First Proof That Infinitely Many Prime Numbers Come in Pairs

First Proof That Infinitely Many Prime Numbers Come in Pairs: ...the gap between each prime and the next becomes larger and larger — on average. But exceptions exist: the ‘twin primes’, which are pairs of prime numbers that differ in value by 2. Examples of known twin primes are 3 and 5, or 17 and 19, or 2,003,663,613 × 2195,000 − 1 and 2,003,663,613 × 2195,000 + 1...

The new result, from Yitang Zhang of the University of New Hampshire in Durham, finds that there are infinitely many pairs of primes that are less than 70 million units apart without relying on unproven conjectures. Although 70 million seems like a very large number, the existence of any finite bound, no matter how large, means that that the gaps between consecutive numbers don’t keep growing forever...

Amherst Prof Devises First Head-to-Head Speed Test with Conventional Computing, and the Quantum Computer Wins | Amherst College

Amherst Prof Devises First Head-to-Head Speed Test with Conventional Computing, and the Quantum Computer Wins | Amherst College: McGeoch says the calculations the D-Wave excels at involve a specific combinatorial optimization problem, comparable in difficulty to the more famous “travelling salesperson” problem that’s been a foundation of theoretical computing for decades.

Creating time crystals with a rotating ion ring

Creating time crystals with a rotating ion ring: The Berkeley team, led by Xiang Zhang and Hartmut Häffner, will attempt to build a time crystal by introducing 100 calcium ions into a 100-micron wide ion trap. The calcium ions will be confined by electric fields to form a crystalline ring, which will then be induced to rotate under the influence of a static magnetic field. According to the group's calculations, this ring should settle into the ground state when the atoms are pre-cooled with lasers to around one-billionth of a degree above absolute zero...


The experimental plan is to properly cool the chamber and then apply the proper magnetic fields. At this point, the ions should begin to cycle around their starting point at regular intervals, forming the repeating lattice of the time crystal. To observe this ion rotation, one of the 100 calcium ions will then be toggled into a new electronic state using a laser. If the scientists observe that ion rotating at steady state, they will have in effect, "broken the translational symmetry of time."

Zinc Oxide Nanowires Transistors Can Be Sophisticated Pressure Sensors | MIT Technology Review

Zinc Oxide Nanowires Transistors Can Be Sophisticated Pressure Sensors | MIT Technology Review: In the new research, Wang’s group demonstrates nanoelectronics that offer at least a 15-fold enhancement in sensor density and spatial resolution compared to the previous approaches... The density, resolution, and sensitivity of the sensors, says Wang, is comparable to that of the skin of a human finger...

In Wang’s nanowire transistors, the gate traditionally used in electronics is eliminated. Instead, the current flowing through the nanowires is controlled by the electrical charge generated when strain or force applied is to the transistors.

Physicists Build World's First "Magnetic Hose" For Transmitting Magnetic Fields

Physicists Build World's First "Magnetic Hose" For Transmitting Magnetic Fields: Navau and co point out that a static magnetic field can be thought of as a wave with an infinite wavelength so in theory it ought to be possible to control it with a metamaterial in the same way as electromagnetic waves...


Their conclusion is that a “magnetic hose” consisting of concentric tubes of superconducting and ferromagnetic materials ought to do the trick. They say that a tube consisting of 20 concentric rings that is about ten times longer than it is wide, should transmit about 90 per cent of a magnetic field at one end to the other.  Indeed, a tube of just 2 concentric rings should transmit about 75 per cent.

Quantum effects get a weirdness scale

Quantum effects get a weirdness scale: This makes it possible to compare theoretical and real experiments, and creates a list of chart-toppers. Attempts at neutron superposition in the 1960s score around 5 or 6, while modern experiments involving nearly 500 atoms hit 12. It is a logarithmic scale, so this is roughly a million-fold improvement, but it pales next to Schrödinger's cat. Implementing this thought experiment with existing quantum technology would max out at 24. A version in which an actual cat simultaneously sits in two spots that are 10 centimetres apart, would score 57...

Vaterite: Crystal within a crystal helps resolve an old puzzle

Vaterite: Crystal within a crystal helps resolve an old puzzle: Now, however, a team of scientists... has discovered the crystalline secrets of vaterite with the help of a needlelike spicule from a sea squirt found in the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Writing today... report that vaterite is composed of two different crystal structures that "coexist within a pseudo-single crystal."

