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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission explains Asteroid Bennu’s mysterious particle events

This view of asteroid Bennu ejecting particles from its surface on January 6 was created by combining two images taken by the NavCam 1 imager onboard NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft: a short exposure image (1.4 ms), which shows the asteroid clearly, and a long exposure image (5 sec), which shows the particles clearly. Other image processing techniques were also applied, such as cropping and adjusting the brightness and contrast of each layer.
Credits: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin

Shortly after NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at asteroid Bennu, an unexpected discovery by the mission’s science team revealed that the asteroid could be active, or consistently discharging particles into space...

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200 Times Faster than ever before: The Speediest Quantum Operation yet

 Two-qubit SWAP gate with truth table.

A group of scientists led by 2018 Australian of the Year Professor Michelle Simmons has achieved the first two-qubit gate between atom qubits in silicon – a major milestone on the team’s quest to build an atom-scale quantum computer. The pivotal piece of research was published today in the journal Nature.

A two-qubit gate is the central building block of any quantum computer – and the UNSW team’s version of it is the fastest that’s ever been demonstrated in silicon, completing an operation in 0.8 nanoseconds, which is ~200 times faster than other existing spin-based two-qubit gates.

In the Simmons’ group approach, a two-qubit gate is an operation between two electron spins – comparable to the role that classical logic gates play in con...

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Device Channels Heat into Light

A Rice University simulation shows an array of cavities patterned into a film of aligned carbon nanotubes. When optimized, the film absorbs thermal photons and emits light in a narrow bandwidth that can be recycled as electricity. (Credit: Chloe Doiron/Rice University)
A Rice University simulation shows an array of cavities patterned into a film of aligned carbon nanotubes. When optimized, the film absorbs thermal photons and emits light in a narrow bandwidth that can be recycled as electricity. Illustration by Chloe Doiron

Carbon nanotube films enable method to recycle waste heat. Engineers have shown how their carbon nanotube films can be used to create a device to recycle waste heat. The device could enhance solar cell output and increase the efficiency of industrial waste-heat recovery.

The ever-more-humble carbon nanotube may be just the device to make solar panels – and anything else that loses energy through heat – far more efficient.

Rice University scientists are designing arrays of aligned single-wall carbon nanotubes to channel mi...

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Moon-forming Disk discovered around Distant Planet

A color-enhanced image of millimeter-wave radio signals from the ALMA observatory in Chile shows a disk of gas and dust (right of center) around exoplanet PDS 70 c, the first-ever observation of the kind of circumplanetary disk that is believed to have birthed the moons of Jupiter more than 4 billion years ago. (Image courtesy of A. Isella, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO))

Astronomers report first observations of a ‘circumplanetary disk’. Using Earth’s most powerful array of radio telescopes, astronomers have made the first observations of a circumplanetary disk of gas and dust like the one that is believed to have birthed the moons of Jupiter.

The find, reported online today in Astrophysical Journal Letters, adds to the intriguing story of planet PDS 70 c, a still-forming gas giant about 37...

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