Category Physics

Harnessing Molecular Power: Electricity Generation on the Nanoscale

There is power in numbers when generating electricity from the movement of molecules. Researchers tested a molecular energy harvesting device that captures the energy from the natural motion of molecules in a liquid. Their work showed molecular motion can be used to generate a stable electric current. To create the device, they submerged nanoarrays of piezoelectric material in liquid, allowing the movement of the liquid to move the strands like seaweed waving in the ocean, except in this case the movement is on the molecular scale, and the strands are made of zinc oxide. When the zinc oxide material waves, bends, or deforms under motion, it generates electric potential.

Wave energy technology is a proven source of power generation, but there is power inherent in every molecule of l...

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Scientists begin Building AI for Scientific Discovery using Tech behind ChatGPT

particle graphic
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

An international team of scientists, including from the University of Cambridge, have launched a new research collaboration that will leverage the same technology behind ChatGPT to build an AI-powered tool for scientific discovery.

While ChatGPT deals in words and sentences, the team’s AI will learn from numerical data and physics simulations from across scientific fields to aid scientists in modeling everything from supergiant stars to the Earth’s climate.

The team launched the initiative, called Polymathic AI earlier this week, alongside the publication of a series of related papers on the arXiv open access repository.

“This will completely change how people use AI and machine learning in science,” said Polymathic AI principal investigator S...

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Simulations of ‘Backwards Time Travel’ can Improve Scientific Experiments

Digital generated image of abstract glowing tech data tunnel
Digital generated image of abstract glowing tech data tunnel
Credit: Yaroslav Kushta via Getty Images

Physicists have shown that simulating models of hypothetical time travel can solve experimental problems that appear impossible to solve using standard physics.

If gamblers, investors and quantum experimentalists could bend the arrow of time, their advantage would be significantly higher, leading to significantly better outcomes.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have shown that by manipulating entanglement — a feature of quantum theory that causes particles to be intrinsically linked — they can simulate what could happen if one could travel backwards in time...

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Toward Metropolitan Free-Space Quantum Networks

Towards metropolitan free-space quantum networks
Metropolitan entanglement-based free-space network. a) A standardized centrally located entanglement server (ES, black box) is streaming entangled photons into the network. Free-space channels are used to connect distant buildings and parts of a metropolitan area, while fiber connections may still be used in a complementary way, for example, to connect to offices within the central building. Each end user owns an application-specific quantum receiver subsystem (green boxes). b) The corresponding physical layer network topology. At the quantum communication layer, the network is a pairwise connected mesh, so that every end user can communicate with any other (not shown). c) A near-term extension possibility using several ESs and a central trusted node...
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