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Even if you’re enjoying gloriously fast broadband at home wherever you live in the world, you’re still going to be a long, long way behind the new record for data transmission: an incredible 1.02 petabits per second.

That’s a million gigabits shifted down a line every single second. The record was set by a team at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Japan, transmitting the data over 51.7 kilometers (32 miles).

To put it another way, there’s enough bandwidth here to transmit not just one 8K video feed, or a hundred or a thousand 8K video feeds, but 10 million 8K video feeds simultaneously. That’s a lot of Netflix.

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Circa 2019

Robust quantum energy storage devices are essential to realize powerful next-generation batteries. Herein, we provide a proof of concept for a loss-free excitonic quantum battery (EQB) by using an open quantum network model that exhibits exchange symmetries linked to its structural topology. By storing electronic excitation energy in a symmetry-protected dark state living in a decoherence-free subspace, one can protect the charged EQB from environment-induced energy losses, thereby making it a promising platform for long-term energy storage. To illustrate the key physical principles and potential functionality of this concept, we consider an open quantum network model of a para-benzene-like structure.

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Mimicking the human body, specifically the actuators that control muscle movement, is of immense interest around the globe. In recent years, it has led to many innovations to improve robotics, prosthetic limbs and more, but creating these actuators typically involves complex processes, with expensive and hard-to-find materials.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and Penn State University have created a new type of fiber that can perform like a muscle actuator, in many ways better than other options that exist today. And, most importantly, these muscle-like fibers are simple to make and recycle.

In a new paper published in Nature Nanotechnology (“Nanostructured block copolymer muscles”), the researchers showed that these fibers, which they initially discovered while working on another project, are more efficient, flexible and able to handle increased strain compared to what’s out there today. These fibers could be used in a variety of ways, including medicine and robotics.

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“We’re just human, and we cannot predict what the universe is going to tell us.”

It’s the moment we have all been waiting for: The James Webb Space Telescope will make its first scientific observations of the universe in the coming weeks. The first full-color images will drop on July 12, 2022, along with spectroscopic data.

This is the crescendo moment in a scientific symphony that has been tuning up for the last two decades.

What the images will show is somewhat a mystery —so Inverse spoke to Klaus Pontoppidan, Project Scientist with the Webb Mission Office at the Space Telescope Science Institute and Technical PI for Webb’s Early Release Observations, to try and glean some clues to what they will reveal.

Continue reading “A new cosmic dawn: The Webb Telescope’s first color images are arriving soon” | >