Lifeboat Foundation

An international research team led by the Department of Microstructured Quantum Matter at the MPSD reports the first observation of switchable chiral transport in a structurally achiral crystal, the Kagome superconductor CsV₃Sb₅. Their work has been published in Nature.

Whether or not an object is indistinguishable from its mirror image has important consequences for its physical behavior. Say you watch a basketball player in a mirror. The ball, the player and their surroundings are, at first glance, just the same in the mirror as in real life. But if observed closely, some details are different. The ball in the player’s right hand now appears in their left hand in the mirror. While the mirror image still shows the same hand, it has clearly changed from a left to a right hand or vice versa. Many other physical objects also have mirror images that differ in a key aspect, just like hands, which is why scientists call them handed or chiral (from Greek χϵρι = hand). Others, like the ball, cannot be distinguished from their mirror image, which makes them achiral.

Chirality is one of the most fundamental geometric properties and plays a special role in biology, chemistry and physics. It can cause surprising effects: One version of the carvone molecule, for example, produces a spearmint smell but its chiral—mirrored—equivalent smells of caraway.

Scientists have successfully increased the lifespan of animals and there are first studies which describe how we might reverse aging. So how could we one day rever aging?

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From raspberry notes to rum and nail polish ones. Some call it a ‘space party,’ while others say ‘it stinks.’

Doctoral researcher in Astrobiology and professional perfumer, Marina Barcenilla, creates the scents of space based on astrochemistry and reports by astronauts.

Interesting Engineering (IE) report on the range of smells available including which represent the entire journey around Earth’s orbit to the center of the Milky Way. By tapping into the intimate relationship between olfaction (the sense of smell) and memory, the project aims to break communication barriers between science and the public.

Continue reading “What does space smell like? Expert recreates 4 aromas from astronaut accounts” »

The star exploded in an epic supernova, and its debris still shapes the chemical makeup of a distant quasar, a new study reports.

Researchers have developed an automatic drawing machine that uses pens and pencils to draw metamaterials onto paper. They demonstrated the new approach by using it to make three metamaterials that can be used to manipulate the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Metamaterials are artificially engineered composite materials that derive their properties from patterned microstructures, rather than the chemical composition of the materials themselves. The exact shape, geometry, size, orientation and arrangement of the structures can be used to manipulate electromagnetic waves in ways that aren’t possible with conventional materials.

“Metamaterials, especially those used as absorbers, generally need to be thin, lightweight, wide and strong, but it isn’t easy to create thin and lightweight devices using traditional substrates,” said research team leader Junming Zhao from Nanjing University in China. “Using paper as the substrate can help meet these requirements while also lending itself to metasurfaces that conform to a surface or that are mechanically reconfigurable.”

The University of Alicante Quantum Chemistry group has predicted and published the existence of a new natural phenomenon in matter-radiation interaction, which has recently been experimentally confirmed. This finding is the subject of the review that the group’s researcher Juan Carlos Sancho García has submitted to the journal Nature, having been invited to publish in its “News & Views” section.

According to Sancho, his contribution is a successful example of how theory and simulation make it possible to advance and predict phenomena that are later confirmed by experiments, with the corresponding possible impact on the technological advances that populate society and the world today. In particular, the review reports the empirical confirmation of a prediction previously made and published by the UA team using quantum mechanics calculations. This is based on the effect of the “electronic correlation” that occurs strongly in this type of molecules studied, by which it is possible to take advantage of 100% of the energy that is emitted in the form of visible light on any screen.

The researcher explains that each of the pixels of a screen that makes up any device such as mobile phones, tablets, etc. is made up of molecules that emit the three basic colors (red, green, and blue). The battery activates these molecules to emit light (electroluminescence) so that they first reach their maximum level of “excitation” and then decay, and it is this loss of energy that results in the emission of color.

A series of buzzing, bee-like “loop-currents” could explain a recently discovered, never-before-seen phenomenon in a type of quantum material. The findings from researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder may one day help engineers to develop new kinds of devices, such as quantum sensors or the quantum equivalent of computer memory storage devices.

The quantum material in question is known by the chemical formula Mn₃Si₂Te₆. But you could also call it “honeycomb” because its manganese and tellurium atoms form a network of interlocking octahedra that look like the cells in a beehive.

Physicist Gang Cao and his colleagues at CU Boulder synthesized this molecular beehive in their lab in 2020, and they were in for a surprise: Under most circumstances, the material behaved a lot like an insulator. In other words, it didn’t allow electric currents to pass through it easily. When they exposed the honeycomb to magnetic fields in a certain way, however, it suddenly became millions of times less resistant to currents. It was almost as if the material had morphed from rubber into metal.

Water Droplets Hold the Secret Ingredient for Building Life. Chemists uncover key to early Earth chemistry, which could unlock paths to speed up chemical synthesis for…

face_with_colon_three circa 2021.

Think about where our energy comes from: drilling rigs and smokestacks, windmills and solar panels. Lithium-ion battery packs might even come to mind.

We probably don’t think about the farms that comprise over one-third of Earth’s total land area. But farms can also be an energy source. Barcelona-based battery company Bioo is generating electricity from the organic matter in soil and creating biological batteries that can power agricultural sensors, a growing 1.36 billion dollar global market.

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