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Blog – Page 1901

Chandrayaan-3’s landing on the Moon and subsequent sulfur detection has propelled lunar ice research forward, aiding NASA ’s plans for a sustainable lunar station. These developments highlight the growing collaboration in space exploration.

Building a space station on the Moon might seem like something out of a science fiction movie, but each new lunar mission is bringing that idea closer to reality. Scientists are homing in on potential lunar ice reservoirs in permanently shadowed regions, or PSRs. These are key to setting up any sort of sustainable lunar infrastructure.

In late August 2023, India’s Chandrayaan-3 lander touched down on the lunar surface in the south polar region, which scientists suspect may harbor ice. This landing marked a significant milestone not only for India but for the scientific community at large.

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Scientists at Rice University have uncovered a first-of-its-kind material: a 3D crystalline metal in which quantum correlations and the geometry of the crystal structure combine to frustrate the movement of electrons and lock them in place.

The find is detailed in a study published in Nature Physics. The paper also describes the theoretical design principle and experimental methodology that guided the research team to the material. One part copper, two parts vanadium, and four parts sulfur, the alloy features a 3D pyrochlore lattice consisting of corner-sharing tetrahedra.

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Highly precise optical absorption spectra of diamond reveal ultra-fine splitting.

Besides being “a girl’s best friend,” diamonds have broad industrial applications, such as in solid-state electronics. New technologies aim to produce high-purity synthetic crystals that become excellent semiconductors when doped with impurities as electron donors or acceptors of other elements.

The Science of Doping.

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Researchers at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) have developed a comprehensive plan to introduce perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells into the marketplace, setting the stage for a world energized by widespread, cost-effective renewable energy, both in Saudi Arabia and globally.

The authors of the article, published in esteemed journal Science, include Prof. Stefaan De Wolf and his research team at the KAUST Solar Center. The team is working on improving solar efficiency to meet Saudi Arabia’ solar targets.

Perovskite/silicon tandem technology combines the strengths of two materials – perovskite’s efficient light absorption and silicon’s long-term stability – to achieve record-breaking efficiency. In 2023, the De Wolf laboratory reported two world records for power conversion efficiency, with five achieved globally in the same year, showing rapid progress in perovskite/silicon tandem technology.

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The four quantum noises-Bit Flip, Phase Flip, Depolarization, and Amplitude Damping-as well as any potential combinations of them, are examined in this paper’s investigation of quantum teleportation using qutrit states. Among the mentioned noises, we observed that phase flip has the highest fidelity. When compared to uncorrelated Amplitude Damping, we find that Correlated Amplitude Damping performs two times better. Finally, we conclude that for better fidelity, it is preferable to introduce the same noise in channel state if noise is unavoidable.

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An exotic electronic state observed by MIT physicists could enable more robust forms of quantum computing.

The electron is the basic unit of electricity, as it carries a single negative charge. This is what we’re taught in high school physics, and it is overwhelmingly the case in most materials in nature.

But in very special states of matter, electrons can splinter into fractions of their whole. This phenomenon, known as “fractional charge,” is exceedingly rare, and if it can be corralled and controlled, the exotic electronic state could help to build resilient, fault-tolerant quantum computers.

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