Quantum Science News

RSS

Students Successfully Image Photons Forming Pairs

In the quantum world of light, being distinguishable means staying lonely. Only those photons that are indistinguishable can wind up in a pair, through what is called Hong-Ou-Mandel interference. This subtle quantum effect has been successfully imaged for the first time by two doctoral students from the Faculty of Physics at the University of Warsaw.

23 Apr 2015

Life Around Tau Ceti Star Seems Unlikely

As the search continues for Earth-size planets orbiting at just the right distance from their star, a region termed the habitable zone, the number of potentially life-supporting planets grows. In two decades we have progressed from having no extrasolar planets to having too many to search. Narrowing the list of hopefuls requires looking at extrasolar planets in a new way. Applying a nuanced approach that couples astronomy and geophysics, Arizona State University researchers report that from that long list we can cross off cosmic neighbor Tau Ceti.

23 Apr 2015

Cosmic Rays Help Measure Electric Fields Within Thunderclouds

How is lightning initiated in thunderclouds? This is difficult to answer – how do you measure electric fields inside large, dangerously charged clouds? It was discovered, more or less by coincidence, that cosmic rays provide suitable probes to measure electric fields within thunderclouds. This surprising finding is published in Physical Review Letters on April 24th. The measurements were performed with the LOFAR radio telescope located in the Netherlands.

23 Apr 2015

Hubble Space Telescope Helps Leicester Astronomer to Track Large, Luminous Yellow Stars

It was launched 25 years ago and has given mankind a glimpse at some of the farthest and earliest cosmic phenomenon in the observable Universe.

23 Apr 2015

MOIRCS Enables Closer Look at Characteristics of Star-Forming Regions in Ancient Galaxies

Ongoing studies of distant galaxy protoclusters using the Multi-Object Infrared Camera and Spectrograph (MOIRCS) instrument on the Subaru Telescope is giving astronomers a closer look at the characteristics of star-forming regions in galaxies in the early universe. A team of astronomers from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) and SOKENDAI (Graduate University of Advanced Studies, Japan) are tracking velocity structures and gaseous metallicities in galaxies in two protoclusters located in the direction of the constellation Serpens. These appear around the radio galaxies PKS 1138-262 (at a redshift of 2.2, Figure 1) and USS 1558-003 (at a redshift of 2.5).

23 Apr 2015

The First Stars Could Have Clustered Together in Phenomenally Bright Groups

The first stars in the Universe were born several hundred million years after the Big Bang, ending a period known as the cosmological ‘dark ages’ – when atoms of hydrogen and helium had formed, but nothing shone in visible light. Now two Canadian researchers have calculated what these objects were like: they find that the first stars could have clustered together in phenomenally bright groups, with periods when they were as luminous as 100 million Suns. Alexander DeSouza and Shantanu Basu, both of the University of Western Ontario in Canada, publish their results in a paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

23 Apr 2015

Breakthrough Results May Guide the Design of New Superconductors

Electric current flows without any resistance in a superconducting state thanks to a surprising redistribution of bonding electrons and the associated electronic and atomic behavior after substitution of some cobalt atoms for iron in barium iron arsenide.

22 Apr 2015

Expansion of Virtual Telescope to Take Detailed Images of Black Holes

Astronomers building an Earth-size virtual telescope capable of photographing the event horizon of the black hole at the center of our Milky Way have extended their instrument to the bottom of the Earth -- the South Pole -- thanks to recent efforts by a team led by Dan Marrone of the University of Arizona.

22 Apr 2015

Peking University Researcher Earns Coveted Award for Research on Superconductivity

On April 1st, 2015, the award ceremony of the Sir Martin Wood China Prize was held on the opening ceremony of the 14th National Seminar of Low Temperature Physics. The inspectors finally decided on two researchers as the prize-winners. They were Li Shiyan from Fudan University and Wang Jian from Peking University. Zhao Zhongxian, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, hosted the ceremony.

22 Apr 2015

NIST Announces Record Performance of JILA's Strontium Lattice Atomic Clock

In another advance at the far frontiers of timekeeping by National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers, the latest modification of a record-setting strontium atomic clock has achieved precision and stability levels that now mean the clock would neither gain nor lose one second in some 15 billion years*—roughly the age of the universe.

