Science

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The Strange Structures of the Saturn Nebula

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The spectacular planetary nebula NGC 7009, or the Saturn Nebula, emerges from the darkness like a series of oddly-shaped bubbles, lit up in glorious pinks and blues. This colourful image was captured by the powerful MUSE instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), as part of a study which mapped the dust inside a planetary nebula for the first time. The map — which reveals a wealth of intricate structures in the dust, including shells, a halo and a curious wave-like feature — will help astronomers understand how planetary nebulae develop their strange shapes and symmetries.

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Ageing Star Blows Off Smoky Bubble

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Astronomers have used ALMA to capture a strikingly beautiful view of a delicate bubble of expelled material around the exotic red star U Antliae. These observations will help astronomers to better understand how stars evolve during the later stages of their life-cycles.

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Hydrogen power moves a step closer: Physicists are developing methods of creating renewable fuel from water using quantum technology

Renewable hydrogen can already be produced by photoelectrolysis where solar power is used to split water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen.

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Fossil fuels accounted for almost 90 percent of energy consumption in 2015.

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New insights into nanocrystal growth in liquid: Understanding process that creates complex crystals important for energy applications

Many seashells, minerals, and semiconductor nanomaterials are made up of smaller crystals, which are assembled together like the pieces of a puzzle. Now, researchers have measured the forces that cause the crystals to assemble, revealing an orchestra of competing factors that researchers might be able to control.

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Mica the mineral flakes off in fine sheets.

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Inferno World with Titanium Skies

ESO’s VLT makes first detection of titanium oxide in an exoplanet

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After Cassini: Pondering the Saturn Mission's Legacy

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Cassini's discoveries are feeding forward into future exploration of the solar system.

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Fast magnetic writing of data

For almost seventy years now, magnetic tapes and hard disks have been used for data storage in computers. In spite of many new technologies that have been developed in the meantime, the controlled magnetization of a data storage medium remains the first choice for archiving information because of its longevity and low price. As a means of realizing random access memories (RAMs), however, which are used as the main memory for processing data in computers, magnetic storage technologies were long considered inadequate. That is mainly due to its low writing speed and relatively high energy consumption.

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In 1956, IBM introduced the first magnetic hard disc, the RAMAC. ETH researchers have now tested a novel magnetic writing technology that could soon be used in the main memories of modern computers.

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High-speed quantum memory for photons

Physicists from the University of Basel have developed a memory that can store photons. These quantum particles travel at the speed of light and are thus suitable for high-speed data transfer. The researchers were able to store them in an atomic vapor and read them out again later without altering their quantum mechanical properties too much. This memory technology is simple and fast and it could find application in a future quantum Internet.

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Single photons transmit quantum information between the network nodes, where they are stored in an atomic gas.

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Bit data goes anti-skyrmions

Today's world, rapidly changing because of "big data", is encapsulated in trillions of tiny magnetic objects - magnetic bits - each of which stores one bit of data in magnetic disk drives. A group of scientists from the Max Planck Institutes in Halle and Dresden have discovered a new kind of magnetic nano-object in a novel material that could serve as a magnetic bit with cloaking properties to make a magnetic disk drive with no moving parts - a Racetrack Memory - a reality in the near future.

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These are anti-skyrmions on a racetrack.

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A revolution in lithium-ion batteries is becoming more realistic

The modern world relies on portable electronic devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, cameras or camcorders. Many of these devices are powered by lithium-ion batteries, which could be smaller, lighter, safer and more efficient if the liquid electrolytes they contain were replaced by solids.

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Lithium amide-borohydride is a promising candidate for a solid electrolyte. The crystalline structure of this material consists of two sub-lattices, shown in different colors. Under appropriate conditions, lithium ions (red), normally found in the elementary cells of only one sub-lattice (yellow), move to the empty cells of the second sub-lattice (blue) where they can freely propagate.