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Atomic Wave Simulates Black Hole Properties

Using sheets of light to corral waves of ultracold atoms, researchers have created an experimental platform for studying the event horizons of black holes.

According to theory, if a pair of mirrors facing one another is vibrated rapidly enough, the optical field between them will display black-hole-like traits, such as the equivalent of an event horizon. These conditions have not yet been realized in the lab, but now researchers have managed something similar by swapping the roles of light and matter [1]. They used sheets of light to reflect waves of ultracold atoms back and forth, creating what they call a matter-wave cavity. Vibrating the sheets of light allows them to simulate the behavior of light propagating close to a black hole, while their setup could also enable the study of many other exotic phenomena.

An optical cavity, which is formed by a pair of mirrors facing one another, offers a versatile tool for manipulating light. Vibrating one of the mirrors causes the length of the cavity to oscillate, which can alter the light’s properties. If the mirror could be made to oscillate at the cavity’s resonant frequency—which would require motion at close to the speed of light—all the light would be compressed into an extremely short, intense pulse that would bounce between the mirrors.

European orbiter detects fresh hints of volcanic activity on Mars

New evidence from gas seeping above volcanic rifts suggests Mars is not geologically dead deep inside, but merely sleeping. Fresh fissures along the Alba Mons region hint at active spots under the surface, where gases from inside the planet may be making their way up to the surface.

An international research team led by Alexander Trokhimovskiy suggests that the release of hydrogen chloride comes from hot magma beneath the surface—a sign of dormant volcanism.

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) first reported hydrogen chloride gas in the Martian atmosphere back in 2021. This gas is commonly found escaping from magmatic vents on Earth, leading researchers to wonder whether the same was happening on Mars.

Foot-stiffening socks could make walking less tiring

Human feet are much stiffer than those of other primates, which means they limit midfoot bending during walking. The evolutionary reasons for this are not entirely clear. One idea is that the features that stiffen the foot evolved to make upright walking less effortful.

To test this, Owen Beck and Hui Tang at the University of Texas at Austin developed a pair of foot-stiffening socks, as they detail in a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. Along the way, they may have come up with a low-cost garment that makes walking easier.

The socks feature tightly knitted bands around the ball of the foot. When someone stands or walks, they restrict the foot from spreading out or widening under pressure, a condition known as foot splay. This, in turn, increases arch stiffness. What the researchers didn’t know, however, was whether this extra stiffness would actually conserve energy without interfering with the natural movement needed for push-off.

New research uncovers chiral topological phases in metals without structural order

Fermions are among the most important particles in physics and include both everyday electrons and more exotic variants. Chiral fermions, like gloves, come in left- and right-handed versions and were proposed over a century ago. While high-energy neutrinos—the leading candidates for massless chiral fermions—proved to have mass, nearly (semi-) metallic solid-state crystals were discovered 15 years ago to host electronic versions of massless chiral fermions.

Mice that watch fights come away battle-ready

People love to watch violent things. From slasher films to boxing, there’s some intrinsic appeal to watching people get pummeled. The dystopian thriller “Squid Game,” for instance, debuted in 2021 and in three years racked up 330 million streams totaling more than 2.8 billion hours viewed. Even monkeys pay more attention to videos of other monkeys fighting.

Now, researchers at Princeton University have found that there may be something useful gained from all this watching: being better prepared if you find yourself in a similar situation.

In a new paper, Princeton neuroscientists reveal that male mice that merely watched other males fight were better prepared fighters themselves without being any meaner or more aggressive than other mice. Their brains changed in many of the same ways, too, as those of mice with actual fighting experience.

How neurons in the hippocampus separate different aspects of experiences

When remembering an experience, people often recall not just where it happened, but also its timing and how it unfolded over time. This helps them to recall sequences of events and associations that can guide their actions in new scenarios.

Memories of events, their timing and the order they occurred in are known to be encoded by the hippocampus. This is a structure located deep inside the brain that plays a key role in memory, the regulation of emotions and spatial navigation.

Past research showed that some neurons in the hippocampus, called place cells, become active when people are in specific locations. These neurons can also respond to other features of an event or experience.

Key gene preserves lifelong supply of stem cells that make bone healing possible, study suggests

The action of a key gene is required to maintain a lifelong supply of stem cells that make bone healing possible, a new study finds.

These immature cells are known to get the signal to either continually divide to make more copies of themselves (self-renewal) as a ready pool of replacements, or to mature into cells with a specific function like bone-building. Once they mature, they generally cannot reverse the process, so the supply of stem cells is limited. Such pools become even more depleted as people age.

Led by NYU Langone Health researchers, the new work identified the gene HOXA10 as a lifelong protector of the stem cell supplies, keeping them from maturing into bone-building cells called osteoblasts until needed for healing.

New CRISPR proteins expand editing access to heart disease genes

Rice University’s Han Xiao has used his AI-supported Sequence Display technology to expand the targeting abilities of CRISPR/Cas9. In a paper recently published in Nature Communications, Xiao evolved several variants of a compact Cas9 that could efficiently target stretches of DNA previously inaccessible for editing. The research included a proof-of-concept study in which the evolved Cas9s were successfully used to edit two genes found in coronary heart disease.

“My team used Sequence Display technology to evolve a compact Cas9 that can efficiently target priority areas of DNA,” said Xiao, a professor of chemistry and corresponding author on this paper. “This shows the power of our approach, which rapidly generates large datasets that AI can use to identify optimal protein sequences for a given function. In this case, it allowed us to evolve several new Cas9 variants with better activities.”

A new superinductor created within a silicon integrated circuit

A recent study published in Nature Electronics and carried out by researchers from nanoGUNE’s Quantum Hardware research group, Quantum Motion, London Center for Nanotechnology, Imperial College London and the University of Cambridge introduces a new superinductor created within a silicon integrated circuit fabricated in a commercial complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process.

Superinductors are electrical inductors that are engineered to have an extremely large inductance, often far beyond what can be achieved with conventional coils. They are particularly important for superconducting qubits and quantum circuits, as a large inductance can dramatically alter the circuit’s quantum behavior. This makes superinductors interesting for quantum technology, as they enable the creation of circuits with very large impedance and very small inductive energy scales.

In this work, researchers show that superconducting circuit elements can be fabricated with a commercial CMOS process by utilizing titanium nitride (TiN). TiN is particularly well suited for this purpose because of its high kinetic inductance, which makes it possible to create compact, high-inductance circuit elements while maintaining robust superconducting properties.