New phase of water could dominate the interiors of Uranus and Neptune

New phase of water could dominate the interiors of Uranus and Neptune: One lesser known phase of water is the superionic phase, which is considered an "ice" but exists somewhere between a solid and a liquid: while the oxygen atoms occupy fixed lattice positions as in a solid, the hydrogen atoms migrate through the lattice as in a fluid. Until now, scientists have thought that there was only one phase of superionic ice, but scientists in a new study have discovered a second phase that is more stable than the original.

...the simulations show that a phase transition between the bcc and fcc phases may exist at pressures of 1.0 ± 0.5 Mbar.

...Uranus and Neptune we've just done brief flybys with Voyager 2. What we do know is that they have bizarre non-axisymmetric non-dipolar magnetic fields, totally unlike any other planet in our solar system.

nsf.gov - National Science Foundation (NSF) Discoveries - Energy Efficient Brain Simulator Outperforms Supercomputers - US National Science Foundation (NSF)

nsf.gov - National Science Foundation (NSF) Discoveries - Energy Efficient Brain Simulator Outperforms Supercomputers - US National Science Foundation (NSF): Each of Neurogrid's 16 chips contains more than 65,000 silicon "neurons" whose activity can be programmed according to nearly 80 parameters, allowing the researchers to replicate the unique characteristics of different types of neurons. Soft-wired "synapses" crisscross the board, shuttling signals between every simulated neuron and the thousands of neurons it is networked with, effectively replicating the electrical chatter that constitutes communication in the brain.

Using black holes to measure the Universe's rate of expansion

Using black holes to measure the Universe's rate of expansion: By adding together measurements of the amount of energy being emitted from the vicinity of the black hole to the amount of radiation which reaches Earth, it's possible to infer the distance to the black hole itself and the time in the history of the universe when the energy was emitted.
Getting an accurate estimate of the radiation being emitted depends on the properties of the black hole. For the specific type of black holes targeted in this work, the amount of radiation emitted as the object draws matter into itself is actually proportional to its mass, say the researchers. Therefore, long-established methods to measure this mass can be used to estimate the amount of radiation involved.

Simulation shows it's possible to move H2O@C60 using electrical charge

Simulation shows it's possible to move H2O@C60 using electrical charge: After embedding the water molecule inside the fullerene, the researchers simulated putting the new structure inside of a carbon nanotube, essentially creating a channel to allow for movement of the fullerene along with its water molecule cargo. They then applied an electrical charge parallel to the nanotube. Doing so, the researchers found, caused the fullerene to move within the channel (and the water molecule inside to spin), carrying its cargo with it...
Interestingly, the researchers found that if the charge was increased to 0.065 volts per angstrom, the direction of movement in the channel was reversed, though they can't explain why.

Many Neuroscience Studies May Be Based on Bad Statistics | Wired Science | Wired.com

Many Neuroscience Studies May Be Based on Bad Statistics | Wired Science | Wired.com: Many researchers consider a statistical power of 80 percent to be a desirable goal in designing a study. At that level, if an effect of a particular size were genuine, the study would detect it 80 percent of the time.

But roughly half of the neuroscience studies Munafò and colleagues included in their analysis had a statistical power below 20 percent. Those studies would fail to detect a genuine effect at least 80 percent of the time...

“It was already clear that fMRI studies were almost always very underpowered, but this paper shows that just about everything except a set of studies described as “neurological” are also underpowered,” Pashler said.

Twist in dark matter tale hints at shadow Milky Way

Twist in dark matter tale hints at shadow Milky Way: In 2008, when the PAMELA satellite found a similar excess of positrons, Neal Weiner of New York University and colleagues suggested that WIMPs are drawn together under a force of their own...

Observations of the orbits of stars around galaxies suggest that all galaxies, including the Milky Way, are surrounded by a spherical cloud of dark matter (see diagram). But if a fraction of dark matter particles interact with each other, they would combine into atom-like structures and eventually collapse into a spinning disc. This is how ordinary matter formed the Milky Way. The resulting shadow Milky Way could be spinning right along with the visible one, or it could end up tilted at a slight angle, she adds.

First Demonstration of the Storage And Release of Light in a Metamaterial

First Demonstration of the Storage And Release of Light in a Metamaterial: In this case, Nakanishi and co have created a metamaterial in which each repeating unit contains two variable capacitors. One of the capacitors is designed to absorb and radiate waves at a particular frequency while the other is designed to trap them.

