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Category: materials – Page 15

Researchers from Tsinghua University, the Beijing Institute of Technology, the University of Wollongong (Australia), and the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have achieved an ultrahigh electrostrain of 1.9% in (K, Na)NbO3 (KNN) lead-free piezoelectric ceramics.

The breakthrough, facilitated by the (ESR) spectrometer at the Steady High Magnetic Field Experimental Facility (SHMFF), marks a significant advancement in piezoelectric material performance.

The findings are published in Nature Materials.

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Microsoft has reinstated the ‘Material Theme – Free’ and ‘Material Theme Icons – Free’ extensions on the Visual Studio Marketplace after finding that the obfuscated code they contained wasn’t actually malicious.

The two VSCode extensions, which count over 9 million installs, were pulled from the VSCode Marketplace in late February over security risks, and their publisher, Mattia Astorino (aka ‘equinusocio’) was banned from the platform.

“A member of the community did a deep security analysis of the extension and found multiple red flags that indicate malicious intent and reported this to us,” stated a Microsoft employee at the time.

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A possible method for probing the properties of exotic particles that exist on the surfaces of an unusual type of superconductor has been theoretically proposed by two RIKEN physicists.

The paper is published in the journal Physical Review B.

When cooled to very low temperatures, two or more electrons in some solids start to behave as if they were a single particle.

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Scientists have achieved their initial goal of converting light into a supersolid material that unites solid-stage characteristics with those of superfluids. The discovery establishes paths toward studying uncommon quantum nature states of matter while carrying great implications for technological growth.

The matter form known as a supersolid behaves as both a solid and shows the properties of a superfluid. Despite keeping its rigid arrangement, the material demonstrates smooth flow while remaining non-frictional. Theoretical research on supersolids as a matter state has continued for decades since scientists first considered them in the 1970s. Through precise conditions, scientists believe materials can develop combined solid and superfluid properties to produce an absolute natural anomaly.

The discovery shows how particular materials become supple when exposed to exceptionally cold temperatures because they transition into a viscosity-free state. The dual properties of rigidness combined with fluidity create an extraordinary phase called supersolid in matter. Traditional materials possess two distinct states because solids maintain their shape, yet liquids possess free movement. Supersolids demonstrate behaviour beyond normal fluid-solid definitions because they exhibit features of both states.

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Now, scientists at UCL and the University of Cambridge have discovered a new type of ice that resembles liquid water more closely than any other known ice, which may rewrite our understanding of water and its many anomalies. The newly discovered ice is amorphous: Its molecules are disorganized. They need to be properly ordered as ordinary, crystalline ice.

In a jar frozen to-200 degrees Celsius, scientists employed a technique known as ball milling, aggressively shaking common ice and steel balls. Ball milling is used in several industries to grind or blend materials, but it has yet to be applied to ice.

In the study, liquid nitrogen was used to cool a grinding jar to-200 degrees Centigrade, and the density of the ball-milled ice was determined from its buoyancy in liquid nitrogen. Scientists used several other techniques, including X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy, to analyze the structure and properties of ice. They also used small-angle diffraction to explore its long-range structure.

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Variability in the brightness of Sagittarius A* (Sgr A•, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way, could emerge through synchrotron radiation emitted by electrons accelerated by the supermassive black hole’s accretion disk [1]. That is the finding of a team of astronomers led by Farhad Yusef-Zadeh at Northwestern University, Illinois. The researchers hope that their results could lead to deeper insights into the distinctive flaring patterns in the material that surrounds many black holes.

Weighing in at just over 4 million solar masses, Sgr A* is a supermassive black hole, which is fueled by the material it draws in from interstellar space. Since it is both relatively close by and vastly more massive than any other body in the Galaxy, Sgr A* provides astronomers with an ideal opportunity to study how fueling material is irradiated, captured, accreted, and ejected by a black hole. In particular, astronomers have identified short outbursts, or flares, in the near-infrared (NIR) emission from infalling material. In many cases, radiation at this frequency is a key tracer of flow dynamics within a black hole’s inner accretion disk and can hint at the mechanisms driving those flows.

Yusef-Zadeh’s team observed these flares several times between 2023 and 2024 using the NIR instrument aboard the JWST observatory. This instrument allowed the team to observe Sgr A* at two different NIR frequencies, which enabled the researchers to study both the time variability of the flares and their energy distribution.

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