Illustration of Kerr effect used to detect magnetization through the rotation of polarized light when it interacts with electron spins in a material. Shown are layers of chromium germanium telluride (CGT). The orange balls represent tellurium atoms, yellow is germanium, and blue is chromium. Credit: Zhenglu Li/Berkeley Lab

Study reveals unprecedented control of ferromagnetic behavior in 2D material. The scientists found that a 2D van der Waals crystal, part of a class of material whose atomically thin layers can be peeled off one by one with adhesive tape, possessed an intrinsic ferromagnetism.The discovery could have major implications for a wide range of applications that rely upon ferromagnetic materials, such as nanoscale memory, spintronic devices, and magnetic sensors...

UCI physicist Jing Xia (right, with graduate student Alex Stern) calls the fiber-optic Sagnac interferometer he built the most sensitive magnetic microscope in the world. He compares it to a telescope that an ornithologist in Irvine could use to inspect the eye of a bird in New York. Credit: Steve Zylius / UCI

New 2D quantum materials have been created with breakthrough electrical and magnetic attributes that could make them building blocks of future quantum computers and other advanced electronics. The research is conducted at extremely cold temperatures and that the signal carriers in all 3 studies are not electrons – as with silicon-based technologies – but Dirac or Majorana fermions, particles without mass that move at nearly the speed of light...

This unprocessed image of Saturn’s moon Titan was captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during its final close flyby of the hazy, planet-sized moon on April 21, 2017. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has had its last close brush with Saturn’s hazy moon Titan and is now beginning its final set of 22 orbits around the ringed planet. The spacecraft made its 127th and final close approach to Titan on April 21 at 11:08 p.m. PDT (2:08 a.m. EDT on April 22), passing at an altitude of about 608 miles above the moon’s surface. Cassini transmitted its images and other data to Earth following the encounter...

The map of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky produced by the Planck satellite. Red represents slightly warmer regions, and blue slightly cooler regions. The Cold Spot is shown in the inset, with coordinates on the x- and y-axes, and the temperature difference in millionths of a degree in the scale at the bottom. Credit: ESA and Durham University. Click for a full size image

A supervoid is unlikely to explain a ‘Cold Spot’ in the cosmic microwave background, according to the results of a new survey, leaving room for exotic explanations like a collision between universes. The cosmic microwave background (CMB), a relic of the Big Bang, covers the whole sky. At 2.73 degrees above 0K, the CMB has some anomalies, including the Cold Spot. This feature, about 0...