About 80 percent of the universe’s mass is thought to consist of dark matter. And yet, little is known about the composition and structure of the particles that make up dark matter, presenting physicists with some fundamental questions. To explore this elusive matter, researchers are attempting to capture photons, orContinue Reading
What do children’s building blocks and quantum computing have in common? The answer is modularity. It is difficult for scientists to build quantum computers monolithically – that is, as a single large unit. Quantum computing relies on the manipulation of millions of information units called qubits, but these qubits areContinue Reading
Imagine a clock that doesn’t have electricity, but its hands and gears spin on their own for all eternity. In a new study, physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have used liquid crystals, the same materials that are in your phone display, to create such a clock — or,Continue Reading
Where did the moon’s magnetism go? Scientists have puzzled over this question for decades, ever since orbiting spacecraft picked up signs of a high magnetic field in lunar surface rocks. The moon itself has no inherent magnetism today. Now, MIT scientists may have solved the mystery. They propose that aContinue Reading
How can data be processed at lightning speed, or electricity conducted without loss? To achieve this, scientists and industry alike are turning to quantum materials, governed by the laws of the infinitesimal. Designing such materials requires a detailed understanding of atomic phenomena, much of which remains unexplored. A team fromContinue Reading
An international team of astronomers, led by The University of Texas at Austin’s Cosmic Frontier Center, has identified the most distant black hole ever confirmed. It and the galaxy it calls home, CAPERS-LRD-z9, are present 500 million years after the Big Bang. That places it 13.3 billion years into theContinue Reading
New research published in the journal Science reveals the Red Planet’s mantle preserves a record of its violent beginnings. The inside of Mars isn’t smooth and uniform like familiar textbook illustrations. Instead, new research reveals it’s chunky — more like a Rocky Road brownie than a neat slice of Millionaire’sContinue Reading
A plucked guitar string can vibrate for seconds before falling silent. A playground swing, emptied of its passenger, will gradually come to rest. These are what physicists call “damped harmonic oscillators” and are well understood in terms of Newton’s laws of motion. But in the tiny world of atoms, thingsContinue Reading
Quantum networks are often described as the future of the internet — but instead of transmitting classical information in bits, they send quantum information carried by photons. These networks could enable ultra-secure communication, link together distant quantum computers into a single, vastly more powerful machine, and create precision sensing systemsContinue Reading
Four and a half billion years ago Jupiter rapidly grew to its massive size. Its powerful gravitational pull disrupted the orbits of small rocky and icy bodies similar to modern asteroids and comets, called planetesimals. This caused them to smash into each other at such high speeds that the rocksContinue Reading
