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Because of their unique physical, photonic, thermal, and electronic capabilities, two-dimensional (2D) nanostructures have exhibited tremendous promise in the domains of bioengineering, sensing, and energy storage.

Study: Two Dimensional Silicene Nanosheets: A New Choice of Electrode Material for High-Performance Supercapacitor. Image Credit: Quardia/Shutterstock.com.

Nonetheless, combining silicon-based nanomaterials into high-performance power storage systems remains a largely undeveloped subject because of the complex manufacturing process. New work published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces hope to address this problem by effectively integrating silicene nanosheets into a high-voltage supercapacitor.

The introduction of topology in photonic systems has attracted considerable attention not only for the elaborate molding of light but also for its practical applications in novel photonic devices. Originally, the quantum Hall effect of light was realized in photonic crystals (PCs) by introducing external electric or magnetic fields to break the time-reversal symmetry (TRS).

Instead of breaking the TRS, the quantum spin-Hall effect of light has been achieved in TRS-preserved systems where photonic pseudospins can be constructed. Recently, the valley Hall effect of light has been realized by introducing the binary valley degree of freedom (DoF) into photonic systems. One of the vital features of the valley Hall effect is the nontrivial photonic band gap, which is characterized by the nonzero valley Chern number.

Furthermore, valley-dependent edge modes are supported at the domain wall which consists of two PCs with opposite-valley Chern numbers. The valley Hall effect of light is commonly realized in a triangular-lattice PC with broken mirror symmetry or in a honeycomb-lattice PC with broken spatial inversion symmetry, and it is compatible with existing nanophotonic fabrication technique.

Researchers from Linköping University and the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden have proposed a new device concept that can efficiently transfer the information carried by electron spin to light at room temperature—a stepping stone toward future information technology. They present their approach in an article in Nature Communications.

Light and electron charge are the main media for information processing and transfer. In the search for information technology that is even faster, smaller and more energy-efficient, scientists around the globe are exploring another property of electrons —their spin. Electronics that exploit both the spin and the charge of the electron are called “spintronics.”

Like the Earth, an electron spins around its own axis, either clockwise or counterclockwise. The handedness of the rotation is referred to as spin-up and spin-down states. In spintronics, the two states represent the binary bits and thus carry information. The information encoded by these spin states can be converted by a light-emitting device into light, which then carries the information over a long distance through fiber optics. The transfer of quantum information opens the possibility to exploit both electron spin and light, and the interaction between them, a technology known as “opto-spintronics.”

so-called qubits, to perform computations much faster than any classical computer ever could.

While multiple frontrunner startups have explored various technology platforms, from superconducting qubits and ion trap systems to diamond-based quantum accelerators, scaling the number of qubits from a few dozen to hundreds, thousands, and eventually millions of qubits has remained notoriously difficult. But this might change with photonic quantum computing.

The startup ORCA Computing builds photonic quantum computers that use photons, the fundamental particles of light, as qubits. Using quantum memories and established telecommunications technology, it can scale its devices more easily and integrate with existing computing infrastructure e.g. in data centers. Based on the core memory technology developed by Kris Kaczmarek, ORCA was officially co-founded by Ian Walmsley, Richard Murray, Josh Nunn, and Cristina Escoda in Oxford in the fall of 2019. This summer 2022, it has raised a $15M Series A led by Octopus Ventures and joined by Oxford Science Enterprises, Quantonation, and Verve Ventures, with additional, project-based funding provided by Innovate UK. Previous investors also include Atmos Ventures and Creative Destruction Lab.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=fU99W-ZrIHQ

Artificial intelligence has the potential to change human existence as we know it, but can it make a decent movie?

At opposition, and on surrounding nights, Neptune rises in the east around sunset and will be visible all night long, traveling along the ecliptic (the apparent path of the Sun and planets in Earth’s sky). Neptune can be seen in the constellation of Aquarius, below the “circlet” asterism of Pisces, and to the west of Jupiter.

The planet is in apparent retrograde motion (appearing to travel backwards in its orbit relative to Earth) from June 28 to December 3. Neptune will be at its closest to Earth the day before opposition, September 15, at only 2.7 billion miles (4.3 billion km) distance. At opposition, the Sun’s light will fully illuminate the planet’s surface, casting light directly onto Neptune from Earth’s point of view.

Since it is not visible to the naked eye, Neptune was unknown to astronomers until the 1800s, when it was the first planet to be discovered by mathematical prediction, rather than direct observation, owing to gravitational perturbation on the orbit of Uranus.

Diamonds are forever, but they might not be that rare.

Diamonds are forever, the saying goes. The precious stones may also be surprisingly abundant throughout the universe, a press statement reveals. Scientists have used common plastic to recreate the process that leads to diamond rain on Uranus and Neptune in the lab. They found that it is likely diamonds actually form in these planets’ atmospheres.

Previously, the consensus was that high pressure and temperature conditions deep below the surface of these ice giants turn hydrogen and carbon into solid diamonds.

Continue reading “The stunning space phenomenon ‘diamond rain’ may be more common than once thought” »

The experiment seeks to answer fundamental questions about experimental physics.

Ten years ago, scientists announced the discovery of the Higgs boson, which helped explain why the smallest building blocks of nature have mass. For particle physicists around the world, it was a very important and long-awaited result that marked a new era of experimental physics. Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider — the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator — located at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva discovered the Higgs boson largely due to results from the ATLAS experiment.

The largest general-purpose particle detector experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, ATLAS was one of the two LHC experiments involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012.

It is still a fraction of the resources it can dedicate to the fight.

Wikimedia Commons.

On February 24 when Russian troops began crossing over the border of Ukraine, little did anybody think that the conflict would go on for months. With a massive advantage of the sheer number of troops, military equipment, and technology, the Russian ‘special operation’ should not have even lasted weeks.