Researchers from LMU and Saarland University have entangled two quantum memories over a 33-kilometer-long fiber optic connection – a record and an important step toward the quantum internet.

A network in which data transmission is perfectly secure against hacking? If physicists have their way, this will one day become a reality with the help of the quantum mechanical phenomenon known as entanglement. For entangled particles, the rule is: If you measure the state of one of the particles, then you automatically know the state of the other. It makes no difference how far away the entangled particles are from each other. This is an ideal state of affairs for transmitting information over long distances in a way that renders eavesdropping impossible.

A team led by physic...

Lightweight and flexible perovskites are highly promising materials for the fabrication of photovoltaics. So far, however, their highest reported efficiencies have been around 20%, which is considerably lower than those of rigid perovskites (25.7%).

Researchers at Nanjing University, Jilin University, Shanghai Tech University, and East China Normal University have recently introduced a new strategy to develop more efficient solar cells based on flexible perovskites. This strategy, introduced in a paper published in Nature Energy, entails the use of two hole-selective molecules based on carbazole cores and phosphonic acid anchoring groups to bridge the perovskite with a low temperature-processed NiO nanocrystal film.

“We believe that lightweight flexible perovskite solar cells ar...

The mystery of how the first quasars in the universe formed—something that has baffled scientists for nearly 20 years—has now been solved by a team of astrophysicists whose findings are published in Nature.

The existence of more than 200 quasars powered by supermassive black holes less than a billion years after the Big Bang had remained one of the outstanding problems in astrophysics because it was never fully understood how they formed so early.

The team of experts led by Dr. Daniel Whalen from the University of Portsmouth have found that the first quasars naturally formed in the violent, turbulent conditions of rare reservoirs of gas in the early universe.

Dr...

Biologists have used population genomics to shed light on the evolution and consequences of a selfish genetic element known as Segregation Distorter (SD). The researchers report that SD has caused dramatic changes in chromosome organization and genetic diversity.

The human genome is littered with “selfish genetic elements,” which do not seem to benefit their hosts, but instead seek only to propagate themselves...