Scientists get a first look at the innermost region of a white dwarf system

Some 200 light years from Earth, the core of a dead star is circling a larger star in a macabre cosmic dance. The dead star is a type of white dwarf that exerts a powerful magnetic field as it pulls material from the larger star into a swirling, accreting disk.

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Explainable AI and turbulence: A fresh look at an unsolved physics problem

While atmospheric turbulence is a familiar culprit of rough flights, the chaotic movement of turbulent flows remains an unsolved problem in physics. To gain insight into the system, a team of researchers used explainable AI to pinpoint the most important regions in a turbulent flow, according to a Nature Communications study led by the University […]

New scalable single-spin qubits could simplify future processors

Quantum computers, which operate leveraging effects rooted in quantum mechanics, have the potential of tackling some computational and optimization tasks that cannot be solved by classical computers. Instead of bits (i.e., binary digits), which are the basic units of information in classical computers, quantum computers rely on so-called qubits.

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The Story Behind The Broken Menhir Of Er-Grah

The once standing stone of Er-Grah is one of the unsung wonders of the ancient world. It was the biggest megalith ever erected in history and was raised in France (Brittany) during the Neolithic, 4700 BCE. It is believed to have stood for 700 years before breaking into four pieces at around 4000 BCE.

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NASA releases detailed images of rare interstellar comet passing through solar system

NASA unveiled close-up pictures on Wednesday of the interstellar comet that’s making a quick one-and-done tour of the solar system.

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Lost signal: How solar activity silenced Earth’s radiation

Researchers from HSE University and the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences analyzed seven years of data from the ERG (Arase) satellite and, for the first time, provided a detailed description of a new type of radio emission from near-Earth space—the hectometric continuum, first discovered in 2017.

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Key driver of extreme winds on Venus identified

Imagine the catastrophic winds of a category 5 hurricane. Now, imagine even faster winds of more than 100 meters per second, encircling the planet and whipping clouds across the sky, with no end in sight. This scenario would be astonishing on Earth, but it’s business as usual on Venus, where the atmosphere at cloud level […]

Webb reveals Apep’s four ‘spiraling’ dust shells shaped by Wolf-Rayet stars

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered a first of its kind: a crisp mid-infrared image of a system of four serpentine spirals of dust, one expanding beyond the next in precisely the same pattern. (The fourth is almost transparent, at the edges of Webb’s image.)

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Physicists and philosophers have long struggled to understand the nature of time: Here’s why

The nature of time has plagued thinkers for as long as we’ve tried to understand the world we live in. Intuitively, we know what time is, but try to explain it, and we end up tying our minds in knots.

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When superfluids collide, physicists find a mix of old and new behavior

Physics is often about recognizing patterns, sometimes repeated across vastly different scales. For instance, moons orbit planets in the same way planets orbit stars, which in turn orbit the center of a galaxy.

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Physicists demonstrate the constancy of the speed of light with unprecedented accuracy

In 1887, one of the most important experiments in the history of physics took place. American scientists Michelson and Morley failed to measure the speed of Earth by comparing the speed of light in the direction of Earth’s motion with that perpendicular to it. That arguably most important zero measurement in the history of science […]

Scientist captures tiny particles for clues on what sparks lightning

Using lasers as tweezers to understand cloud electrification might sound like science fiction, but at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) it is a reality. By trapping and charging micron-sized particles with lasers, researchers can now observe their charging and discharging dynamics over time.

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Could a kid have painted that? Jackson Pollock’s famous pour-painting has child-like characteristics, study shows

What makes art art? Is it the method or the creator? Does it need a color palette and oil paints, or a canvas laid flat on the floor and paint splattered across it? Does it require a critically acclaimed painter, or a toddler with crayons? And when it comes to the artist, can we even […]

Surface-only superconductor is the strangest of its kind

Something strange goes on inside the material platinum-bismuth-two (PtBi₂). A new study by researchers at IFW Dresden and the Cluster of Excellence ct.qmat demonstrates that while PtBi₂ may look like a typical shiny gray crystal, electrons moving through it do some things never seen before.

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12 Of The Most Powerful Ancient Gods Of Mesopotamia

Sumer, known as the “land of the kings”, was founded in southern Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) between 4500 and 4000 BCE. It became one of the first civilizations ever established in history, where its people drained the marshes for agriculture, developed trade, and established industries such as weaving, metallurgy, and pottery.

Each city was […]