Solar prominences are large magnetic structures confining a cool and dense plasma in the hot solar corona. Typically, the prominence plasma is 100 times cooler and denser than its coronal surroundings. This phenomenon raises some important questions about the origin of the prominence plasma, and the energy and force equilibria which allow it to remain in the corona for a relatively long time.

The prominence contains many fine structures, including prominence bubble and dark upflow plumes. However, the nature of prominence bubbles remains controversial and the detailed formation mechanism of dark upflow plumes is not clear.

A research team led by Dr. Wang Jincheng, Prof...

People who consume sugar and other carbohydrates in excess over a long period of time have an increased risk of developing an autoimmune disease. In affected patients, the immune system attacks the body’s own tissue and the consequences are, for example, chronic inflammatory bowel diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, type 1 diabetes and chronic inflammation of the thyroid gland.

New targets for therapy

The underlying molecular mechanisms that promote autoimmune diseases are multilayered and complex...

A UNIGE team has succeeded in storing a quantum bit for 20 milliseconds. A duration that had never before been achieved by a solid-state quantum memory.

Computers, smartphones, GPS: quantum physics has enabled many technological advances. It is now opening up new fields of research in cryptography (the art of coding messages) with the aim of developing ultrasecure telecommunications networks. There is one obstacle, however: after a few hundred kilometers within an optical fiber, the photons that carry the qubits or ‘quantum bits’ (the information) disappear...

Asteroids hold many clues about the formation and evolution of planets and their satellites. Understanding their history can, therefore, reveal much about our solar system. While observations made from a distance using electromagnetic waves and telescopes are useful, analyzing samples retrieved from asteroids can yield much more detail about their characteristics and how they may have formed. An endeavor in this direction was the Hayabusa mission, which, in 2010, returned to Earth after 7 years with samples from the asteroid Itokawa.

The successor to this mission, called Hayabusa2, was completed near the end of 2020, bringing back material from Asteroid 162173 “Ryugu,” along with a collection of images and data gathered remotely from close proximity...