Lifeboat Foundation

A result from an experiment in Hungary catches the attention of a group of theorists in the United States.

Finally, portable thermal imaging devices could be here soon.

The primary source of infrared radiation is heat—the radiation produced by the thermal motion of charged particles in matter, including the motion of the atoms and molecules in an object. The higher the temperature of an object, the more its atoms and molecules vibrate, rotate, twist through their vibrational modes, the more infrared radiation they radiate. Because infrared detectors can be “blinded” by their own heat, high-quality infrared sensing and imaging devices are usually cooled down, sometimes to just a few degrees above absolute zero. Though they are very sensitive, the hardware required for cooling renders these instruments less-than-mobile, energy-inefficient and limits in-the-field applications.

A paper published this week in the journal Optics Express, from The Optical Society (OSA), describes a new type of portable, field-friendly, mid-infrared detector that operates at room temperature. Room-temperature operation, notes Andreas Harrer of the TU-Wien Center for Micro- and Nanostructures, Austria and the first author of the paper, “is essential for detectors to be energy-efficient enough for portable and handheld applications. We want to pave the way to an infrared-detection technology which is flexible in design and meets all requirements for compact integrated field-applicable detection systems.”

Continue reading “Pixel-array quantum cascade detector paves the way for portable thermal imaging devices” »

Excellent article on improving crystalized formations & usage.

According to conventional understanding, if the interactions are isotropic (where all spin directions are possible), this phenomenon can occur if the spins are arranged in triangular geometries and the interactions between them are antiferromagnetic favouring antiparallel alignment of the spins. For three atoms forming the corners of a triangle, the electronic spin of one atom cannot simultaneously be oriented antiparallel to those on both the other two atoms. In real materials that contain triangular units coupled by antiferromagnetic interactions this “frustration” can prevent the spins from coming to rest in a particular orientation even at absolute zero temperature, instead they move collectively like atoms in a liquid. By contrast, ferromagnetic interactions do not give rise to frustration in isotropic magnets because mutually parallel alignment of the spins can always occur. For these reasons, only a few isotropic materials have been proposed as spin liquid candidates.

Monocrystals with complex magnetic interactions

Continue reading “Novel state of matter: Observation of a quantum spin liquid” »

Physicists have manipulated 50 individual atoms at once in a dramatic upscaling of a technique vital to quantum computing. Cathal O’Connell explains.

A research team at the University of Washington has harnessed complex computational methods to design customized proteins that can self-assemble into 120-subunit “icosahedral” structures inside living cells—the biggest, self-booting, intracellular protein nanocages ever made. The breakthrough offers a potential solution to a pressing scientific challenge: how to safely and efficiently deliver to cells new and emerging biomedical treatments such as DNA vaccines and therapeutic interfering particles.

The work, funded by DARPA in a lead-up to the new INTERfering and Co-Evolving Prevention and Therapy (INTERCEPT) program, “opens the door to a new generation of genetically programmable protein-based molecular machines,” the researchers report in this week’s issue of the journal Science. The research paper is available here: http://ow.ly/LW8F302tOp3

Anyone familiar with the role-playing games Dungeons and Dragons and Munchkin need only picture the 20-sided die to understand what an organic, icosahedral cargo container looks like—symmetrical, triangle-shaped panels folded evenly on each side. Unlike a die that can be held in your hand, however, these creations are the size of small viruses and are designed to interact with cells in the same way viruses might—that is, by delivering their caged contents into a cell, albeit in this case with positive, customizable outcomes. Also, whereas dice are produced in molds on a factory assembly line, these nanocages build themselves inside cells, following with atomic precision instructions written in genetic code.

Who wants a Quantum Hologram?

Scientists from Warsaw were able to produce a hologram of a photon. Hopefully, this method may be used to produce holograms of more complex objects and further understand quantum mechanics.

Physicists from the University of Warsaw believe that they may have achieved “the impossible.” They were able to create a hologram of a single particle of light. Previously, scientists believed that the fundamental laws of physics did not allow this, and to that end, their breakthrough allows physicists to further study quantum holography (which may give us a new way to peer into the heart of quantum phenomena).

Continue reading “For The First Time Ever, Physicists Made A Quantum Hologram” »

(A computer simulation of a black hole. NASA, ESA, and D. Coe, J. Anderson, and R. van der Marel (STScI))

In case you haven’t heard, there is a very, very big problem with the universe: About 80% of all of the stuff inside it is missing.

Astronomers call this material “dark matter.” They know it’s out there because its huge mass tugs on and shapes galaxies, but no one has ever detected the material itself. Aside from exerting a gravitational pull, dark matter doesn’t seem to interact with stars, planets, dust, atoms, subatomic particles, or any other “normal” matter as we know it. It’s essentially invisible.

Continue reading “Most of the universe may be trapped inside of ancient black holes” »

The physicist Asimina Arvanitaki is thinking up ways to search gravitational wave data for evidence of dark matter particles orbiting black holes.

Another reason why we must look at all avenues of progress in Quantum. This particular discovery enriches many areas of material enrichment, QC (communications and information processing), etc. Limiting QC to only alerts from Google or maybe 1 other vendor is truly a mistake.

An international team of researchers has predicted the existence of several previously unknown types of quantum particles in materials. The particles — which belong to the class of particles known as fermions — can be distinguished by several intrinsic properties, such as their responses to applied magnetic and electric fields. In several cases, fermions in the interior of the material show their presence on the surface via the appearance of electron states called Fermi arcs, which link the different types of fermion states in the material’s bulk.

The research, published online this week in the journal Science, was conducted by a team at Princeton University in collaboration with researchers at the Donostia International Physics Center (DIPC) in Spain and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids in Germany. The investigators propose that many of the materials hosting the new types of fermions are “protected metals,” which are metals that do not allow, in most circumstances, an insulating state to develop. This research represents the newest avenue in the physics of “topological materials,” an area of science that has already fundamentally changed the way researchers see and interpret states of matter.

The team at Princeton included Barry Bradlyn and Jennifer Cano, both associate research scholars at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science; Zhijun Wang, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Physics, Robert Cava, the Russell Wellman Moore Professor of Chemistry; and B. Andrei Bernevig, associate professor of physics. The research team also included Maia Vergniory, a postdoctoral research fellow at DIPC, and Claudia Felser, a professor of physics and chemistry and director of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids.