Tag: science

NEW PHASE OF MATTER CREATED DURING EXPERIMENTS WITH EXOTIC PARTICLES IN QUANTUM PROCESSOR

A new phase of matter previously recognized only in theory has been created by researchers using a quantum processor, which demonstrates the control of an exotic form of particles called non-Abelian anyons.

Neither fermions nor bosons, these exotic anyons fall someplace in between and are believed only to be able to exist in two-dimensional systems. Controlling them allowed the creation of an entirely new phase of matter the researchers now call non-Abelian topological order.

THE WORLD OF NON-ABELIAN ANYONS

In our everyday world of three dimensions, just two types of particles exist: bosons and fermions. Bosons include light, as well as the subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson, whereas fermions comprise protons, neutrons, and electrons that constitute the matter throughout our universe.

Non-Abelian anyons are identified as quasiparticles, meaning that they are particle-like manifestations of excitation that persist for periods within a specific state of matter. They are of particular interest for their ability to store memory, which may have a variety of technological applications, particularly in quantum computing.

One of the reasons for this is because of the stability non-Abelian anyons possess when compared to qubits, which are currently used in quantum computing platforms. Unlike qubits, which can at times be less than reliable, non-Abelian anyons can store information as they move around one another without the influence of their environment, making them ideal targets for use in computational systems once they can be harnessed at larger scales.

In recent research, Ashvin Vishwanath, the George Vasmer Leverett Professor of Physics at Harvard University, used a quantum processor to test how non-Abelian anyons might be leveraged to perform quantum computation.

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INVENTORS CREATE WORLD’S FIRST ‘WATER BATTERIES’ THAT WON’T CATCH FIRE OR EXPLODE

An international team of researchers and industry collaborators say they have invented the world’s first water batteries.

Unlike popular lithium-ion batteries, which power everything from mobile phones to electric cars but are made with dangerous and toxic electrolytes, these new batteries use only water. The result is an energy storage device that is less toxic, fully recyclable, and one that will never catch fire or explode.

Although the performance of water batteries is still short of lithium-ion batteries, their inventors say numerous advances and planned improvements should close that gap within the next five to ten years.

In a traditional battery, organic electrolytes allow electric current to flow between the positive and negative terminals. In lithium-ion batteries, a liquid solvent that dissolves lithium salt acts as the electrolyte. Unfortunately, these materials often don’t react well to high temperatures or pressures. In the worst cases, they can burn up electronic devices, set car engines on fire, or even explode.

Hoping to find a better alternative, an international team of research scientists led by RMIT University Distinguished Professor Tianyi Ma and selected industry partners figured out a way to replace this dangerous and often toxic electrolyte with plain old H2O, a.k.a. water. The result is an energy storage medium that works just like a lithium-ion battery but without all of the unwanted risks.

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PENTAGON’S BLUE PROGRAM AIMS TO FUEL UNDERWATER REMOTE SENSORS USING MICROSCOPIC MARINE ORGANISMS

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched an ambitious effort to harness the power of microscopic marine organisms to power remotely deployed naval sensor platforms. 

The initiative, known as the “BioLogical Undersea Energy” or “BLUE” program, seeks to revolutionize the capabilities of ocean-deployed sensor technologies by developing self-refueling power supplies that run on dissolved organic matter abundantly found throughout the world’s oceans. 

“The BLUE program seeks to develop technologies to continuously provide electrical power that will expand the capabilities of remote, ocean-deployed sensor systems,” reads documents issued to prospective industry partners. “Such systems hold great potential for national security, understanding dynamics of marine environments, and monitoring marine climate change.”

According to a solicitation notice issued last week by DARPA, the BLUE program is driven by the recognition that current battery-powered sensor systems face limitations due to their finite energy capacity and frequent need for recharging or swapping of batteries.

Replacing batteries for some underwater sensors can present significant logistical hurdles and even risks to personnel and equipment. This is particularly evident in scenarios involving covert sensor systems that monitor strategic waters adjacent to a potential foreign adversary.

By exploring alternative energy sources derived from marine biomass, DARPA seeks to overcome these challenges and unlock new remote marine monitoring and surveillance possibilities.

Specifically, the BLUE program will target microscopic forms of marine biomass, including dissolved organic matter, phytoplankton, bacteria, and microscopic zooplankton, as potential electrical power sources. 

Unlike approaches utilizing macroscopic biomass, such as seaweed or kelp, BLUE will focus solely on harnessing energy from the abundant and diverse microorganisms in marine environments. 

“It is our hypothesis that the energy requirements of many ocean-deployed systems can be met by development of an onboard device that converts marine biomass into simple fuels and then converts those fuels into operational power,” Dr. Leonard Tender, BLUE program manager, said in a statement issued by DARPA. 

Using natural processes to convert organic waste into usable energy is hardly a novel idea.

Anaerobic digestion, a process where microorganisms break down biodegradable material without oxygen, is a significant source of renewable energy and biofuel production. The International Energy Agency reports that biofuels currently contribute to over 3.5% of the world’s transport energy, with projections indicating a 150% increase by 2030.

This is also not the first time the Pentagon has tried to recruit marine life to serve out U.S. national security interests. A previous DARPA effort, the “Persistent Aquatic Living Sensors” or “PALS” program, sought to use marine animal behavior as a way of monitoring strategic waters, including tracking adversarial subs. 

Nevertheless, DARPA’s aim to replicate biofuel production within a self-contained underwater system is unprecedented. While innovative, this ambitious endeavor could likely encounter some engineering hurdles, primarily due to the intricacies of operating in remote marine environments.

To meet program requirements, a power supply must sustain at least 0.1 kW average continuous power for over a year while remaining fully submerged. The device should also be compact enough to fit within the specified size and weight constraints of a form factor of less than 180 liters or 440 lbs. 

Crucially, the power supply should be expected to self-refuel on marine biomass, offering a persistent and sustainable energy solution for remote sensor systems in oceanic environments. 

As with most programs run by the Pentagon’s brain trust, DARPA does not elaborate on what times of sensor platforms a new microscopic marine power supply might fuel. However, solicitation documents repeatedly mention the need for systems to operate underwater and be capable of independently providing consistent power for “at least one year.” The microscopic marine organisms fueling the system must also be “sufficiently abundant” in locations identified through sources such as satellite imaging. 

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SCIENTISTS CAN SEE AROUND OBSTACLES WITH THIS REALITY HACK THAT TURNS ORDINARY SURFACES INTO MIRRORS

Two scientists from the University of Southern Florida (USF) say they have developed a technique that allows them to see around obstacles.

According to the technique’s inventors, their algorithm, which was inspired by a car crash, can use a single photograph to compute “highly accurate, full-color three-dimensional reconstructions of areas behind obstacles.”

Although still in the development stages, the inventors say they could see several uses for their technique. Potential applications range from traffic safety and military operations to police forces navigating hostage situations.

“We live in a 3D world,” said the technique’s co-inventor, USF assistant professor of computer science John Murray-Bruce, “so obtaining a more complete 3D picture of a scenario can be critical in several situations and applications.”

THE ABILITY TO SEE AROUND OBSTACLES IS ALL IN THE SHADOWS

To create the algorithm, Murray-Bruce and his doctoral student, Robinson Czajkowski, focused on the information available in a digital photograph. Most importantly, they analyzed the data available from shadows cast by objects and structures that are obstructed from the camera’s point of view.

“These shadows are all around us,” Czajkowski said. “The fact we can’t see them with our naked eye doesn’t mean they’re not there.”

In fact, the pair of scientists say there is a ton of information in these shadows that the human eye simply cannot interpret. Their algorithm also incorporates data from “reflections” cast by objects obscured from the camera’s point of view.

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‘Pure Junk Science’: Researchers Challenge Narrative On CO2 And Warming Correlation

Each year from 2023 to 2030, climate change sustainable development goals will cost every person in economies such as the United States $2,026, the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development estimates. In lower-income economies, the per-person annual cost ranges from $332 to $1,864.

In total, the global price tag comes to about $5.5 trillion per year.

Separately, a report from the left-aligned nonprofit Climate Policy Initiative found that in 2021 and 2022, the world’s taxpayers spent $1.3 trillion each year on climate-related projects.

It also found that the “annual climate finance needed” from 2031 to 2050 is more than $10 trillion each year.

“Anyone who willfully denies the impact of climate change is condemning the American people to a very dangerous future,” President Joe Biden said on Nov. 14, 2023, while announcing $6 billion in new investments through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

“The impacts we’re seeing are only going to get worse, more frequent, more ferocious, and more costly.”

At its signing in August 2022, President Biden said the IRA “invests $369 billion to take the most aggressive action ever—ever, ever, ever—in confronting the climate crisis and strengthening our economic—our energy security.”

A report from Goldman Sachs put the dollar amount much higher, stating, “Critical funding for this next energy revolution is expected to come from the IRA, which will provide an estimated $1.2 trillion of incentives by 2032.”

The trillions of dollars being poured into new initiatives stem from the goals set by the United Nations’ Paris Agreement’s legally binding international treaty to “substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions” in the hope of maintaining a temperature of no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

But any decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions won’t have an effect for hundreds to thousands of years—even under the most restrictive circumstances, according to some experts.

“If emissions of CO2 stopped altogether, it would take many thousands of years for atmospheric CO2 to return to ‘pre-industrial’ levels,” the Royal Society states in a report on its website. The organization describes itself as a “fellowship of many of the world’s most eminent scientists.”

“Surface temperatures would stay elevated for at least a thousand years, implying a long-term commitment to a warmer planet due to past and current emissions,” the report states. “The current CO2-induced warming of Earth is therefore essentially irreversible on human timescales.”

A frequently asked questions page on NASA’s website holds the same position.

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New Study Shows For First Time Men and Women’s Brains Work Differently

In what may prove a massive blow to the transgender lobby, scientists have officially proven for the first time that male and female brains are distinct and operate differently.

“There has never been any definitive proof of difference in activity in the brains of men and women, but Stanford University has shown that it is possible to tell the sexes apart based on activity in “hotspot” areas,” reports the Telegraph.

Researchers discovered that “sex is a robust determinant of human brain organisation” in key areas of the brain including ones that regulate emotion, memory, sexual stimulation, habit forming and introspection.

The “default mode network” which is the neurological center for “self” is also different between men and women.

The differences explain what we normally experience in the real world – for example why men have better spatial awareness and working memory whereas women have better long term memory.

The team trained an AI system to process vast amounts of data and was then tasked with being asked to determine whether an MRI brain scan came from a man or a woman.

“When the researchers tested the model on about 1,500 brain scans, the model was able to tell if the scan came from a woman or a man more than 90 per cent of the time,” reports the newspaper.

“Our findings suggest that differences in brain activity patterns across these key brain regions contribute to sex-specific variations in cognitive functioning,” said Dr Vinod Menon, prof of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Stanford.

So there you have it. It’s biology, not society that shapes brain divergence.

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NAVAL RESEARCH LABORATORY LEVERAGES EXOTIC PROPERTIES OF 2D WAVEGUIDES TO CAPTURE THE LIGHT OF DARK EXCITONS

A milestone discovery of waveguides based on two-dimensional materials with “exotic” properties has been achieved, according to researchers with the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL).

The breakthrough was achieved during studies involving hexagonal boron nitride, a two-dimensional material, by the U.S. Navy’s official corporate research lab while working with researchers from Kansas State University.

EXPERIMENTS IN THE REALM OF 2D MATERIALS

2D materials are a unique class of substances that result from the reduction of a material to its recognized monolayer limits through processes of mechanical peeling. This results in a unique class of ultra-thin 2D materials which have a variety of applications.

The most famous 2D material is graphene, which is formed from bonded carbon atoms to create a sheet that is just one atom in thickness. Such materials can be separated into layers by exploiting what is known as the van der Waals attraction, which describes an attracting force between atoms or molecules that is dependent on distance, rather than chemical bonding.

Following successful recent experiments with graphene, researchers have engaged in experimentation with other novel 2D materials, including hexagonal boron nitride (BN), the softest and most stable of BN’s forms which has already seen applications as a lubricant in machine components, as well as in some cosmetic products.

However, of greater interest to studies at the NRL are the ways these materials can be leveraged at the nanoscale level. This makes them particularly useful for developing applications where extremely thin optical and electrical components are necessary.

Hexagonal boron nitride is a particularly special case, given that past samples examined by NRL scientists revealed its potentially useful optical qualities. However, further studies soon revealed a surprise: that the compound possessed other hidden, and extremely promising capabilities.

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Leading Scientific Journal Humiliated After Publishing Fake AI-Generated Paper About Rat With Giant Penis

A leading scientific journal faces humiliation after it published a completely fake paper, purportedly written by Chinese researchers, which contained AI generated images of a rat with a penis bigger than its own body.

The Telegraph reports that the journal Frontiers in Cell and Development Biology published a paper that claimed to show the signalling pathway of sperm stem cells, but depicted a rat sitting upright with a massive dick and four giant testicles.

The illustration was reportedly created by using Midjourney, the AI imaging tool, which added labels to the ridiculous diagram using terms that don’t exist, including “dissilced”, “testtomcels” and “senctolic”.

Another ludicrous image to the right of the rat displays “sterrn cells” in a Petri dish being spooned out.

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The existence of a new kind of magnetism has been confirmed

A new kind of magnetism has been measured for the first time. Altermagnets, which contain a blend of properties from different classes of existing magnets, could be used to make high capacity and fast memory devices or new kinds of magnetic computers.

Until the 20th century, there was thought to be only one kind of permanent magnet, a ferromagnet, the effects of which can be seen in objects with relatively strong external magnetic fields like fridge magnets or compass needles.

These fields are caused by the magnetic spins of the magnets’ electrons lining up in one direction.

But, in the 1930s, French physicist Louis Néel discovered another kind of magnetism, called antiferromagnetism, where the electrons’ spins are alternately up and down. Although antiferromagnets lack the external fields of ferromagnets, they do show interesting internal magnetic properties because of the alternating spins.

Then in 2019, researchers predicted a perplexing electric current in the crystal structure of certain antiferromagnets, called the anomalous Hall effect, which couldn’t be explained by the conventional theory of alternating spins. The current was moving without any external magnetic field.

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Scientists Try Risky Air And Water Experiments Hoping To Stop Climate Change

Scientists desperate to stop or reverse climate change are dumping chemicals in the ocean and spraying saltwater in the air. What can go wrong? I discuss the short and long term.

The Wall Street Journal reports Scientists Resort to Once-Unthinkable Solutions to Cool the Planet

Dumping chemicals in the ocean? Spraying saltwater into clouds? Injecting reflective particles into the sky? Scientists are resorting to once unthinkable techniques to cool the planet because global efforts to check greenhouse gas emissions are failing.

These geoengineering approaches were once considered taboo by scientists and regulators who feared that tinkering with the environment could have unintended consequences, but now researchers are receiving taxpayer funds and private investments to get out of the lab and test these methods outdoors.

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