22 Apr 2015

Researchers Reveal Molecular Structure of Water's Liquid Surface Using New Quantum Model

The National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the UK's National Measurement Institute in collaboration with IBM and the University of Edinburgh, has used a new quantum model to reveal the molecular structure of water's liquid surface.

22 Apr 2015

Dawn Space Probe Resumes Sending Images of Dwarf Planet Ceres

It was an arrival and a farewell at the same time: On 6 March of this year, when NASA’s Dawn space probe finally arrived at Ceres after a two-and-a-half-year flight through the asteroid belt, the spherical dwarf planet initially disappeared into the darkness. As the space probe was approaching its destination from the dark side, the onboard scientific camera system was unable to take any new pictures. For five long weeks. Now, Ceres has come into view again. Photos from mid-April afford a first glimpse of the north pole of the dwarf planet.

21 Apr 2015

EPS Honors SLAC and Stanford Theoretical Physicist with 2015 High Energy and Particle Physics Prize

James D. Bjorken, a theoretical physicist and professor emeritus at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and at Stanford University, has been awarded the 2015 High Energy and Particle Physics Prize of the European Physical Society (EPS). Along with four other scientists, he was honored for theoretical work that revolutionized our understanding of the internal structure of the proton.

21 Apr 2015

Direct Evidence of Pulsing Quasar Could Substantiate Existence of Black Hole Binaries

As two galaxies enter the final stages of merging, scientists have theorized that the galaxies' supermassive black holes will form a "binary," or two black holes in such close orbit they are gravitationally bound to one another. In a new study, astronomers at the University of Maryland present direct evidence of a pulsing quasar, which may substantiate the existence of black hole binaries.

21 Apr 2015

Supermassive Black Hole Exists in Dwarf Starburst Galaxy

Dartmouth astrophysicists and their colleagues have not only proven that a supermassive black hole exists in a place where it isn't supposed to be, but in doing so have opened a new door to what things were like in the early universe.

21 Apr 2015

Quantum Science News

Students Successfully Image Photons Forming Pairs

Life Around Tau Ceti Star Seems Unlikely

Cosmic Rays Help Measure Electric Fields Within Thunderclouds

Hubble Space Telescope Helps Leicester Astronomer to Track Large, Luminous Yellow Stars

MOIRCS Enables Closer Look at Characteristics of Star-Forming Regions in Ancient Galaxies

The First Stars Could Have Clustered Together in Phenomenally Bright Groups

Breakthrough Results May Guide the Design of New Superconductors

Expansion of Virtual Telescope to Take Detailed Images of Black Holes

Peking University Researcher Earns Coveted Award for Research on Superconductivity

NIST Announces Record Performance of JILA's Strontium Lattice Atomic Clock

Researchers Reveal Molecular Structure of Water's Liquid Surface Using New Quantum Model

Dawn Space Probe Resumes Sending Images of Dwarf Planet Ceres

EPS Honors SLAC and Stanford Theoretical Physicist with 2015 High Energy and Particle Physics Prize

Direct Evidence of Pulsing Quasar Could Substantiate Existence of Black Hole Binaries

Supermassive Black Hole Exists in Dwarf Starburst Galaxy

News Categories

Building the World's First Enterprise-Grade Quantum-Proof Communication Platform

Solving Real-World Problems With Neutral Atoms: The Road to Fault-Tolerance

The Limits of Current Quantum Simulations

SideKick QCL Controller: Low-Noise Laser Control Solution

LabOne Q: An Intuitive Software Framework for Scalable Quantum Computing

Sponsored Content

Why Precision Matters in Quantum Computing and High-Tech Manufacturing

Perovskite Quantum Dots: Transforming the Landscape of Optoelectronics

Repeat-Until-Success Algorithm for Quantum Gate Decomposition

Quantum Science News

News Categories

Building the World's First Enterprise-Grade Quantum-Proof Communication Platform

Solving Real-World Problems With Neutral Atoms: The Road to Fault-Tolerance

The Limits of Current Quantum Simulations

1Astronomers Discover Unprecedented Star, Hinting at New Cosmic Origins

2New Tool Pinpoints Next-Gen Materials for Robust Computers

3AI Reveals Rapid Spin of Sagittarius A Black Hole

4Fewer Qubits and Better Error Correction: Nord Quantique's Multimode Encoding Breakthrough

Sponsored Content