Scientists have claimed to make a breakthrough that would be “one of the holy grails of modern physics” – but experts have urged caution about the results.
In recent days, many commentators have become excited by two papers that claim to document the production of a new superconductor that works at room temperature and ambient pressure. Scientists in Korea said they had synthesised a new material called LK-99 that would represent one of the biggest physics breakthroughs of recent decades.
Superconductors are a special kind of material where electrical resistance vanishes, and which throw out magnetic fields. They are widely useful, including in the production of powerful magnets and in reducing the amount of energy lost as it moves through circuits.
The Big Bang marks the birth of the Universe, right? The physicists brave enough to look beyond it aren’t so sure.
Physicists have succeeded in making a new imaging technique ready for use on humans where radioactive markers and radiation are not necessary.
With breakthroughs in astronomical observation, scientists now have confirmed the existence of supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. The recent release of black hole images has further charged people’s curiosity about black holes while providing additional evidence to support Einstein’s general theory of relativity.
These supermassive black holes range in mass from millions to billions of solar masses. Astonishingly, some of these black holes have formed less than a billion years after the Big Bang. Understanding how these black holes formed and grew to such enormous mass in such a short period of time has always been an important topic in modern astrophysics.
A research team composed of Chi-Hong Lin and Ke-Jung Chen from the Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica (ASIAA) and Chorng-Yuan Hwang from the Institute of Astronomy at National Central University has made significant new advances in the formation theory of supermassive black holes. The research results have been published in The Astrophysical Journal.
Neuromorphic computers do not calculate using zeros and ones. They instead use physical phenomena to detect patterns in large data streams at blazing fast speed and in an extremely energy-efficient manner.
In their project NIMFEIA, Katrin and Helmut Schultheiß along with their team from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have now taken this technology a tremendous step forward. They also demonstrated that their approach can be seamlessly integrated into conventional chip manufacturing. Their findings have now been published in Nature Communications.
What the researchers have developed at the HZDR-Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research is referred to by many names. “Neuromorphic computing,” for example, is one term, as the processes resemble those that occur within the brain. “Unconventional computing” is another name, as the technology is so different from the data processing that we are accustomed to today, which uses the Boolean logic of zeros and ones.
For over a hundred years, scientists have held the belief that our thoughts, feelings, and dreams are shaped by the way various brain regions interact via a vast network of trillions of cellular connections.
However, a recent study led by the team at Monash University’s Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health has examined more than 10,000 distinct maps of human brain activity and discovered that the overall shape of an individual’s brain has a much more substantial impact on our cognitive processes, emotions, and behavior than its intricate neuronal connectivity.
The study, recently published in the prestigious journal, Nature draws together approaches from physics, neuroscience, and psychology to overturn the century-old paradigm emphasizing the importance of complex brain connectivity, instead identifying a previously unappreciated relationship between brain shape and activity.
Observations made by NASA
Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. Its vision is “To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity.” Its core values are “safety, integrity, teamwork, excellence, and inclusion.” NASA conducts research, develops technology and launches missions to explore and study Earth, the solar system, and the universe beyond. It also works to advance the state of knowledge in a wide range of scientific fields, including Earth and space science, planetary science, astrophysics, and heliophysics, and it collaborates with private companies and international partners to achieve its goals.