Hugo Dil and Juraj Krempasky with the experimental set-up at the Paul Scherrer Institut. Credit: Hugo Dil/EPFL

Physicists have found a way to reverse electron spins using electric fields for the first time, paving the way for programmable spintronics technologies. Spintronics is a field of physics that studies the spin of electrons, an intrinsic type of magnetism that many elementary particles have. The field of spintronics has given rise to technological concepts of “spintronic devices,” which would run on electron spins, rather than their charge, used by traditional electronics.

In order to build programmable spintronic devices we first need to be able to manipulate spins in certain materials...



An isolated hill in the Medusae Fossae Formation. The effect of wind erosion on this hill is evident by its streamlined shape. Credit: High Resolution Stereo Camera/European Space Agency.

Explosive volcanic eruptions that shot jets of hot ash, rock and gas skyward are the likely source of a mysterious Martian rock formation, a new study finds. The new finding could add to scientists’ understanding of Mars’s interior and its past potential for habitability, according to the study’s authors.

The Medusae Fossae Formation is a massive, unusual deposit of soft rock near Mars’s equator, with undulating hills and abrupt mesas. Scientists first observed the Medusae Fossae with NASA’s Mariner spacecraft in the 1960s but were perplexed as to how it formed...

A magenta-stained cell shows how the molecule STING (green) is positioned next to the bacteria Listeria (blue) to start an immune response. Credit: Washington State University

Discovery opens door to efficient research model. Washington State University researchers have seen how both humans and fruit flies deploy a protein that plays a critical role in their immune responses to invading bacteria. The discovery gives scientists a model organism with which to explore ways to boost the human immune system and create infection-fighting medicines.

Naturally, there are enormous differences between humans and fruit flies, whose common ancestor goes back 800 million years...

For the first time, the quantum state of a superconducting qubit was transferred with a coaxial cable to another qubit. Credit: Copyright ETH Zurich /M. Pechal, T. Walter, P. Kurpiers

In the new quantum information technologies, fragile quantum states have to be transferred between distant quantum bits. Researchers have now realized such a quantum transmission between two solid-state qubits at the push of a button. At the ETH in Zurich, a team of physicists led by Andreas Wallraff of the Laboratory for Solid State Physics has now succeeded in transmitting quantum information, at the push of button and with high fidelity, between two quantum bits roughly a metre apart.

The main peculiarity of quantum information technologies, such as quantum computers and quantum cryptography, is the use of...