In the Patagonia region of southern Chile, there are “living rocks.”
While that’s what the locals say, Veronica Godoy-Carter, associate professor of biology and biochemistry at Northeastern University, says it’s a little more complicated than that.
“They’re actually little mountains,” she says, of “giant biofilms that are billions of years old. Literally billions.”
SLAC scientists use laser shaping to create an electron beam with five times more peak current, unlocking new frontiers in physics.
NASA has just pulled off a breakthrough that could change space communication forever. A deep-space laser transmission has traveled an astonishing distance, surpassing anything done before.
Scientists have developed a quantum computer that uses light to process data, paving the way for quantum computers that can operate in a networked environment at room temperature.
The new system, called Aurora, is the first photonic quantum computer in the world that can operate at scale using several modules interconnected through fiber optic cables. The system presents a solution to some of quantum computing’s biggest problems — namely operation at scale, fault tolerance and error correction, Xanadu representatives say.
Paper examines potential for satellite systems to be brought down by extreme space weather.
Researchers made an astonishing discovery about leopards by identifying them with their unique, sawing roars.
Back in 1971, a couple of British astronomers predicted the existence of a black hole at the center of our galaxy. And in 1974, other astronomers found it, naming it Sagittarius A*.
Since then, astronomers have discovered that a similar “supermassive black hole” sits at the center of almost every other large galaxy. In 2019, they took the first image of a supermassive black hole. Today, these exotic objects are a fundamental part of our understanding of how galaxies form and evolve.
But what of smaller astronomical bodies, like the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf satellite galaxy that is expected to collide with the Milky Way in 2.4 billion years? Nobody is quite sure whether clouds like this might also house supermassive black holes.
The speed of light is often regarded as the ultimate cosmic speed limit, but researchers have now managed to slow it down dramatically—to just 61 kilometers per hour. This was achieved by using a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a peculiar quantum state of matter that allows light to be slowed or even stopped entirely. This discovery, which builds on decades of research, has implications for quantum physics, computing, and information storage.
The Quantum Jelly Effect In everyday conditions, light moves at 299,792,458 meters per second in a vacuum, and its speed decreases slightly when passing through materials like glass or water. However, these reductions are relatively small. In contrast, when light travels through a Bose-Einstein condensate, it can be slowed to a near standstill.
A Bose-Einstein condensate is an exotic state of matter, first predicted by Albert Einstein and Satyendra Nath Bose, that occurs when a gas is cooled to temperatures just above absolute zero. Under these conditions, the atoms behave as a single quantum entity, exhibiting superfluidity and interacting with light in ways not seen in ordinary materials.
Newly discovered brain cells count each bite before sending the order to cease eating a meal. Columbia scientists have found specialized neurons in the brains of mice that order the animals to stop eating.
Though many feeding circuits in the brain are known to play a role in monitoring food intake, the neurons in those circuits do not make the final decision to cease eating a meal.
The neurons identified by the Columbia scientists, a new element of these circuits, are located in the brainstem, the oldest part of the vertebrate brain. Their discovery could lead to new treatments for obesity.
