SciGlow | All Science News In One Place
SciGlow is a newsletter of science stories from the major research labs. Headlines link to in-depth articles and editorials. SciGlow keeps scientists and others up-to-date on current research.
At the atomic scale, nothing is stable and atoms and molecules are always moving around. For a tiny particle of shiny gold or silver, about 1% of the time these random arrangements allow us to see, for a brief time, a single molecule that is attached to the particle’s surface. However, these fluctuations are fast, … Read more
A similar situation occurs when a light pulse interacts in a material with a moving front of refractive index as shown in Fig. 2. In this case, no friction needs to be overcome and the extracted energy from the front is used instead to change the color (frequency) of the light. Experienced surfers can balance … Read more
A team from Dartmouth College and MIT has designed and conducted the first lab test to successfully detect and characterize a class of complex, “non-Gaussian” noise processes that are routinely encountered in superconducting quantum computing systems. The characterization of non-Gaussian noise in superconducting quantum bits is a critical step toward making these systems more precise. … Read more
An international team of researchers has observed that local thermal perturbations of spins in a solid can convert heat to energy even in a paramagnetic material – where spins weren’t thought to correlate long enough to do so. This effect, which the researchers call “paramagnon drag thermopower,” converts a temperature difference into an electrical voltage. … Read more
For the first time, researchers have used ultra-thin layers of 2D structures known as metasurfaces to create holograms that can measure the polarization of light. The new metasurface holograms could be used to create very fast and compact devices for polarization measurements, which are used in spectroscopy, sensing and communications applications. Metasurfaces are optical elements … Read more
Physicists created a new way to fabricate special kinds of electronic components known as spintronic devices. These high-performance, low-power devices have a promising future, so efficient ways to make them are highly sought after. The new fabrication method is interesting because it uses organic molecules which are relatively easy to configure for different purposes. Layers … Read more
Modern atomic clocks are the most accurate measurement tools currently available. The best current instruments deviate by just one second in 30 billion years. However, even this extraordinary level of precision can be improved upon. Indeed, a clock based on an excited nuclear state of thorium-229 should make it possible to enhance timing accuracy by … Read more
Medical implants of the future may feature reconfigurable electronic platforms that can morph in shape and size dynamically as bodies change or transform to relocate from one area to monitor another within our bodies. In Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing, a group of researchers from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and University of … Read more
A new material could aid in the development of extremely energy efficient IT applications. The material was discovered by an international research team in cooperation with Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). The electrons at the oxide interface of the material possess special properties which drastically increase the conversion rate of spin current to charge current. … Read more
York University researchers have made a precise measurement of the size of the proton – a crucial step towards solving a mystery that has preoccupied scientists around the world for the past decade. Scientists thought they knew the size of the proton, but that changed in 2010 when a team of physicists measured the proton-radius … Read more