Category Technology/Electronics

HZDR team proposes improvements for an experiment designed to explore the limits of physics. Absolutely empty – that is how most of us envision the vacuum. Yet, in reality, it is filled with an energetic flickering: the quantum fluctuations. Experts are currently preparing a laser experiment intended to verify these vacuum fluctuations in a novel way, which could potentially provide clues to new laws in physics...

A floating, solar-powered device that can turn contaminated water or seawater into clean hydrogen fuel and purified water, anywhere in the world, has been developed by researchers.

The device, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, could be useful in resource-limited or offgrid environments, since it works with any open water source and does not require any outside power.

It takes its inspiration from photosynthesis, the process by which plants convert sunlight into food. However, unlike earlier versions of the ‘artificial leaf’, which could produce green hydrogen fuel from clean water sources, this new device operates from polluted or seawater sources and can produce clean drinking water at the same time.

Tests of the device showed it was able to produce cl...

From Wi-Fi-connected home security systems to smart toilets, the so-called Internet of Things brings personalization and convenience to devices that help run homes. But with that comes tangled electrical cords or batteries that need to be replaced. Now, researchers reporting in ACS Applied Energy Materials have brought solar panel technology indoors to power smart devices. They show which photovoltaic (PV) systems work best under cool white LEDs, a common type of indoor lighting.

Indoor lighting differs from sunlight. Light bulbs are dimmer than the sun. Sunlight includes ultraviolet, infrared and visible light, whereas indoor lights typically shine light from a narrower region of the spectrum...

Quantum physicists show that imperfect timekeeping places a fundamental limit to quantum computers and their applications. The team claims that even tiny timing errors add up to place a significant impact on any large-scale algorithm, posing another problem that must eventually be solved if quantum computers are to fulfill the lofty aspirations that society has for them.

New research from a consortium of quantum physicists, led by Trinity College Dublin’s Dr Mark Mitchison, shows that imperfect timekeeping places a fundamental limit to quantum computers and their applications...