Is this the world’s tiniest reptile?

Meet the nano-chameleon, a new contender for the title of world’s smallest reptile Source: https://earthsky.org/earth/nano-chamelion-smallest-reptile…

A speed limit also applies in the quantum world

Even in the world of the smallest particles with their own special rules, things cannot proceed infinitely fast. Physicists at the University of Bonn have now shown what the speed limit is for complex quantum operations. The study also involved scientists from MIT, the universities of Hamburg, Cologne and Padua, and the Jülich Research Center. The results are important for the…

How Europe’s Night Trains Came Back From the Dead

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: [O]ver the past decade, much of Europe’s night train network has been cut. 2013 and 2014 saw the culling of lines from Paris to Madrid, Rome and Barcelona; Amsterdam to Prague and Warsaw; and Berlin to Paris and Kiev. For many, it seemed the end of the line was nigh. But recently there…

Zeptoseconds! Scientists Measure the Shortest Unit of Time Ever

nickwinlund77 quotes Live Science: Scientists have measured the shortest unit of time ever: the time it takes a light particle to cross a hydrogen molecule. That time, for the record, is 247 zeptoseconds. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second, or a decimal point followed by 20 zeroes and a 1. Previously, researchers had dipped into the…

Facebook Halts Oculus Quest Sales In Germany Amid Privacy Concerns

Facebook has “temporarily paused” sales of its Oculus Quest headsets to customers in Germany. “Reports suggest the move is in response to concerns from German regulators about the recently announced requirement that all Oculus users will need to use a Facebook account by 2023 to log in to the device,” reports Ars Technica. From the report: “We have temporarily paused selling…

A ‘breath of nothing’ provides a new perspective on superconductivity

Zero electrical resistance at room temperature? A material with this property, i.e. a room temperature superconductor, could revolutionize power distribution. But so far, the origin of superconductivity at high temperature is only incompletely understood. Scientists from Universität Hamburg and the Cluster of Excellence “CUI: Advanced Imaging of Matter” have succeeded in observing strong evidence of superfluidity in a central model system,…

Microsoft Dropped for Open Source Again in Germany: Hamburg Follows Munich’s Lead

“The trend towards open-source software on government computers is gathering pace in Germany,” reports ZDNet: In the latest development, during coalition negotiations in the city-state of Hamburg, politicians have declared they are ready to start moving its civil service software away from Microsoft and towards open-source alternatives. The declaration comes as part of a 200-page coalition agreement between the Social Democratic…

Western New York digging out from intense snow and ice

An intense storm and lake-effect snow walloped upstate New York – especially rural areas in western New York – in late February, 2020. On the shores of Lake Erie, the storm created a dramatic display of thick, windblown ice on homes and buildings. Source: https://earthsky.org/todays-image/photos-intense-lake-effect-snow-feb-2020-uptate-ny…

Twisted 2-D material gives new insights into strongly correlated 1-D physics

Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) in Hamburg, the RWTH Aachen University (both in Germany) and the Flatiron institute in the U.S. have revealed that the possibilities created by stacking two sheets of atomically thin material atop each other at a twist are even greater than expected. …