If the capacitors are tuned to the same frequency, any light at that frequency is absorbed and trapped. Detuning the capacitors then releases the electromagnetic waves, allowing them to continue on their way...


What’s more impressive, however, is that the released waves have the same phase distribution as the originals. “The electromagnetic waves were stored and released, while maintaining the phase distribution in the propagating direction,” they say.

Brain imaging spots our abstract choices before we do

Brain imaging spots our abstract choices before we do:  Kreiman discovered that electrical activity in the supplementary motor area, involved in initiating movement, and in the anterior cingulate cortex, which controls attention and motivation, appeared up to 5 seconds before a volunteer was aware of deciding to press the button (Neuron, doi.org/btkcpz). This backed up earlier fMRI studies by John-Dylan Haynes of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, Germany, that had traced the origins of decisions to the prefrontal cortex a whopping 10 seconds before awareness...

If this kind of "mind-reading" is possible, a new study by Haynes, published this week and also presented at the meeting, suggests that it may not be restricted to decisions about moving a finger. Using fMRI, Haynes has found that the very brain areas involved in deciding to move are also active several seconds before a more abstract decision, like whether to add or subtract a series of numbers.

Transparent brains make neuroscience clearer

Transparent brains make neuroscience clearer: First, they remove the brain from a mouse and infuse it with a see-through gel that collects in the neurons' lipid membranes. As the gel solidifies, it takes the shape of the membranes and creates a matrix that holds the cells' proteins, DNA and RNA in place. Then the team adds a second chemical that dissolves the lipids, leaving a transparent brain made out of gel that retains the brain's proteins, DNA and RNA in their original positions.

The technique – which the researchers have named Clarity – makes it easy to see the structure of individual neurons, and preserves the fragile interconnections in near-perfect detail...

The team has successfully turned a 0.5-millimetre-thick section of human brain transparent, but working with larger chunks of human brain may be a challenge, as human neurons have a large amount of fatty protein surrounding their axons that must all be dissolved.

Superheated Bose-Einstein condensate exists above critical temperature

Superheated Bose-Einstein condensate exists above critical temperature: In BECs and distilled water, the inhibition of a phase transition at the critical temperature occurs for different reasons. In general, there are two types of phase transitions. The boiling of water is a first-order phase transition, and it can be inhibited in clean water because, in the absence of impurities, there is in an energy barrier that "protects" the liquid from boiling away. On the other hand, boiling a BEC is a second-order phase transition. In this case, superheating occurs because the BEC component and the remaining thermal (non-condensed) component decouple and evolve as two separate equilibrium systems...


Here, the researchers demonstrated that in an optically trapped potassium-39 gas the strength of interactions can be reduced just enough so that the two components remain at the same temperature, but the particle flow between them is slowed down and their chemical potentials decouple. This condition makes it possible for the BEC to maintain a higher chemical potential than the surrounding thermal component, and thus survive far above its equilibrium transition temperature...



In the new study, the physicists experimentally demonstrated that a BEC could persist in the superheated regime... for more than a minute.

'Artificial leaf' gains the ability to self-heal damage and produce energy from dirty water

'Artificial leaf' gains the ability to self-heal damage and produce energy from dirty water: The device, however, actually is a simple catalyst-coated wafer of silicon, rather than a complicated reproduction of the photosynthesis mechanism in real leaves. Dropped into a jar of water and exposed to sunlight, catalysts in the device break water down into its components, hydrogen and oxygen...


"Self-healing enables the artificial leaf to run on the impure, bacteria-contaminated water found in nature," Nocera said. "We figured out a way to tweak the conditions so that part of the catalyst falls apart, denying bacteria the smooth surface needed to form a biofilm. Then the catalyst can heal and re-assemble."

Join the Popular Science #CrowdGrant Challenge And Do Something Amazing

Join the Popular Science #CrowdGrant Challenge And Do Something Amazing: #CrowdGrant is a brand-new partnership with RocketHub—a premiere crowdfunding platform—that's now accepting the best and brightest project proposals in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and other future-shaping fields.

Peaceful matter-antimatter pairing looks more real

Peaceful matter-antimatter pairing looks more real: The first signs of these Majorana fermions came last year in the form of a current that appeared at zero voltage in a nano-size wire...
They created a similar set-up but this time ramped the voltage up and down and shortened the wire. The plan was to cause the quantum waves associated with each fermion to overlap and constructively interfere, creating two extra peaks in current. Sure enough, the team saw two more blips...

