Such processes, however, generally require harsh chemicals, high temperatures or vacuum techniques that are unsuitable for living cells and tissues.

 

Measuring gravity outdoors using a quantum gas, breakthroughs in materials processing and particle physics

14 Apr 2022 Hamish Johnston

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast, four physicists at the University of Birmingham explain how they used two clouds of ultracold atoms as a portable gravity sensor. Their device was able to locate a small tunnel on the university campus and can be used outdoors – and impressive feat because the atoms were held in ultrahigh vacuum and millikelvin temperatures.

 

Quantum science and technology thrives when industry and governments join forces

27 Jul 2023 Hamish Johnston

In this episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast our guest is Celia Merzbacher, who is executive director of the Quantum Economic Development Consortium (QED-C).

Based near Washington, DC, QEC-C is an international organization that identifies gaps in quantum-related technologies, standards, and workforces and addresses those gaps through collaboration between industry and governments.