An electron spin resonance spectrometer using an artificial atom (a superconducting flux qubit) is realized, featuring both high sensitivity (400 spins/√Hz) and high spatial resolution (0.05 pL).
Continue reading “A single superconducting artificial atom senses solid-state spins” »
A few days back we talked about a joint NASA and ESA study that was being conducted in Germany looking at long term effects of weightlessness on astronauts and how artificial gravity might help them. More details have surfaced about that study, and it pays very well for doing nothing but laying in bed. The study pays participants $19,000 (16,500 euro) and is known as AGBRESA study 2019.
The first Women in Science Open House aims to inspire young women in the STEM field.
Michelle Cash, program coordinator at the Sandy Creek Nature Center, the event has been something she has wanted to do for a long time. After speaking with an intern at the nature center, they realized now is the perfect time because of recent social movements and the increase of women in political power.
“I think this is a good time to recognize and start to make people aware that there’s women out there doing really good stuff for science and has been doing stuff for science for a long, long time,” Cash said.
Continue reading “Women in Science Open House aims to inspire young girls in the STEM field” »
Regions Financial Corporation has barred its customers from purchasing cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
The US-based bank and financial service clarified in its 2018 bank deposit agreement that it reserved the right to “return or decline to pay” for items related to “decentralized, non-fiat virtual currencies, cryptocurrency or another digital currency or money that relies on distributed ledger or blockchain.”
2018 Regions Bank Deposit Agreement pic.twitter.com/mDtEr5T1ep
Continue reading “[Not Surprisingly], a U.S. Bank Bans Customers From Buying Bitcoin” »
The hunt for gravitational waves is back on. After a series of upgrades, the National Science Foundation’s Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) will resume its search for ripples in space and time on Monday, April 1.
LIGO is famous for making the first direct detection of gravitational waves in 2015, for which the observatory’s founders were awarded the Nobel Prize. The observatory was able to detect gravity waves generated by two colliding black holes which were located 1.3 billion light-years away from Earth, and since then has observed nine more black hole mergers and one collision of two neutron stars.
Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of spacetime, caused by massive bodies which bend it like a bowling ball placed on a rubber sheet. They were predicted by Einstein as part of his general theory of relativity in 1916, but it took nearly a century for physicists to observe them because the effects are so small. Since these waves have been detected, they can be used to investigate cosmic objects as an alternative to light-based telescopes.
Continue reading “LIGO to Resume Its Nobel-winning Hunt for Gravitational Waves” »
Physicists have measured the sound of ‘nothingness’ at room temperature — an important step in our future ability to listen in to the Universe.
You can think of it a little like this — we’ve now been able to measure the way some of the ubiquitous ‘background noise’ of space interacts with our equipment, which will hopefully help us tune it out going forward.
After all, the entire Universe is crackling with the static of quantum physics, and in order to be able to pick up the faint echoes of distant astronomical giants — such as the gravitational waves rippling off a black hole merger, for example — we need to be able to tune out the quantum static.
Continue reading “Physicists Just Measured Quantum ‘Nothingness’ at Room Temperature” »