Computer simulation shows the sun's "heartbeat" is magnetic

Computer simulation shows the sun's "heartbeat" is magnetic: They ran their simulation on University of Montreal supercomputers which are connected to a larger network across the city. In so doing, they observed that though the sun as a whole experiences an 11 year cycle of solar polar reversals (as noted here on Earth by the periodic nature of observable sun spot activity), zonal magnetic field bands undergo a polarity reversal on average every 40 years.

It's Almost Impossible To Believe There's a Robot In This Suit and Not a Real Human

It's Almost Impossible To Believe There's a Robot In This Suit and Not a Real Human: And it's not just Petman's gait and movements that are incredibly realistic. The humanoid's artificial skin is designed to detect chemical leaks if a suit has failed, and is actually able to produce its own micro-climate to recreate hot and sweaty conditions.

Solid or Liquid? Physicists Redefine States of Matter

Solid or Liquid? Physicists Redefine States of Matter: ...the main difference between liquids and solids is the way they respond to shear, or twisting forces. Liquids barely resist shear and can easily be sloshed, whereas solids — regardless of whether they are crystals, quasicrystals or glass — resist attempts to change their shape.

The liquid-solid phase transition, Radin and Aristoff reason, should therefore be marked by the “shear response” of a material jumping from zero to a positive value...

Network of cell mimics comes to life

Network of cell mimics comes to life: Built with a custom-made 3-D printer by scientists at the University of Oxford in England, the “droplet network” comprises tens of thousands of tiny water droplets connected by lipid layers...
To create the squishy, raftlike networks, the printer squirts a layer of water droplets into an oily solution. Lipids in the oil gather around microscopic water droplets like a cell’s membrane...

Virtual reality creates infinite maze in a single room - tech - 05 April 2013 - New Scientist

Virtual reality creates infinite maze in a single room - tech - 05 April 2013 - New Scientist: The illusion created by the VR system is strong enough that people trying it do not realise that they are effectively walking around in circles. "People think they are walking in much larger environments..."

Rocket powered by nuclear fusion could send humans to Mars

Rocket powered by nuclear fusion could send humans to Mars: To power a rocket, the team has devised a system in which a powerful magnetic field causes large metal rings to implode around this plasma, compressing it to a fusion state. The converging rings merge to form a shell that ignites the fusion, but only for a few microseconds...
The UW-MSNW team has successfully demonstrated the metal-crushing process in the UW Plasma Dynamics Laboratory in Redmond. The team had a sample of the collapsed, fist-sized aluminum ring resulting from one of those tests on hand for people to see and touch at the recent NASA symposium.

Blow for 'dark flow' in Planck's new view of the cosmos

Blow for 'dark flow' in Planck's new view of the cosmos: This flow suggested that the universe had somehow become lopsided, as if space-time itself was behaving like a tilted table and matter was sliding off...
The latest search is based on a new, higher-resolution map of the cosmic microwave background from Planck. The Planck team says their multi-pronged analysis also found no evidence of galaxy clusters gushing along in a coherent stream.

Scientists Find Signal in Space That Could Be Dark Matter

Scientists Find Signal in Space That Could Be Dark Matter: Though they rarely interact, scientists think dark matter particles should occasionally hit one another, annihilating into positrons and electrons, which AMS detects. A dark matter signal would see the ratio of positrons relative to electrons rise at higher energies and then sharply drop off...
The AMS experiment has observed that the positron excess, whatever its source, seems to come uniformly from all parts of the sky. This indicates that the signal has one particular source and is not many different phenomena...

Sound cloaks enter the third dimension | Matter & Energy | Science News

Sound cloaks enter the third dimension | Matter & Energy | Science News: ... the researchers came up with a design made up of 60 rings of various sizes that form a cagelike structure around the sphere. Simulations indicated that sound waves scattering off the sphere and the ringed cloak would interfere with each other and cancel out.

Because the cloak did not need to steer sound waves in complicated ways, Sánchez-Dehesa and his team built it out of plastic with the help of a 3-D printer.  They hung their creation from the ceiling of an echo-free chamber, pointed a speaker at it and played a range of sound frequencies. For most frequencies, the sphere scattered an easily detectable amount of sound. But at 8.55 kilohertz — an audible high pitch — the cloaked sphere became imperceptible to the sensors behind it.

