Physicists Made an Insanely Precise Clock That Keeps Time Using Entanglement

 Nothing keeps time just like the beating heart of an atom. But even the crisp tick-tock of a vibrating nucleus is restricted by uncertainties imposed by the laws of quantum physics.

Several years ago, researchers from MIT and therefore the University of Belgrade in Serbia proposed that quantum entanglement could push clocks beyond this blurry boundary.

Now, we've got a symptom of concept within the type of experiment. Physicists connected together with a cloud of ytterbium-171 atoms with streams of photons reflected from a surrounding hall of mirrors and measured the timing of their tiny wiggles.

Their results show that entangling atoms during this way could speed up the time-measuring process of atomic nuclei clocks, making them more precise than ever. in theory, a clock supported this new approach would lose just 100 milliseconds since the dawn of your time itself.

Similar to other cutting-edge clocks supported by the nuclei of atoms of cesium and thorium, a time during this reasonable setup is split by oscillations during a ytterbium nucleus after it absorbs particular energy of sunshine.

Since ytterbium's core is made to hum at a rate 100,000 times faster than the nucleus of a cesium atom, it makes for a much more precise time-keeping mechanism.

But there comes a degree when physical science says it's impossible to mention exactly where an atom's oscillations start and stop. This Standard Quantum Limit (SQL) acts sort of a blur on the atomic pendulum; you may have a faster ticking clock, but what good does it do if you cannot even measure it?

Without the simplest way to beat this obstacle, it doesn't really matter if we swap out one set of atomic nuclei for a more precise type – their quantum messiness sets a tough limit on the precision of atomic clocks.

One trick is to record the frequencies of multiple atoms humming all without delay within a lattice consisting of many tiny atomic pendulums. Current timepiece technologies use lasers engineered to be as stable as possible, providing each atom with a particularly similar frequency of sunshine. By combining their collective blur, individual uncertainties average out.

This new method goes a step further during this averaging process. By connecting atoms together in a way that entangles the quantum probabilities of their spins, it's possible to redistribute the uncertainty within the system, increasing the precision in some parts at the expense of others.

"It's just like the light is a communication link between atoms," says MIT physicist Chi Shu.

"The first atom that sees this light will modify the sunshine slightly, which light also modifies the second atom, and also the third atom, and thru many cycles, the atoms collectively know one another and begin behaving similarly."

No matter which method is employed, the longer you listen, the more precise the top result is. during this case, the team found entanglement made the measurement process roughly thrice faster compared with clocks working at the SQL.

That might not seem all that dramatic, but a speed boost can be just the thing we'd like to review a number of the more subtle influences the Universe has on time.

"As the Universe ages, does the speed of sunshine change? Does the charge of the electron change?" says lead researcher Vladan Vuletic from MIT.

"That's what you'll probe with more precise atomic clocks."

It could even allow us to seek out the purpose at which Einstein's theory of relativity falls apart, pointing to new physics that connects the defined curvature of space-time with the uncertain nature of quantum fields. Or allow us to higher measure the fine time-warping characteristics of matter.

Standing at the sting of a replacement age in physics and astronomy, we're really visiting need time on our side.

A Chinese Probe Just Brought Back The First New Samples From The Moon in Decades

 

An unmanned Chinese spacecraft carrying rocks and soil from the Moon returned safely to Earth early Thursday within the first mission in four decades to gather lunar samples, the Xinhua wire service said.

The return module of the guided-missile called Chang'e-5 landed in northern China's Inner Mongolia region, Xinhua said, quoting the China National Space Administration.

Beijing is looking to catch up with the US and Russia after taking decades to match its rivals' achievements and has poured billions into its military-run space program.

The spacecraft, named after a mythical Chinese Moon goddess, landed on the laze on December 1 and commenced its return voyage two days later. While on the Moon it raised the Chinese flag, China's space agency has said.

Scientists hope the samples will help them study the Moon's origins, formation, and volcanic activity on its surface.

With this mission, China became only the third country to own retrieved samples from the Moon, following us and therefore the land within the 1960s and 1970s.

This was the primary such attempt since the Soviet Union's Luna 24 mission in 1976.

The spacecraft's mission was to gather two kilograms (4.5 pounds) of fabric in a neighborhood referred to as Oceanus Procellarum – or "Ocean of Storms" – an enormous, previously unexplored lava plain, in line with the science journal Nature.

Under President Xi Jinping, plans for China's "space dream", as he calls it, are put into overdrive.

China hopes to possess a crewed space platform by 2022 and eventually send humans to the Moon.

Catastrophic Oil Spill From Abandoned Ship in The Red Sea Could Happen Any Second

If the coral refuge of the Red Sea can survive local pollution, scientists think these reefs may be the last ones standing on a rapidly warming planet. But that's a giant 'if'.

Right now, life during this region is moored to the fate of a 45-year-old tanker, gradually rusting away off the western coast of Yemen, with 1,000,000 barrels of oil in its hold.

Neglected by its owners for over five years, this massive old ship – the FSO Safer – represents serious danger, ironically enough.

Ever since war broke out on the mainland between Iran-allied Houthi rebels and Saudi-led forces, the state-owned Yemeni company has lost access to its ship, even for repairs, and rebel forces have to this point refused the international organisation an opportunity to intervene.

Under the established order, environmental experts warn it's just a matter of your time before all 34 of the Safer's storage tanks sink into the ocean, causing an oil spill fourfold the scale of the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.

"A 1-million-barrel leak guarantees a regional environmental and humanitarian disaster," a replacement study warns.

