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Peering into the Milky Way’s far side, Roman could unveil 100,000 worlds

NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is poised to make a major leap in the hunt for worlds outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. Scientists expect the mission to reveal around 100,000 worlds—a staggering leap compared to the nearly 6,300 found so far thanks to NASA missions working in tandem with other observatories. And Roman will primarily find them in underexplored regions of the Milky Way.

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Something just passed between us and a distant star

On the night of 18 December 2019, a star in our satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud, briefly got brighter. Not dramatically nor explosively, just a smooth symmetrical rise and fall in brightness lasting about an hour, as though something had passed in front of it and bent its light toward us. Then it returned to normal and was never seen to vary again.

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Electrical ‘knob’ can switch light on, off and tune intensity at the nanoscale

Physicists from Emory University have led work to develop a microscopic, nonlinear light source that can be switched on, off or tuned to a particular intensity by an electrical “knob.” The paper is published in the journal Optica, and could aid in the design of smaller, more flexible technologies for communications, sensing and quantum computing.

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Why the most massive galaxies in the early universe stopped forming stars prematurely

Astronomical observations show that the most massive galaxies in the early universe formed approximately three to four billion years after the Big Bang and stopped producing stars very early in cosmic history, around one billion years after their formation. This strange behavior has puzzled experts in the field. For comparison, our galaxy, the Milky Way, is as old as the universe itself and continues to produce stars, albeit at a low rate, even 13.5 billion years after its formation.

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Leaving gravity behind: Experiment from ISS reveals how particles alter turbulent flow behavior

After traveling hundreds of miles above Earth and spending months aboard the International Space Station, a University of Delaware experiment has returned to campus, bringing new data on how turbulence behaves in microgravity.

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The solar wind’s secret hammerheads and what they tell us about heat in space

The proton sharks showed up on a Friday. In a routine data calibration meeting for NASA’s Parker Solar Probe in 2020, a small group of scientists were scrolling through visualizations of their data showing solar winds. Suddenly, a weird shape flashed on the screen: Instead of the usual rounded blob of solar-wind protons, this distribution had a long, flattened, head-like structure jutting out to one side.

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Spin wave signals used in computing boosted more than 5,000 times in Z-shaped path approach

A research team from Tohoku University, Shin-Etsu Chemical Co., Ltd., and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) has invented a new way to efficiently guide spin waves around sharp corners with minimal loss—representing an exciting discovery for energy-efficient computing. Using a two-dimensional magnonic crystal—a copper (Cu) film with a hexagonal array of tiny holes placed on a magnetic garnet film—the team showed through calculations that spin waves travel along a Z-shaped path more than 5,000 times more efficiently than in conventional waveguides.

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Quantum vibronics research points to future energy and computing technologies

Scientists at the University of California, Riverside are making breakthroughs in understanding how quantum wave functions move across ultra-thin materials—research that could eventually improve solar energy technologies and help lay the groundwork for new forms of quantum computing.

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Taking dark energy out of the equation: Mathematicians challenge the standard cosmological model of the universe

Mathematicians are challenging the idea that dark energy is responsible for the accelerating expansion of the universe. In a new paper published in Proceedings of the Royal Society A, mathematicians from the University of California, Davis, provide mathematical proof that instabilities inherent in the Einstein-Euler equations imply that the current model of the expanding universe is not viable.

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BWC: Fla. deputy cites driver for holding cellphone in hand she didn’t have

The Palm Beach County deputy later requested dismissal of the distracted-driving citation after the woman’s social media post about the ticket drew widespread attention online

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Quantum pendulum clock overcomes classical accuracy limits and sheds light on quantum to classical transitions

In a grandfather clock, a pendulum swings back and forth and this periodic motion is maintained using the energy stored in its suspended weights. This is done with the help of the escapement mechanism, which converts the gravitational energy of the weights into impulses that drive the pendulum, which then moves the clock’s gears, which move its hands.

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Bare supercontinent may have tipped ancient Earth into ‘Snowball’ phase

About a billion years ago, Earth started to come into its own. It was past the awkwardness of its younger years full of growing pains and turmoil: comet strikes and slimy water, including the Great Oxidation Event that flipped the world upside down. Roughly a billion years ago, the planet began to advance and mature, with plant life developing about 700 million years ago, but still with the occasional wild climate parties to keep things interesting.

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Cobalt honeycombs open a new path to quantum computing

Honeycombs are famous for their elegant design, but now they may have found a new application: quantum computing. To collect knowledge from subatomic particles, quantum computers require carefully designed materials capable of performing necessary, complex functions. However, the metals used, such as ruthenium and iridium, are often rare and expensive, limiting the potential to build new technology.

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BWC: Man in front seat of cruiser points gun at Calif. officers before fatal OIS

A Mt. Shasta PD officer was assisting a Weed PD officer with a drug search; when they went to confront a traffic stop suspect in the cruiser’s passenger seat, he pointed a gun at them

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Chang’e-5 regolith studies reveal nanoscale space-weathering processes

On the moon, the lack of atmosphere and accompanying features such as biological activity, oxygen-rich air, flowing water and rain, wind, and most erosion allows the lunar regolith to preserve a long-term record of surface processes in the space environment.

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