How to Make a Computer from a Living Cell

How to Make a Computer from a Living Cell: The Stanford researchers’ genetic logic gate can be used to perform the full complement of digital logic tasks, and it can store information, too. It works by making changes to the cell’s genome, creating a kind of transcript of the cell’s activities that can be read out later with a DNA sequencer...

The transcriptor triggers the production of enzymes that cause alterations in the cell’s genome. When the production of those enzymes is triggered by the signal—a protein of interest, for example—these enzymes will delete or invert a particular stretch of DNA in the genome. Researchers can code the transcriptor to respond to one, or multiple, different such signals. The signal can be amplified because one change in the cell’s DNA can lead the cell to produce a large amount of the output protein over time.

Video: Robotic Ants Solve Riddles Without Math

Video: Robotic Ants Solve Riddles Without Math: Researchers used tiny, cube-shaped robots that were powered by watch motors and ran on dime-sized wheels. They gave the machines three rules: to walk randomly in a given direction, to turn away from obstacles they bump into, and to follow a trail of light left by other robots (as seen in the video)—similar to the way real ants use their antennae to sense chemicals left behind by other ants. These simple tenets were enough to allow the robots to copy ants' ability to find the shortest path home.

Artificial muscle computer performs as a universal Turing machine

Artificial muscle computer performs as a universal Turing machine: The artificial muscle computer is modeled on Stephen Wolfram's "2, 3" Turing machine architecture, which is the simplest known universal Turing machine...


In its current version, the artificial muscle computer is very large (about 1 m3) and extremely slow (0.15 Hz).

‘Metascreen’ forms ultra-thin invisibility cloak

‘Metascreen’ forms ultra-thin invisibility cloak: The trick: a new, ultrathin layer called a “metascreen,” made by attaching strips of 66-micron-thick copper tape to a 100-micron-thick, flexible polycarbonate film in a fishnet design. It was used to cloak (hide) an 18 cm cylindrical rod from microwaves...

Previous cloaking studies have used metamaterials to refract (bend) the incoming waves around an object. The new “mantle cloaking” method uses instead an ultrathin metallic metascreen to cancel out the waves as they are scattered off the cloaked object...

Astronomers Discover New Kind of Supernova | Carnegie Institution for Science

Astronomers Discover New Kind of Supernova | Carnegie Institution for Science: This new type, Iax, is fainter and less energetic than Type Ia. Although both types come from exploding white dwarfs, Type Iax supernovas may not completely destroy the white dwarf.
“A Type Iax supernova is essentially a mini supernova..."

The team calculates that Type Iax supernovae are about a third as common as Type Ia supernovae. The reason so few have been detected is that the faintest are only one-hundredth as bright as a Type Ia supernova.

Gravity-less toy black hole solves cosmic puzzles

Gravity-less toy black hole solves cosmic puzzles: His team modelled a minimal black hole, defined only by having an inside and an outside, using quantum theory. To their surprise, they found that this object reproduces a lot of the features of real black holes that are thought to rely on gravity, including Hawking radiation, which could occur via a process called quantum tunneling.

This chimes with suggestions that gravity is not a fundamental component of the universe but an emergent property of quantum mechanics, just as waves are an emergent property of water molecules.

Scientists examine nothing, find something - CSMonitor.com

Scientists examine nothing, find something - CSMonitor.com: They suggest that the impedance of a vacuum – another electromagnetic 'constant' whose value depends on the speed of light – itself depends only on the electric charge of the particles in the vacuum, and not their masses.

If their hypothesis is correct, it answers our question of where the speed of light comes from: It emerges from the total number of charged particles in the universe.

Shrinking Blob Computes Travelling Salesman Solutions

Shrinking Blob Computes Travelling Salesman Solutions:  In simplified terms, the blob clings to the dots as it shrinks, linking them with a minimal surface, rather like a soap bubble surface. “As the blob shrinks it morphologically adapts to the configuration of the cities,” they say...

The magic ingredient in all this is the special goo. It consists of many particles that each move according to a set of simple rules, like autonomous agents. These sit in a sea of “chemoattractant”, a virtual scent that the particles are attracted to.  At each stage in the calculation, each particle senses the chemoattractant around it and then moves towards the region of highest concentration. As it moves, it leaves behind its own trace of the chemoattractant for other particles to follow.

Laser empties atoms from the inside out

Laser empties atoms from the inside out: ...it is possible to remove the two most deeply bound electrons from atoms, emptying the inner most quantum shell and leading to a distinctive plasma state...


