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A depiction of the global order of magnetic charge ice. Orange-red areas represent the positive charges; blue areas represent negative charges. Credit: Yong-Lei Wang and Zhili Xiao

A team has created a new material, called “rewritable magnetic charge ice,” that permits an unprecedented degree of control over local magnetic fields and could pave the way for new computing technologies. With potential applications involving data storage, memory and logic devices, magnetic charge ice could someday lead to smaller and more powerful computers or even play a role in quantum computing.

Current magnetic storage and recording devices, such as computer hard disks, contain nanomagnets with 2 polarities, each of which is used to represent either 0 or 1, binary digits...

What is the origin of gold, silver, platinum? Credit: © alexphoto71 / Fotolia

The origin of many of the most precious elements on the periodic table, such as gold, silver and platinum, has perplexed scientists for >6 decades. Now a recent study has an answer, evocatively conveyed in the faint starlight from a distant dwarf galaxy. In a roundtable discussion The Kavli Foundation spoke to 2 of the researchers behind the discovery about why the source of these heavy elements, collectively called “r-process” elements, has been so hard to crack.

“Understanding how heavy, r-process elements are formed is one of hardest problems in nuclear physics,” said Assistant/Prof Anna Frebel, MIT...

A cloud of cold atoms is illuminated with red signal light and blue coupling light. The light pulses are superimposed on dichroic mirrors (DM). With wave plates (WP), a polarizing beam splitter (PBS), and avalanche photodiodes (APD) the polarization of the transmitted signal light is determined. Credit: MPQ, Quantum Dynamics Division

MPQ scientists take an important step towards a logical quantum gate for photons. Commonly, a typical quantum computer is considered to be based on a network of quantum particles that serve for storing, encoding and processing quantum information. In analogy to the case of a classical computer a quantum logic gate that assigns output signals to input signals in a deterministic way would be an essential building block...

The device was attached to a remote-controlled small rover. The researchers first tested the claw on beach sand, where it performed well. They then used the claw on sand that simulates Martian soil in density and humidity (or lack thereof). The device was able to scoop up sand efficiently. Credit: Jacobs School of Engineering/UC San Diego

The sea urchin’s intricate mouth and teeth are the model for a claw-like device developed by a team of engineers and marine biologists at the University of California, San Diego to sample sediments on other planets, such as Mars...