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Blog – Page 16

Researchers from Japan and Taiwan have made a groundbreaking discovery, demonstrating for the first time that helium—long considered chemically inert—can bond with iron under extreme pressure. Using a laser-heated diamond anvil cell, they observed this unexpected interaction, suggesting that vast amounts of helium may be present in the Earth’s core. This finding challenges long-held theories about the planet’s internal structure and history and could provide new insights into the primordial nebula from which our solar system originated.

Volcanic eruptions primarily release rocks and minerals, but they can also emit traces of a rare gas known as primordial helium. Unlike the more common isotope, helium-4 (⁴He), which consists of two protons and two neutrons and is continuously produced by radioactive decay, primordial helium—helium-3 (³He)—contains only one neutron and is not formed on Earth. Its presence offers valuable clues about the planet’s deep interior and its connection to cosmic origins.

Given the occasionally high 3 He/4He ratios found in volcanic rocks, especially in Hawaii, researchers have long believed there are primordial materials containing 3 He deep within the mantle. However, graduate student Haruki Takezawa and members of Professor Kei Hirose’s group from the University of Tokyo’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science have now challenged this view with a new take on a familiar experiment — crushing things.

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However, as with much of quantum physics, this “language”—the interaction between spins—is extraordinarily complex. While it can be described mathematically, solving the equations exactly is nearly impossible, even for relatively simple chains of just a few spins. Not exactly ideal conditions for turning theory into reality…

A model becomes reality

Researchers at Empa’s nanotech@surfaces laboratory have now developed a method that allows many spins to “talk” to each other in a controlled manner – and that also enables the researchers to “listen” to them, i.e. to understand their interactions. Together with scientists from the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory and the Technical University of Dresden, they were able to precisely create an archetypal chain of electron spins and measure its properties in detail. Their results have now been published in the renowned journal Nature Nanotechnology.

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Analysis of Moroccan stalagmites reveals that the Sahara received increased rainfall between 8,700 and 4,300 years ago, supporting early herding societies. This rainfall, likely driven by tropical plumes and monsoon expansion, narrowed the desert, improved habitability, and facilitated human movement.

Analysis of stalagmite samples from caves in southern Morocco has revealed new details about past rainfall patterns in the Sahara Desert. Researchers from the University of Oxford

The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England that is made up of 39 constituent colleges, and a range of academic departments, which are organized into four divisions. It was established circa 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the world’s second-oldest university in continuous operation after the University of Bologna.

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As Shakespeare put it, we all have our entrances and our exits on this grand stage we call life, and now researchers have identified the specific point in middle-age when our brain cells show the first signs of starting down a downward slope.

That age, based on brain scans and tests covering 19,300 individuals, is on average around 44 years. It’s here that degeneration starts to be noticeable, before hitting its most rapid rate at age 67. By the time we reach 90, the speed of brain aging levels off.

According to the team behind the new study, led by researchers from Stony Brook University in the US, the findings could be helpful in figuring out ways to promote better brain health during the later stages of life.

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The Dark Storm hacktivist group claims to be behind DDoS attacks causing multiple X worldwide outages on Monday, leading the company to enable DDoS protections from Cloudflare.

While X owner Elon Musk did not specifically state that DDoS attacks were behind the outages, he did confirm that it was caused by a “massive cyberattack.”

“There was (still is) a massive cyberattack against X,” Musk posted on X.

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The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said today that Americans lost a record $12.5 billion to fraud last year, a 25% increase over the previous year.

Consumers reported that investment scams resulted in the highest losses, totaling around $5.7 billion with a median loss of over $9,000 and exceeding all other fraud categories. The second largest reported loss was linked with imposter scams, amounting to $2.95 billion in 2024.

Younger people have also reported losing money to fraud more often than people over 70, as 44% of all reports filed last year came from consumers between 20 and 29.

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Ever since their discovery almost four decades ago, high-temperature superconductors have fascinated scientists and engineers alike. These materials, primarily cuprates, defy classical understanding because they conduct electricity without resistance at temperatures far higher than traditional superconductors. Yet despite decades of research, we still don’t have a clear, comprehensive microscopic picture of how superconductivity emerges in these complex materials.

During my Ph.D. at Caltech, I was intrigued by the profound puzzle presented by high-temperature superconductors: Can we directly compute their from fundamental quantum mechanics without relying on simplified models or approximations? With this question, I embarked on a challenging but rewarding scientific journey.

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