Astronomers have used the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to peer into the early universe and uncover the building blocks of galaxies during their formative years. The CRISTAL survey—short for [CII] Resolved ISM in STar-forming galaxies with ALMA—reveals cold gas, dust, and clumpy star formation in galaxies observed as they appeared just 1 billion years after the Big Bang.
“Thanks to ALMA’s unique sensitivity and resolution, we can resolve the internal structure of these early galaxies in ways never possible before,” said Rodrigo Herrera-Camus, principal investigator of the CRISTAL survey, professor at Universidad de Concepción, and Director of the Millennium Nucleus for Galaxy Formation (MINGAL) in Chile. “CRISTAL is showing us how the first galactic disks formed, how stars emerged in giant clumps, and how gas shaped the galaxies we see today.”
CRISTAL, an ALMA Large Program, observed 39 typical star-forming galaxies selected to represent the main population of galaxies in the early universe. Using [CII] line emission, a specific type of light emitted by ionized carbon atoms in cold interstellar gas, as a tracer of cold gas and dust, and combining it with near-infrared images from the James Webb and Hubble Space Telescopes, researchers created a detailed map of the interstellar medium in each system.
“The current operating mode, in which a beam of protons collides with a beam of oxygen ions, is the most challenging,” points out Roderik Bruce, an LHC ion specialist. “This is because the electromagnetic field inside the accelerator affects protons and oxygen ions differently, due to their different charge-to-mass ratios. In other words, without corrections the two beams would collide in different places at each turn.”
To overcome this problem, the engineers are carefully adjusting the frequency of revolution and the momentum of each beam, so that the collisions take place right at the heart of the LHC’s four main experiments: ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb.
But these four experiments are not the only ones to be involved in this special campaign. Last week, the LHCf experiment, which studies cosmic rays using the small-angle particles created during collisions, installed a detector along the LHC beamline, 140 meters from the ATLAS experiment’s collision point, which it will use for proton–oxygen run. This detector will later be removed and replaced by a calorimeter, which will provide additional data during the oxygen–oxygen and neon–neon collisions.
Satyendra Nath Bose FRS, MP [ 1 ] (/ ˈ b oʊ s / ; [ 4 ] [ a ] 1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974) was an Indian theoretical physicist and mathematician. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, in developing the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics, and the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he was awarded India’s second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan, in 1954 by the Government of India. [ 5 ] [ 6 ] [ 7 ]
The eponymous particles class described by Bose’s statistics, bosons, were named by Paul Dirac. [ 8 ] [ 9 ]
A polymath, he had a wide range of interests in varied fields, including physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, mineralogy, philosophy, arts, literature, and music. He served on many research and development committees in India, after independence. [ 10 ] .
In a study published in Physical Review Letters, scientists at GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung have discovered a new superheavy isotope, 257 Sg (seaborgium), whose properties are providing new insights into nuclear stability and fission in the heaviest elements.
Superheavy elements exist in a delicate balance between the attractive nuclear force that holds protons and neutrons together and the repulsive electromagnetic force that pushes positively charged protons apart.
Without quantum shell effects, analogous to electron shells in atoms, these massive nuclei would split apart in less than a trillionth of a second.
From enabling quantum supercomputers to securing communications and teleporting quantum states, entanglement is the thread weaving through all of quantum technology. What once struck Einstein as a paradox is today routinely observed and harnessed in labs – the “spooky action” has become a practical tool. We have learned that entanglement is not some esoteric fringe effect; it’s a concrete physical resource, much like energy or information, that can be exploited to do tasks that are otherwise impossible. Its special correlations allow quantum computers to perform massively parallel computations in a single wavefunction, allow cryptographers to detect eavesdroppers with absolute certainty, and allow quantum states to be transmitted without moving a physical carrier.
Yet, there is still much to master. Entangling a handful of qubits is easy; doing so with thousands or millions – while keeping them error-corrected – remains a grand challenge. As we push the number of entangled particles higher, we are essentially scaling up new forms of matter (entangled states) that have no counterpart in classical physics. In 2022, a 12-qubit entangled state might be a small quantum circuit; by 2035, we could be operating machines where 1,000 qubits are all entangled in complex ways, delivering computational feats far beyond today’s reach. On the communications front, nascent quantum networks are entangling nodes over city-scale distances, working toward a future quantum internet that could interconnect quantum computers or enable clock synchronization and sensing with unprecedented precision. Each improvement in generating high-quality entanglement over distance inches us closer to unhackable global communication links.
Entanglement also raises philosophical questions about the nature of reality – it blurs the boundary between “separate” objects and challenges our intuitions of locality. But from an engineer’s perspective, entanglement is also just another phenomenon to be tamed and utilized. The narrative of quantum technology is one of turning quantum quirks into quantum capabilities. Where classical engineers use wires and signals, quantum engineers use entanglement and superposition. It’s telling that entanglement is often called the “essence” or “cornerstone” of quantum mechanics – crack it, and you unlock a whole new paradigm of information processing.