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Physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics have tested quantum mechanics to a completely new level of precision using hydrogen spectroscopy, and in doing so they came much closer to solving the well-known proton charge radius puzzle.

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics (MPQ) have succeeded in testing quantum electrodynamics with unprecedented accuracy to 13 decimal places. The new measurement is almost twice as accurate as all previous hydrogen measurements combined and moves science one step closer to solving the proton size puzzle. This high accuracy was achieved by the Nobel Prize-winning frequency comb technique, which debuted here for the first time to excite atoms in high-resolution spectroscopy. The results are published today in Science.

Physics is said to be an exact science. This means that predictions of physical theories – exact numbers – can be verified or falsified by experiments. The experiment is the highest judge of any theory. Quantum electrodynamics, the relativistic version of quantum mechanics, is without doubt the most successful theory to date. It allows extremely precise calculations to be performed, for example, the description of the spectrum of atomic hydrogen to 12 decimal places. Hydrogen is the most common element in the universe and at the same time the simplest with only one electron. And still, it hosts a mystery yet unknown.

Sales for the category have exploded as the pandemic disrupts business as usual. Is this because people are turning away from animal-based eating, or is it keeping with the segment’s trends?

This time, from his home in Manchester, Daniel visits Michael in Sheffield Robotics lab in a Pepper robot. Hilarity ensues.

The farm has been placed under quarantine, and staff have been told to self-isolate.

And since revving up in 1970, the subsonic tunnel, considered a low-speed facility that can hit a maximum 235 miles per hour, has cranked out 650 tests.

Over the past few decades, artificial intelligence (AI) tools have been used to analyze data or complete basic tasks in an increasing number of fields, ranging from computer science to manufacturing, medicine, physics, biology and even artistic disciplines. Researchers at University of Michigan have recently been investigating the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in architecture. Their most recent paper, published in the International Journal of Architectural Computing, specifically explores the potential of AI as a tool to create new architectural designs.

“My partner, Sandra Manninger, and myself, have a long-standing obsession with the idea to cross pollinate the fields of architecture and AI,” Matias del Campo, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told Tech Xplore. “We first got in touch with AI research in 1998, when we were introduced to the OFAI (The Austrian Institute of Artificial Intelligence) through a mutual friend, Dr. Arthur Flexer and we held the first course in Machine Learning for Architecture at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, in 2006.”

Several years after they first became interested in the potential uses of AI in architecture, del Campo and Manninger started collaborating with the Robotics Department at University of Michigan. Working with Jessy Grizzle, the department’s director, and Alexandra Carlson, one of her Ph.D. students, they were able to significantly expand their research. Their study featured in the International Journal of Architectural Computing is the latest of a series of research efforts in which they investigated the use of AI techniques for designing architectural solutions.

Physicists use a Bose-Einstein condensate to study phase transitions in an iron pnictide superconductor.

Physicists have deployed a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) as a “quantum microscope” to study phase transitions in a high-temperature superconductor. The experiment marks the first time a BEC has been used to probe such a complicated condensed-matter phenomenon, and the results – a solution to a puzzle involving transition temperatures in iron pnictide superconductors – suggest that the technique could help untangle the complex factors that enhance and inhibit high-temperature superconductivity.

A BEC is a state of matter that forms when a gas of bosons (particles with integer quantum spin) is cooled to such low temperatures that all the bosons fall into the same quantum state. Under these conditions, the bosons are highly sensitive to tiny fluctuations in the local magnetic field, which perturb their collective wavefunction and create patches of greater and lesser density in the gas. These variations in density can then be detected using optical techniques.

Continue reading “Ultracold atoms put high-temperature superconductors under the microscope” »

Synthetic biology tools used to engineer T cells that work like living computers and recognize antigen combinations in solid tumors.