"At such extraordinary intensities electrons move at close to the speed of light and as they move they create perhaps the most intense X-rays ever observed on Earth. These X-rays empty the atoms from the inside out..."


The analysis showed the mechanism for hollow atom generation was not due to the collision of electrons or driven by the laser photons, but was driven by the resulting radiation field from the interaction.

Planck shows almost perfect cosmos – plus axis of evil

Planck shows almost perfect cosmos – plus axis of evil: "The overall conclusion is that standard cosmology is an extremely good match to Planck data," said Efstathiou. "If I were an inflationary theorist I would be extremely happy."

...Planck reveals that one half of the universe has bigger variations than the other. Planck's detectors are over 10 times more sensitive and have about 2.5 times the angular resolution of WMAP's, giving cosmologists a much better look at this alignment. "We can be extremely confident that these anomalies are not caused by galactic emissions and not caused by instrumental effects..."

A Near-Whole Brain Activity Map in Fish

A Near-Whole Brain Activity Map in Fish:  The zebrafish larvae, whose bodies are transparent and brains are tiny, were genetically engineered to produce a protein in their neurons that glows in response to the chemical changes that occur when that neuron fires...

With the modified fish and microscopy methods, the researchers were able to capture the activity of at least 80 percent of the baby fish’s 100,000 neurons over a time period of just 1.3 seconds.  

Predicted state of atomic collapse seen for first time - MIT News Office

Predicted state of atomic collapse seen for first time - MIT News Office: What the new Science paper reports is that atoms sitting on a sheet of graphene — a two-dimensional structure composed of carbon atoms linked in a chicken-wire-like mesh of hexagonal bonds — exactly mimic the properties of atomic nuclei, and can be manipulated to recreate and observe complex atomic phenomena. The key is that while electrons move through graphene as relativistic particles — as though they were massless, even though they actually do have mass — their motion is 300 times slower than that of true massless particles. As a result, the expected phenomenon of collapse should take place at one-three-hundredth the normal nuclear charge — putting it well within reach of experimental observations.

To simulate atomic nuclei, the researchers used pairs of calcium atoms on the graphene surface; they were able to manipulate these pairs (called dimers) on the surface using the probe tip of a scanning tunneling microscope. As soon as three dimers were pushed close together, the surrounding field of electrons showed a specific spectrum of resonances that precisely matched the decades-old predictions of atomic collapse. The observed resonances persisted in a four-dimer and five-dimer artificial nucleus.

Controversial quantum computer aces entanglement tests

Controversial quantum computer aces entanglement tests: D-Wave instead uses adiabatic quantum computing, in which an array of chilled, superconducting niobium loops – the qubits in this system – very quickly find the lowest point in what can be thought of as an energy "landscape" of hills and valleys...


Spedalieri and colleagues applied a mathematical test that determines whether there are any ways for non-entangled qubits to arrange themselves to be compatible with the data. If not, the system must be entangled.

Using this test, they found evidence for entanglement. What's more, it was at a similar stage in the computation to where D-Wave also found evidence for entanglement, based on energy distribution.

ScienceShot: A Better Cosmic Yardstick

ScienceShot: A Better Cosmic Yardstick: Now, astronomers have used observations of eight pairs of binary stars in the distant cluster to develop a new figure. The orbits of these pairs are aligned such that one star passes in front of the other as seen from Earth, which allowed the researchers to approximate the size of each member from the durations of the eclipses. The spectra of these cool, mature stars allowed the team to determine their surface temperatures. Together, those bits of data enabled the astronomers to estimate the amount of energy emitted by the stars, and that, in conjunction with observations of their actual brightness as seen from Earth, allowed the researchers to estimate the distance to each pair.

Micro 3-D Printer Creates Tiny Structures in Seconds

Micro 3-D Printer Creates Tiny Structures in Seconds: Today’s printers, including Nanoscribe’s present system, keep the laser beam fixed and move the light-sensitive material along three axes using mechanical stages, which slows down printing. To speed up the process, Nanoscribe’s new tool uses a tiny moving mirror to reflect the laser beam at different angles. Thiel says generating multiple light beams with a microlens array could make the process even faster.

The smallest features that can be created using the Nanoscribe printer measure about 30 nanometers...

