New converter could bridge light wavelength gap in quantum communications

Quantum networks, systems that connect devices using quantum mechanical effects, could potentially allow users to share information more securely and efficiently. Building these networks typically entails linking stationary qubits, units of quantum information encoded in trapped ions or other physical systems, using photons (particles of light) transmitted through optical fibers.

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Radio waves drive a fusion plasma current that could help reactors run continuously

For the first time, a team of physicists in the U.S. has clearly demonstrated a “helicon current drive” in a nuclear fusion experiment. Led by Jeff Lestz at General Atomics, San Diego, the team took advantage of the latest advances in tokamak technology to show that radio waves steered to travel around the donut-shaped device […]

27 exoplanet targets for the world’s first private space telescope

The Lazuli Space Telescope will be the first private space telescope. It’s the brainchild of Eric Schmidt, Google’s former CEO. It will have a 3-meter mirror (9.8 feet), larger than Hubble’s 2.4-meter mirror (7.9 feet), and will be launched by 2029.

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Man serving a life sentence for murder escapes Tenn. prison through fence

Officials realized Jacob Morley, 28, was unaccounted for around 11:30 p.m. Oct. 24 at the Northwest Correctional Complex in Tiptonville, the Tennessee Department of Correction said in a statement.

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BWC: Barricaded suspect raises knife, moves toward Va. officers before fatal OIS

The Arlington County Police Department shooting of the knife-wielding suspect occurred after nearly three hours of negotiations and several less-lethal deployments

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Metalens microscope switches focus with voltage, not moving optics

Just as it is difficult for a camera to keep both a nearby flower and a distant mountain sharply focused at the same time, conventional optical microscopes face a similar challenge when imaging structures located at different depths inside the body. Tighter focusing of light improves spatial resolution, but at the same time reduces the […]

Single optical element combines soft X-ray imaging and spectroscopy

An international research team from Germany, Switzerland and Japan has demonstrated in a recent study that a single reflection zone plate (RZP) can perform both soft X-ray imaging and resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) mapping. The approach could simplify future instruments that need to determine both where structures are located in a material and how […]

Clouds on a lava planet challenge what astronomers expected

A rocky lava planet once thought to be too extreme to have an atmosphere appears to be wrapped in one with a reflective layer of vaporized silicate mineral clouds, the same family of compounds that make up quartz and sand.

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Laser-blasted plasma shows how instabilities could heat the sun’s corona

From its visible surface, the sun radiates heat at a relatively cool temperature of 5,800 Kelvin. Yet within the thin outer layer of the sun’s atmosphere known as the corona, electrons can reach temperatures of millions of degrees, for reasons astronomers have yet to fully explain.

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Man convicted of murder after running over retired Ohio deputy directing traffic

Rodney Hinton Jr. fatally struck retired Hamilton County Deputy Larry Henderson as he worked a traffic detail; Hinton Jr. had watched bodycam video showing the fatal OIS of his son hours before the incident

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Calif. city fires city manager, asks laid off PD employees to return to work

At least nine civilian staff members at the Hollister Police Department were among a group of city employees laid off over a $2 million budget shortfall

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Physicists reveal new paradigm for fiber growth in neurodegenerative diseases

Some proteins that are linked to neurodegenerative diseases can form both liquid droplets and amyloid fibers. But how are these two states connected, and where do the fibers grow? Leiden physicists Liru Feng and Louise Jawerth have discovered a counter-intuitive mechanism.

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Stellar collisions may have been common when the universe was young

In our solar system’s corner of the galaxy, stars rarely collide. It makes sense: Space is vast, and stars have room to roam. Even in most of the present-day universe, stellar collisions are rare. The James Webb Space Telescope, however, peers deep enough into space to see the universe as it was not too long […]

Diamond defects confirm 80-year-old theory of crystal stress

For the first time, researchers in Japan have directly mapped several components of the stress field surrounding an atomic-scale flaw in the crystal structure of diamond. Led by Tokuyuki Teraji at Japan’s National Institute for Materials Science, the team achieved its result using nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers in diamond, whose spin states respond differently to stress […]

Tiny shifts in iron content tip a potential memory material between competing magnetic states

A team of Yale researchers has figured out what gives a magnetic material its mysterious properties, a discovery that could help boost computing memory and the field of “spintronics.” Their work is published in Physical Review Letters.

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