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Blog – Page 24

If you’ve ever watched a flock of birds move in perfect unison or seen ripples travel across a pond, you’ve witnessed nature’s remarkable ability to coordinate motion. Recently, a team of scientists and engineers at Rice University discovered a similar phenomenon on a microscopic scale, where tiny magnetic particles driven by rotating fields spontaneously move along the edges of clusters driven by invisible “edge currents” that follow the rules of an unexpected branch of physics.

The research is published in the journal Physical Review Research.

“When I saw the initial data—with streams of particles moving faster along the edges than in the middle—I said ‘these are edge flows’ and we got to work exploring this,” said corresponding author Evelyn Tang, assistant professor of physics and astronomy. “What’s very exciting is that we can explain their emergence using ideas from topological physics, a field that became prominent due to quantum computers and .”

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Quantum computers hold the potential to revolutionize the possibilities for solving difficult computational problems that would take classical computers many years to resolve. But for those computers to meet their potential, they need working quantum bits, or qubits. The hunt for a better qubit is a major project of researchers around the world, who are trying different materials and methods in their search.

In a study published in Progress in Quantum Electronics, researchers from the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering explored an unconventional and promising approach to building qubits by using quantum fluids and solids.

Their article examined how electrons trapped just above the surfaces of ultraclean quantum fluids and solids such as and solid neon offer a combination of chip-level control and ultra-clean, defect-free environments, presenting a promising path toward scalable, high-fidelity qubits that could overcome key limitations of existing quantum technologies.

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Laser ion acceleration uses intense laser flashes to heat electrons of a solid to enormous temperatures and propel these charged particles to extreme speeds. These have recently gained traction for applications in selectively destroying cancerous tumor cells, in processing semiconductor materials, and due to their excellent properties for imaging and fusion-relevant conditions.

Massive laser systems with several joules of light energy are needed to irradiate solids for the purpose. This produces a flash of ions which are accelerated to extreme speeds. Thus, emulating large million-volt accelerators is possible within the thickness of a hair strand.

Such lasers are typically limited to a few flashes per second to prevent overheating and damage to laser components. Thus, laser-driven ion accelerators are limited to demonstrative applications in large experimental facilities. This is far from real-world applications, where the flashes of high-velocity ions are ideally available much more frequently.

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Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have solved a long-standing mystery behind the drainage of liquid from foams. Standard physics models wildly overestimate the height of foams required for liquid to drain out the bottom. Through careful observation, the team found that the limits are set by the pressure required to rearrange bubbles, not simply push liquid through a static set of obstacles.

Their approach highlights the importance of dynamics to understanding soft materials. The study is published in the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science.

When you spray foam on a wall, you will often see droplets of liquid trailing out the bottom. That is because foams are a dense collection of bubbles connected by walls of liquid, forming a complex labyrinth of interconnected paths. It is possible for liquid to travel along these paths, either leaving the foam or sucking in liquid which is brought into contact with the foam.

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Materials with self-adaptive mechanical responses have long been sought after in material science. Using computer simulations, researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Hyderabad, now show how such adaptive behavior can emerge in active glasses, which are widely used as models for biological tissues.

The findings, published in the journal Nature Physics, provide new insights—ranging from how cells might regulate their glassiness to aiding in the design of new metamaterials.

Glasses (or amorphous solids) are materials whose components lack any particular ordering. Contrast this with a crystal, where atoms are arranged in neat, repeating patterns on a well-defined lattice. While crystals are ordered and nearly perfect, amorphous materials are defined by their disorder.

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Analyzing massive datasets from nuclear physics experiments can take hours or days to process, but researchers are working to radically reduce that time to mere seconds using special software being developed at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley and Oak Ridge national laboratories.

DELERIA—short for Distributed Event-Level Experiment Readout and Integrated Analysis—is a novel software platform designed specifically to support the GRETA spectrometer, a cutting-edge instrument for nuclear physics experiments. The Gamma Ray Energy Tracking Array (GRETA), is currently under construction at Berkeley Lab and is scheduled to be installed in 2026 at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), at Michigan State University.

The software will enable GRETA to stream data directly to the nation’s leading computing centers with the goal of analyzing large datasets in seconds. The data will be sent via the Energy Sciences Network, or ESnet. This will allow researchers to make critical adjustments to the experiment as it is taking place, leading to increased scientific productivity with significantly faster, more accurate results.

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When a molecule absorbs light, it undergoes a whirlwind of quantum-mechanical transformations. Electrons jump between energy levels, atoms vibrate, and chemical bonds shift—all within millionths of a billionth of a second.

These processes underpin everything from photosynthesis in plants and DNA damage from sunlight, to the operation of solar cells and light-powered cancer therapies.

Yet despite their importance, chemical processes driven by light are difficult to simulate accurately. Traditional computers struggle, because it takes vast computational power to simulate this quantum behavior.

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The earliest cells harnessed energy through geochemical reactions, a process that LMU researchers have now successfully replicated in the lab. The earliest ancestor of all life on Earth likely thrived in warm environments, relied on hydrogen for energy, and produced methane as a byproduct. Resear

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Scientists have developed a method to alter the color and brightness of rare earth element luminescence by changing their chemical environment, enabling the design of advanced light-emitting materials. Researchers at HSE University and the Institute of Petrochemical Synthesis of the Russian Acade

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