Lifeboat Foundation

Researchers at MIT and elsewhere have found a new way of generating light and other electromagnetic radiation, using a sheet of graphene, a pure two-dimensional form of carbon.

In experiments at two Department of Energy national labs – SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory – scientists at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) have experimentally confirmed critical aspects of how a new type of microelectronic device, the memristor, works at an atomic scale.

This result is an important step in designing these solid-state devices for use in future computer memories that operate much faster, last longer and use less energy than today’s flash memory. The results were published in February in Advanced Materials.

“We need information like this to be able to design memristors that will succeed commercially,” said Suhas Kumar, an HPE scientist and first author on the group’s technical paper.

Continue reading “X-ray Experiments Show Hewlett Packard Team How Memristors Work” »

Originally published on Gas2.

Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT) says it has created a new material that is ten times stronger than steel but 5 times lighter than aluminum. Think about that for a minute. Assuming those claims can be verified, and also assuming the material is not otherworldly expensive, it may take the place of carbon fiber the way Saran Wrap displaced waxed paper.

Continue reading “Hyperloop Company Claims New Material Is 10X Stronger Than Steel, 5X Lighter Than Aluminum” »

More news on ORNL’s efforts around magnetic excitations in the metallic compound ytterbium-platinum-lead (Yb2Pt2Pb).

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory and their collaborators used neutron scattering to uncover magnetic excitations in the metallic compound ytterbium-platinum-lead (Yb2Pt2Pb). Surprisingly, this three-dimensional material exhibits magnetic properties that one would conventionally expect if the connectivity between magnetic ions was only one-dimensional. Their research is discussed in a paper published in the journal Science.

An electron can theoretically be understood as a bound state of three quasiparticles, which collectively carry its identity: spin, charge and orbit. It has been known that the spinon, the entity that carries information about electron spin, can “separate” itself from the others under certain conditions in one-dimensional chains of magnetic ions such as copper (Cu2+) in an insulating host. Now, the new study reveals that spinons are also present in metallic Yb2Pt2Pb.

Continue reading “Neutrons reveal unexpected magnetism in rare-earth alloy” »

U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has improved Graphene’s bandgap.

New doping method makes graphene with low defects, high stability and a tunable bandgap.

The fact that the speed of light in a vacuum is a constant is one of the cornerstones of physics, but scientists from the Philippines were able to add a twist to this tenet. And I mean it literally!

By changing how some light beams rotate, the researchers from the National Institute of Physics were able to slow down light in a vacuum. The physicists used circularly symmetric light beams, known as Laguerre-Gauss beams, to change the way light twists around itself. Suddenly, the light beams were propagating more slowly.

The speed of light varies when it moves through different materials, and it does so at the expense of accuracy in transmitting information. For this reason, more and more people are interested in ways of manipulating the speed of light without affecting accuracy.

Continue reading “Physicists Manage To Slow Down Light In A Vacuum” »

By NASA.

The iconic scene in the movie Terminator where T-1000 robot heals itself of the bullet holes has now become a technological reality.

To make robots more cooperative and have them perform tasks in close proximity to humans, they must be softer and safer. A new actuator developed by Harvard researchers generates movements similar to those of skeletal muscles using vacuum power to automate soft, rubber beams.

Like real muscles, the actuators are soft, shock absorbing, and pose no danger to their environment or humans working collaboratively alongside them or the potential future robots equipped with them. The work was reported June 1 in the journal Advanced Materials Technologies.

The new actuators could pave the way for entirely soft-bodied robots that are safer than their conventional rigid counterparts.

Continue reading “Actuators inspired by muscle” »

Terahertz radiation, or T-rays, can do some really incredible stuff. It can be used to scan for tumors and bombs build ultrafast wireless networks and see through solid objects. As an imaging technology, however, T-ray cameras have always had a resolution limitation. Well, they used to. Researchers at the University of Exter has developed a new terahertz camera that can see at a microscopic level — and they want to use it to find defects in microchips.

This breakthrough kind of changes the game for terahertz imaging. The radiation has always been able to look through solid objects without damaging them — which is why it’s frequently used in the art world to look past the surface layer of various masterpieces — but resolution limitations kept it from being used to diagnose broken computer chips.

Project lead Rayko Stantchev says his team has effectively doubled the technology’s resolution, creating a proof-of-principle prototype that can see a microscopic image printed on a circuit board obscured by a thick silicon wafer. “With our device you could test the quality of microchips that have buried under optically-opaque materials,” Stantchev says. “Allowing you to tell if a hidden chip is broken without having to open it up.”

Continue reading “Researchers use T-rays to look inside of broken microchips” »