Category Physics

When lightning strikes, the electrons come pouring down. In a new study, researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, led by an undergraduate student, have discovered a novel connection between weather on Earth and space weather. The team utilized satellite data to reveal that lightning storms on our planet can dislodge particularly high-energy, or “extra-hot,” electrons from the inner radiation belt—a region of space enveloped by charged particles that surround Earth like an inner tube.

The team’s results could help satellites and even astronauts avoid dangerous radiation in space. This is one kind of downpour you don’t want to get caught in, said lead author and undergraduate Max Feinland.

“These particles are the scary ones or what some people call ‘killer electrons,'...

In recent years, roboticists have developed a wide range of systems designed to tackle various real-world tasks, ranging from completing household chores to delivering packages or finding target objects in delineated environments.

A key objective in the field has been to develop algorithms that allow the reliable transfer of specific skills across robots with different bodies and characteristics, which would help to rapidly train robots on new tasks, broadening their capabilities.

Researchers at UC Berkeley have developed RoVi-Aug, a new computational framework designed to augment robotic data and facilitate the transfer of skills across different robots...

A pioneering technique shows how sound can be used to create entire objects quickly and at once. Researchers at Concordia have developed a novel method of 3D printing that uses acoustic holograms. And they say it’s quicker than existing methods and capable of making more complex objects.

The process, called holographic direct sound printing (HDSP), is described in a recent article in the journal Nature Communications. It builds on a method introduced in 2022 that described how sonochemical reactions in microscopic cavitations regions — tiny bubbles — create extremely high temperatures and pressure for trillionths of a second to harden resin into complex patterns.

Now, by embe...

Increasingly complex applications such as artificial intelligence require ever more powerful and power-hungry computers to run. Optical computing is a proposed solution to increase speed and power efficiency but has yet to be realized due to constraints and drawbacks. A new design architecture, called diffraction casting, seeks to address these shortcomings. It introduces some concepts to the field of optical computing that might make it more appealing for implementation in next-generation computing devices.

Whether it’s the smartphone in y...