Post Scientist

Researchers at QuTech—a collaboration between the Delft University of Technology and TNO—have engineered a record number of six, silicon-based, spin qubits in a fully interoperable array. Importantly, the qubits can be operated with a low error-rate that is achieved with a new chip design, an automated calibration procedure, and new methods for qubit initialization and readout. These advances will contribute to a scalable quantum computer based on silicon. The results are published in Nature today. Listen this article in our  podcast . Different materials can be used to produce qubits, the quantum analog to the bit of the classical computer, but no one knows which material will turn out to be best to build a larg...

Living sharks are often portrayed as the apex predators of the marine realm. Paleontologists have been able to identify fossils of their extinct ancestors that date back hundreds of millions of years to a time known as the Palaeozoic period. These early "sharks," known as acanthodians, bristled with spines. In contrast to modern sharks, they developed bony "armor" around their paired fins.  Listen this article in our  podcast . A recent discovery of a new species of acanthodian from China surprised scientists with its antiquity. The find predates by about 15 million years the earliest acanthodian body fossils and is the oldest undisputed jawed fish. These findings were published in Nature on Sept. 28. Reconstructed from thousands of tiny skeletal fragments, Fanjingshania, named after the famous UNESCO World Heritage Site Fanjingshan, is a bizarre fish with an external bony "armor" and multiple pairs of fin spines that set it apart from living...

The concept of "symmetry" is essential to fundamental physics: a crucial element in everything from subatomic particles to macroscopic crystals. Accordingly, a lack of symmetry—or asymmetry—can drastically affect the properties of a given system. Listen this article in our  podcast . Qubits, the quantum analog of computer bits for quantum computers, are extremely sensitive—the barest disturbance in a qubit system is enough for it to lose any quantum information it might have carried. Given this fragility, it seems intuitive that qubits would be most stable in a symmetric environment. However, for a certain type of qubit—a molecular qubit—the opposite is true. Researchers from the University of Chicago's Pri...

Researchers at the University of Toronto have identified the mechanism responsible for the formation of temperature and salinity "staircases" in the Arctic Ocean, resolving a mystery that has confounded oceanographers and climatologists alike for more than half a century. Listen this article in our  podcast . Understanding how these vertical structures work promises to shed more light on the causes and consequences of rapid Arctic sea ice loss amid climate change. "Our discovery of a new mechanism of hydrodynamic instability provides insights into the formation of staircase-like structures resulting from the mixing of warm salt water and cooler fresh water," said Yuchen Ma, a Ph.D. candidate in the...

Outside, balmy September sunshine warms an idyllic coast, as California basks in yet another perfect day. Listen this article in our  podcast . Inside, it's minus 460 Fahrenheit (-273 Celsius) in some spots, pockets of cold that bristle with the impossible physics of quantum mechanics—a science in which things can simultaneously exist, not exist and also be something in between. This is Google's Quantum AI laboratory, where dozens of super-smart people labor in an office kitted out with climbing walls and electric bikes to shape the next generation of computers—a generation that will be unlike anything users currently have in their pockets or offices. "It is a new type of computer that uses quantum mechani...

Turning plastic waste into useful products through chemical recycling is one strategy for addressing Earth's growing plastic pollution problem. A new study may improve the ability of one method, called pyrolysis, to process hard-to-recycle mixed plastics—like multilayer food packaging—and generate fuel as a byproduct, the scientists said. Listen this article in our  podcast . Pyrolysis involves heating plastic in an oxygen-free environment, causing the materials to break down and creating new liquid or gas fuels in the process. Current commercial applications, however, either operate below the necessary scale or can only handle certain type of plastics, the scientists said. "We have a very limited understandi...

The human face is special. It is simultaneously public and personal. Our faces reveal sensitive information about us: who we are, of course, but also our gender, emotions, health status and more. Listen this article in our  podcast . Lawmakers in Australia, like those around the world, never anticipated our face data would be harvested on an industrial scale, then used in everything from our smartphones to police CCTV cameras. So we shouldn't be surprised that our laws have not kept pace with the extraordinary rise of facial recognition technology. But what kind of laws do we need? The technology can be used for both good and ill, so neither banning it nor the current free-for-all seem ideal. However, regulatory failure has left our community vulnerable to harmful uses of facial recognition. To fill the...

A prototype, all-electric airplane took its first flight Tuesday morning in central Washington state. Listen this article in our  podcast . The Seattle Times reports that if the Federal Aviation Administration eventually certifies the small airplane to carry passengers, it could become the first all-electric commercial airplane. The plane, built by startup Eviation, was built to carry nine passengers and up two pilots and took off from Moses Lake, Washington, at 7:10 a.m. Tuesday. The plane landed eight minutes later. The company's goal is to show such electric planes are viable as commuter aircraft flying at an altitude of about 15,000 feet (4,572 meters). The plane, designed by engineers in Washington state and Israel, is powered by 21,500 small Tesla-style battery cells.    

As product managers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Nicholas Gilroy and Haiku Sky help turn complex information into a compelling journey on the web. Their work allows users to interact with data and even download information as the story of research unfolds. Listen this article in our  podcast . Working closely with user experience researchers and engineers, the two helped the U.S. Department of Energy's Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) develop a new Lithium Story Map for energy.gov that lays out the relationship between geothermal energy and lithium via images, animation, maps, and narrative. Since its launch on Aug. 24, 2022, the Lithium Story Map has more than 1,600 views. The concept is a first-of-its-kind project for the Department of Energy website, bringing science to the m...

Large obstacles, like clouds and buildings, can block sunlight from reaching solar cells, but smaller sources, such as dust and leaves, can also create similar problems. Understanding how the loss of incoming radiation affects power output is essential for optimizing photovoltaic technology, which converts light into electricity and is an important contributor to the green energy transition. Listen this article in our  podcast . In the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy , researchers from Shanghai Polytechnic University, Shanghai Engineering Research Center of Advanced Thermal Functional Materials, and Shanghai Solar Energy Research Center Co. Ltd explored how different shade conditions impact performance of single solar cells and two-cell systems connected in series and parallel. "In the real w...

Inspired by barn owls, researchers have developed an innovative localization system that combines state-of-the-art sensors with a neuromorphic computational map based on resistive random-access memory (RRAM). Listen this article in our  podcast . As we enter the era of pervasive computing, more and more of our everyday objects are being embedded with microprocessors to help our lives run smoothly. To achieve this, these systems need to operate continuously and waste minimal energy, all while extracting useful and compact information from noisy and often incomplete data captured from several sensors in real time. Thanks to their in-memory, event-driven computing capabilities, hybrid memristive complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) neuromorphic architectures provide an ideal hardware substrate fo...