Applying quantum computing to a particle process

A team of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) used a quantum computer to successfully simulate an aspect of particle collisions that is typically neglected in high-energy physics experiments, such as those that occur at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. …

Electric Cars Would Save America Huge Amounts of Energy

An anonymous reader shares an opinion piece from Bloomberg, written by Liam Denning and Elaine He: Electrifying U.S. vehicles wipes out the equivalent of our entire current power demand. The U.S. consumes a lot of energy; last year, about 100 quadrillion BTUs (equivalent to 17 billion barrels of oil; which, we’ll admit, is only marginally less abstract). But only about a…

Mira’s last journey: Exploring the dark universe

A team of physicists and computer scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory performed one of the five largest cosmological simulations ever. Data from the simulation will inform sky maps to aid leading large-scale cosmological experiments. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-mira-journey-exploring-dark-universe.html…

Exchange bias set in a spin-glass phase could arise in a disordered antiferromagnet

A team of researchers from the University of California, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Nuclear Research Center—Negev and the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory has developed a way to isolate antiferromagnet (AFM) heterostructures in the absence of a ferromagnet (FM) to study the coupling that occurs between AFM order parameters and spin-glass parameters. In their paper published in the journal Nature…

Scientists streamline process for controlling spin dynamics

Marking a major achievement in the field of spintronics, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Yale University have demonstrated the ability to control spin dynamics in magnetic materials by altering their thickness. The study, published today in Nature Materials, could lead to smaller, more energy-efficient electronic devices. …

X-rays surrounding ‘Magnificent 7’ may be traces of sought-after particle

A new study, led by a theoretical physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), suggests that never-before-observed particles called axions may be the source of unexplained, high-energy X-ray emissions surrounding a group of neutron stars. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-x-rays-magnificent-sought-after-particle.html…

Pivotal discovery in quantum and classical information processing

Working with theorists in the University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, researchers in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have achieved a scientific control that is a first of its kind. They demonstrated a novel approach that allows real-time control of the interactions between microwave photons and magnons, potentially leading to advances in electronic devices and…

SolarWinds Hides List of High-Profile Customers After Devastating Hack

SolarWinds has removed a list of high-profile clients from its website in the wake of a massive breach, “suggesting the company may be trying to obscure its clients in an effort to protect them from bad publicity,” reports The Verge. From the report: The list of vulnerable companies is much smaller than SolarWinds’ overall client list, so simply appearing on the…

Evidence Builds That an Early Mutation Made the Pandemic Harder to Stop

As the coronavirus swept across the world, it picked up random alterations to its genetic sequence. Like meaningless typos in a script, most of those mutations made no difference in how the virus behaved. But one mutation near the beginning of the pandemic did make a difference, multiple new findings suggest, helping the virus spread more easily from person to person…

Laser Fusion Reactor Approaches ‘Burning Plasma’ Milestone

Iwastheone shares a report from Science Magazine: In October 2010, in a building the size of three U.S. football fields, researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory powered up 192 laser beams, focused their energy into a pulse with the punch of a speeding truck, and fired it at a pellet of nuclear fuel the size of a peppercorn. So began…