Category Physics

New research conducted by scientists at Caltech and Northwestern University shows that thin films of rust – iron oxide – can generate electricity when saltwater flows over them. These films represent an entirely new way of generating electricity and could be used to develop new forms of sustainable power production.

Interactions between metal compounds and saltwater often generate electricity, but this is usually the result of a chemical reaction in which one or more compounds are converted to new compounds. Reactions like these are what is at work inside batteries.

In contrast, the phenomenon discovered by Tom Miller, Caltech professor of chemistry, and Franz Geiger, Dow Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern, does not...

A research team lead by Osaka University demonstrated how information encoded in the circular polarization of a laser beam can be translated into the spin state of an electron in a quantum dot, each being a quantum bit and a quantum computer candidate. The achievement represents a major step towards a “quantum internet,” in which future computers can rapidly and securely send and receive quantum information.

Quantum computers have the potential to vastly outperform current systems because they work in a fundamentally different way...

Researchers are using liquid-metal particles to print electronic lines and traces on rose petals, leaves, paper, gelatin – on all kinds of materials. The technology creates flexible electronics that could have many applications such as monitoring crops, tracking a building’s structural integrity or collecting biological data.

Martin Thuo of Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory clicked through the photo gallery for one of his research projects. How about this one? There was a rose with metal traces printed on a delicate petal.
Or this? A curled sheet of paper with a flexib...

Researchers turned to biology to help in the design of next-generation computers. Moore’s law – which says the number of components that could be etched onto the surface of silicon wafer would double every two years – has been the subject of recent debate. The quicker pace of computing advancements in the past decade have led some experts to say Moore’s law, the brainchild of Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in the 1960s, no longer applies...