Graphene Antennas Would Enable Terabit Wireless Downloads

Graphene Antennas Would Enable Terabit Wireless Downloads: To make an antenna, the group says, graphene could be shaped into narrow strips of between 10 and 100 nanometers wide and one micrometer long, allowing it to transmit and receive at the terahertz frequency, which roughly corresponds to those size scales. Electromagnetic waves in the terahertz frequency would then interact with plasmonic waves—oscillations of electrons at the surface of the graphene strip—to send and receive information.

3D Printer Recycles Milk Jugs

3D Printer Recycles Milk Jugs: They cut the labels off milk jugs, washed the plastic, and shredded it. Then they ran it through a homemade device that melts and extrudes it into a long, spaghetti-like string of plastic...

The process isn’t perfect. Milk jugs are made of high-density polyethylene, or HDPE, which is not ideal for 3D printing. “HDPE is a little more challenging to print with,” Pearce says. But the disadvantages are not overwhelming. His group made its own climate-controlled chamber using a dorm-room refrigerator and an off-the-shelf teddy-bear humidifier and had good results...

The group determined that making their own filament in an insulated RecycleBot used about 1/10th the energy needed to acquire commercial 3D filament. They also calculated that they used less energy than it would take to recycle milk jugs conventionally.

Brown University creates first wireless, implanted brain-computer interface

Brown University creates first wireless, implanted brain-computer interface: Brown’s wireless BCI, fashioned out of hermetically sealed titanium, looks a lot like a pacemaker... Inside there’s a li-ion battery, an inductive (wireless) charging loop, a chip that digitizes the signals from your brain, and an antenna for transmitting those neural spikes to a nearby computer. The BCI is connected to a small chip with 100 electrodes protruding from it, which, in this study, was embedded in the somatosensory cortex or motor cortex. These 100 electrodes produce a lot of data, which the BCI transmits at 24Mbps over the 3.2 and 3.8GHz bands to a receiver that is one meter away. The BCI’s battery takes two hours to charge via wireless inductive charging, and then has enough juice to last for six hours of use.

One of the features that the Brown researchers seem most excited about is the device’s power consumption, which is just 100 milliwatts...

Physicists make discovery in the quantum realm by manipulating light

Physicists make discovery in the quantum realm by manipulating light: "In our experiment, we caught and released photons in and from a superconducting cavity by incorporating a superconducting switch," said Yin. "By controlling the switch on and off, we were able to open and close a door between the confined cavity and the road where photons can transmit. The on/off speed should be fast enough with a tuning time much shorter than the photon lifetime of the cavity." She explained that not only can the switch be in an on/off state, it also can be opened continuously, like a shutter. In that way, the research team was able to shape the released photons in different wave forms –– a key element for the next step they want to accomplish: controlled photon transfer between two distant cavities.

First fluid knots created in the lab

First fluid knots created in the lab: To investigate, Dustin Kleckner and William Irvine of the University of Chicago, Illinois 3D-printed strips of plastic shaped into a trefoil knot and a Hopf link. Crucially, the strips had a cross section shaped like a wing, or hydrofoil (see picture).

Next, the researchers dragged the knots through water filled with microscopic bubbles. Just as a wing passing through air creates a trailing vortex, the acceleration of the hydrofoils created a knot-shaped vortex that sucked in the bubbles. The result was a knot-shaped flow of moving bubbles – the first fluid knot created in a lab – which the team imaged with lasers.

Man-made material pushes the bounds of superconductivity (March 3, 2013)

Man-made material pushes the bounds of superconductivity (March 3, 2013): The researchers can tailor the material, which seamlessly alternates between metal and oxide layers, to achieve extraordinary superconducting properties — in particular, the ability to transport much more electrical current than non-engineered materials...

The researchers' new material is composed of 24 layers that alternate between the pnictide superconductor and a layer of the oxide strontium titanate. Creating such systems is difficult, especially when the arrangement of atoms, and chemical compatibility, of each material is very different.

Yet, layer after layer, the researchers maintained an atomically sharp interface...

The new material also has improved current-carrying capabilities. As they grew the superlattice, the researchers also added a tiny bit of oxygen to intentionally insert defects every few nanometers in the material. These defects act as pinning centers to immobilize tiny magnetic vortices that, as they grow in strength in large magnetic fields, can limit current flow through the superconductor. "If the vortices move around freely, the energy dissipates, and the superconductor is no longer lossless," says Eom. "We have engineered both vertical and planar pinning centers, because vortices created by magnetic fields can be in many different orientations."