Engineered enzymes enable kilogram-scale synthesis of drug for high-cholesterol conditions
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Unusual nonlinear thermoelectric effect appears in chiral tellurium, confirming theoretical predictions
An unusual thermoelectric effect has been observed in the semiconductor tellurium by RIKEN physicists for the first time. This demonstration points to the potential of similar materials to be used in applications such as energy harvesting and advanced heat management.
Thermoelectric materials can convert electricity into heat and vice versa. For most of them, doubling the voltage across them will double the heat they produce. But for some special thermoelectric materials, there is a nonlinear relationship between voltage and heat. Such nonlinear thermoelectric materials are useful for applications that require heat to flow in one direction and for generating electricity from thermal fluctuations.
Some theoretical calculations have predicted that even more exotic nonlinear thermoelectric effects will occur in materials where the atoms or molecules have a chiral arrangement. But they hadn’t been observed in the lab—until now.
Black holes may avoid singularities when charge and Hawking radiation combine, theoretical physicist argues
Black holes are regions in space where gravity is so strong that nothing, even light, can escape. Einstein’s theory of general relativity breaks down inside black holes, either by the presence of a so-called “curvature singularity” or “Cauchy horizon.”
A curvature singularity is a point where density and spacetime curvature become infinite, the laws of physics break down, and matter is crushed into an infinitely small space. A Cauchy horizon, on the other hand, is a boundary beyond which the future cannot be reliably predicted by known physics theories.
Francesco Di Filippo, a researcher at the Institute for Theoretical Physics in Frankfurt, recently carried out a theoretical study that challenges the assumption that black holes must inevitability possess either a singularity or a Cauchy horizon. His paper, published in Physical Review Letters, shows that the combination of electromagnetic repulsion from electric charge and quantum effects described by Stephen Hawking’s radiation theory could prevent the formation of singularities and Cauchy horizons in some black holes.
Quantum supremacy just ran into an unexpected rival: An ordinary laptop armed with new math
Using a conventional computer and cutting-edge mathematical tools and code, physicists at the Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ) at the Simons Foundation’s Flatiron Institute and collaborators at Boston University have cracked a daunting quantum physics problem previously claimed to be solvable only by quantum computers.
The technique is so groundbreaking in its efficiency that the researchers were even able to use a personal laptop to solve the problem.
By enabling scientists to squeeze extra problem-solving power from classical computers, the breakthrough methodology is opening new avenues for research on quantum dynamics and may be useful as a protocol for solving problems about finding the optimal solution amid an abundance of feasible ones.
NASA’s AWE instrument completes mission to study Earth’s effect on space weather
On May 21, ground controllers powered down NASA’s AWE (Atmospheric Waves Experiment) instrument, bringing the data collection phase of the mission to a successful and scheduled end, surpassing its planned two-year mission.
Installed on the exterior of the International Space Station since November 2023, AWE studied atmospheric gravity waves, which are giant ripples in the atmosphere caused by strong winds flowing over tall mountains or by violent weather events, such as tornadoes, thunderstorms, and hurricanes.
The AWE instrument looked for these waves in colorful bands of light in Earth’s atmosphere, called airglow. AWE investigated how atmospheric gravity waves propagate upward to space and contribute to space weather—conditions in space that can disrupt satellites, as well as navigation and communications signals.
Crystals of space and time: A structural phenomenon that may collapse into tiny black holes
A team from Vienna and Frankfurt has found a formula describing a strange phenomenon: Space and time can form a kind of “crystal” that may turn into a black hole. The results are described in Physical Review Letters.
Alongside the famous gigantic black holes, physics also allows for microscopic versions. They emerge from so-called critical states, when spacetime organizes itself into a regular, crystal-like structure during a process known as critical collapse. A team from Goethe University Frankfurt and TU Wien has now succeeded, for the first time, in describing this phenomenon with an exact mathematical formula using an unusual mathematical trick.
Black holes usually form in spectacular events, such as the death of a massive star. But in theory, arbitrarily small black holes are also possible: tiny microscopic objects that can emerge from special critical states after the slightest addition of energy. Such states may have existed shortly after the Big Bang, when the universe was still a chaotic mixture of particles, potentially giving rise to so-called primordial black holes.
Piezoelectric effect in diamond membranes challenges century-old scientific dogma
A research team in China has reported a significant piezoelectric effect in ultrathin and ultra-flexible polycrystalline diamond membranes. This pioneering discovery challenges a century-long scientific dogma that diamonds are strictly non-piezoelectric.
The team was led by Professor Zhiqin Chu, Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Professor Yuan Lin, Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Their study is published in Science Advances.
Since the 1900s, diamonds have been classified globally as non-piezoelectric material. Consequently, despite being a strong, hard and inert material with exceptionally high acoustic velocity, thermal conductivity, dielectric breakdown strength and ultrawide bandgap, diamond has only been used as a mechanical substrate supporting other piezoelectric material layers in microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Indeed, the very idea of “generating electricity from diamonds” was initially deemed impractical by many.
A new light-based sensor could help make ultrasensitive disease testing more portable
When we think about highly sensitive medical testing, we often imagine a hospital laboratory filled with large instruments, trained technicians, and carefully controlled conditions. This is especially true for optical biosensing, where scientists try to detect extremely small changes caused by biomolecules binding to a sensor surface.
These tiny changes can carry important information about disease, treatment response, or biological function. But detecting them often requires precise spectrometers, stable light sources, and carefully aligned instruments. This makes many advanced biosensing technologies powerful in the laboratory, but difficult to use in smaller clinics, remote regions, or point-of-care settings.
In our recent study, now published in Nature Photonics, we asked a simple question: Can we make high-performance label-free biosensing smaller, more robust, and easier to scale, without sacrificing sensitivity?
Molecule-in-a-crystal system could boost quantum computing via chemically engineered qubits
Within a crystal’s atomic structure, tiny atomic-scale flaws will naturally occur where electrons can become trapped. These defects have emerged as one of the leading platforms for quantum information processing. Through a new study, posted to the preprint server arXiv, Ilai Schwartz and colleagues at NVision Imaging Technologies in Germany have shown that a specialized molecule embedded inside a crystal could take this approach a step further, offering a more controllable and versatile route to building quantum systems.
Unlike the classical computers we use every day, quantum computers encode information in the quantum states of qubits, which can exist in combinations of 0 and 1 simultaneously. This quantum information can’t simply be copied or transmitted in the same way as classical bits: when a qubit is measured, its quantum state is disturbed, making it impossible to transmit its information directly.
To tackle this problem, qubits must be connected to photons, which can transmit their quantum information between distant parts of a network. This connection relies on what physicists call a “spin-photon interface”: a structure in which the quantum state of an electron or nucleus can be reliably written, read, and communicated via light.