Nanotechnology

Satellite data reveals anomalies up to 19 days before the 2023 earthquake in Turkey

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The intensity map and geographical location of the 2023 Turkey earthquake. A black star indicates the epicenter of the earthquake (https://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes). Credit: Journal for Applied Geodesy (2024). DOI: 10.1515/jag-2024-0024 Earthquakes may reveal their impending presence much earlier than previously thought due to a variety of anomalies in the ground, atmosphere and ionosphere that can be … Read more

Scientists adapt the astronomy method to blur microscopy images

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Detecting anomalous wavefronts in fluorescence microscopy. Credit: Optics (2024). DOI: 10.1364/OPTICA.518559 A team led by researchers at HHMI’s Janelia Research Campus has adapted a class of techniques used in astronomy to defocus images of distant galaxies for use in the life sciences, giving biologists a faster and cheaper way to get clearer and sharper images. … Read more

A mountainous mystery discovered in the pink sands of South Australia

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Garnet washed up as pink sand on a beach in the Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park. Credit: University of Adelaide Deposits of deep pink sand washing up on the coast of South Australia shed new light on when the Australian tectonic plate began to subduct beneath the Pacific plate, as well as on the presence of … Read more

According to recent geochemical discoveries, Earth’s ‘Great Oxidation Event’ occurred over a period of 200 million years

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Credit: CC0 Public domain About 2.5 billion years ago, free oxygen, or O2first began accumulating to meaningful levels in Earth’s atmosphere, paving the way for the emergence of complex life on our evolving planet. Scientists call this phenomenon the Great Oxidation Event, or GOE for short. But the initial accumulation of O2 on Earth was … Read more

Millions of insects migrate through the 30 meter high Pyrenees Pass

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Marmalade hoverfly. Credit: Will Hawkes More than 17 million insects migrate every year through a single mountain pass on the border between France and Spain, new research shows. Scientists from the University of Exeter have studied migrating insects in the Pass of Bujaruelo, a 30-metre gap between two high peaks in the Pyrenees. Their article, … Read more

Scientists are discovering more Milky Way-like galaxies in the early universe, expanding our understanding of how galaxies formed

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Some of the spiral galaxies studied by the researchers in the study. Credit: Vicki Kuhn Scientists at the University of Missouri are peering into the past and discovering new clues about the early universe. Because light takes a long time to travel through space, they can now see what galaxies looked like billions of years … Read more

Scientists create and test an efficient water-splitting catalyst predicted by theory

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This diagram shows how a catalyst consisting of a few layers of iridium oxide (IrOX) over a titanium nitride (TiN) carrier can efficiently store oxygen (O2), hydrogen ions (H+), and electrons (e.g–) from water molecules (H2O) in an acidic electrolyte. This ‘oxygen evolution reaction’ is the more challenging of the two reactions required to split … Read more

A chain of copper and carbon atoms can be the thinnest metal wire

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Credit: ACS Nano (2024). DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.3c12802 Researchers from EPFL’s Laboratory for Theory and Simulation of Materials in Lausanne, part of the NCCR MARVEL, have used computational methods to identify what could be the thinnest possible metal wire, as well as several other one-dimensional materials with properties that could be of interest to many applications. One-dimensional … Read more

New technology could help build quantum computers of the future

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An artist’s rendering of a new method to create high-quality color centers (qubits) in silicon at specific locations using ultrafast laser pulses (femtosecond, or one quadrillionth of a second). The top right inset shows an experimentally observed optical signal (photoluminescence) from the qubits, with their structures shown at the bottom. Credit: Kaushalya Jhuria/Berkeley Lab Quantum … Read more

Lone star status: tracking a low-mass star as it sweeps through the Milky Way

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A simulation of a possible explanation for the speed of an L subdwarf named CWISE J124909+362116.0 shows that it is part of a binary pair of white dwarfs that ended when the white dwarf exploded in a supernova. Credit: Adam Makarenko / WM Keck Observatory It may seem as if the Sun is standing still … Read more