Scientists have used cutting-edge research in quantum computation and quantum technology to pioneer a radical new approach to determining how our Universe works at its most fundamental level.
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The new method works without extremely high temperatures, is therefore more energy-efficient and has a significantly higher recovery rate (approx. 96 per cent of the starting material) than established processes. These findings will be published on 17 February 2021 in the scientific journal
Nature.
Mechanical recycling vs. chemical recycling The direct re-utilization of plastics is often hampered by the fact that, in practice, mechanical recycling only functions to a limited degree - because the plastics are contaminated and mixed with additives, which impairs the properties of the recycled materials , Stefan Mecking explains. Chemical recycling is an alternative: Via a chemical process, used plastic is broken down into its molecular building blocks, which can then be converted into new plastic.
Credit: Osaka University
Osaka, Japan - All chemistry students are taught about the periodic table, an organization of the elements that helps you identify and predict trends in their properties. For example, science fiction writers sometimes describe life based on the element silicon because it is in the same column in the periodic table as carbon.
However, there are deviations from expected periodic trends. For example, lead and tin are in the same column in the periodic table and thus should have similar properties. However, whilst lead-acid batteries are common in cars, tin-acid batteries don t work. Nowadays we know that this is because most of the energy in lead-acid batteries is attributable to relativistic chemistry but such chemistry was unknown to the researchers who originally proposed the periodic table.
Credit: Microwave Nano-Electronics Lab, UC Riverside.
RIVERSIDE, Calif. Materials having excess electrons are typically conductors. However, moiré patterns interference patterns that typically arise when one object with a repetitive pattern is placed over another with a similar pattern can suppress electrical conductivity, a study led by physicists at the University of California, Riverside, has found.
In the lab, the researchers overlaid a single monolayer of tungsten disulfide (WS
2) on a single monolayer of tungsten diselenide (WSe
2) and aligned the two layers against each other to generate large-scale moiré patterns. The atoms in both the WS
2 and WSe
Credit: Steven Burrows
For nearly a century, scientists have worked to unravel the mystery of dark matter an elusive substance that spreads through the universe and likely makes up much of its mass, but has so far proven impossible to detect in experiments. Now, a team of researchers have used an innovative technique called quantum squeezing to dramatically speed up the search for one candidate for dark matter in the lab.
The findings, published today in the journal
Nature, center on an incredibly lightweight and as-of-yet undiscovered particle called the axion. According to theory, axions are likely billions to trillions of times smaller than electrons and may have been created during the Big Bang in humungous numbers enough to potentially explain the existence of dark matter.