"Devastation to the health and livelihoods of immeasurable people living in half a dozen countries along the sea coast would be assured. The air they breathe, the food they harvest bewildered, and their water desalination are all at immediate risk."

According to the study, local currents will make sure the distribution of oil to coral reefs that cover nearly all 4,000 kilometres of the sea coastline.

The Gulf of Aqaba, which is tucked within the northernmost corner of the sea, is home to at least one of the foremost pristine reef ecosystems within the world, and its corals have proved remarkably proof against rising temperatures and ocean acidification. A spill of this magnitude might be its undoing.

Currents of the Red Sea. (Viviane Menezes/WHOI)

Having modelled the distribution of a 30-day Red Sea oil spill in both winter and summer conditions, researchers now warn that we are squandering precious time. The Safer is in its final stages of decay, they say, and that we are approaching the worst season for an oil spill. 

In May of this year, a breach of seawater within the hull of the Safer was temporarily patched. Shortly after, in September, officials in the Asian nation claimed to own found an "oil spot" near the vessel, which sits right within the Red Sea's shipping lane.

While these reports haven't been verified, if the ship continues to decay at such a rate into winter, it can be catastrophic.

"It is obvious from the analysis that in winter oil dispersion will extend further north and into the centre of the Red Sea as compared to a spill dispersing during summer," the authors write.

"Therefore, action should be taken before winter, as a winter spill ensures that the oil will spread further north and can [remain] trapped for extended within the Red Sea."

Corals in the Gulf of Aqaba in the Red Sea. (Maoz Fine)

The good news is that rebel forces have ultimately agreed to let the UN inspect and repair the tanker, in line with The big apple Times. The bad news is that this servicing has been delayed until January - if it occurs in the least.

The last time rebel forces agreed to let the UN service the tanker within the summer of 2019, they changed their minds the night before.

"The time is now to stop a possible devastation to the region's waters and therefore the livelihoods and health of countless people living in half a dozen countries along the Red Sea's coast," says coral researcher Karine Kleinhaus from Stony Brook University in the big apple.

"If a spill from the Safer is allowed to occur, the oil would spread via ocean currents to devastate a worldwide ocean resource, because the coral reefs of the northern Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba are projected to be among the last reef ecosystems within the world to survive the approaching decades."

Most of the time, oil spills come as a surprise - a minimum of to the extent that we do not know after they are visiting occur. But researchers say this is often the foremost advanced warning of a significant spill we've ever had, yet we're squandering the chance to prevent it.

Despite several reports of corroding pipes and leaks, the UN International Maritime Organization (IMO) still has no decisively assured route to repairing the ship or removing the oil, although the vessel is increasingly in danger of sinking.

Besides, repairs are probably not visiting cut it at now, although they might buy us precious time to dump the oil.

"Our last chance to pump off the oil within the vessel and stockpile oil booms regionally to contain an imminent spill is quickly disappearing," the authors warn.

Environmental experts have long described the Safer as a 'floating bomb', and as long as the oil itself has been left to rot, some diplomats think the rebels agree and are using it as a deterrent, "like having a nuclear weapon".

Rebel forces may also see it as leverage. With the correct price, UN officials may well be able to remedy matters, but who to pay and the way much continues to be under intense negotiation.

Some losses, after all, are priceless.

In July, a Yemeni environmental group estimated it'd take 30 years for the environment to recover if the Safer sank, and over 126,000 people during this nation alone could potentially lose their livelihoods from the following pollution.

If pollution clogs up the region's myriad desalination plants, it could deprive countless people of water. Many of these in Yemen are already facing starvation and poverty from the continued war.

"The UN, the IMO, and global oil extraction, refinement and shipping companies must act to protect the Red Sea and its critical marine resources by acting to stop this potentially massive and devastating spill," the authors conclude.

We know what we have to do, now we have to make it happen.

We Just Had The Only Total Solar Eclipse of 2020, And The Photos Are Amazing

Thousands of individuals turned their heads to the sky to look at an eclipse that lasted around two minutes on Monday as southern Chile and Argentina were plunged into darkness.

Heavy rain had threatened to stop star gazers in Chile from seeing the eclipse but at the last moment, the clouds parted merely enough for the phenomenon to be partially visible.

"It was beautiful, unique. the reality is that no-one held much hope of seeing it because of the weather and clouds, but it had been unique because it cleared up just in time. it had been a miracle," an emotional Matias Tordecilla, 18, told AFP within the town of Pucon on the shores of Lake Villarrica.

"It's something that you simply don't just see together {with your|along with your} eyes but also feel with your heart," added Tordecilla, who traveled 10 hours along with his family to work out the eclipse.

The eclipse seen in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 14 Dec 2020. (Muhammed Emin Canik/Anadolu Agency via AFP)

It was the second occultation for Chile within the last 18 months.

This one struck at 1:00 pm (1600 GMT) as thousands of tourists and residents gathered, hoping the clouds would disappear in time.

"It gave me goosebumps everywhere," said Pucon resident Cinthia Vega.

In Argentine Patagonia, several families and foreigners had founded camp between the towns of Villa El Chacon and Piedra del Aguila hoping to determine the eclipse.

The arm of a statue is seen as solar eclipse occurs in Santiago, Chile on 14 Dec 2020. (Cristobal Saavedra Vogel /Anadolu Agency via AFP)

While there was no rain there, strong winds had threatened to impact visibility.

Despite COVID-19 restrictions on movement, almost 300,000 tourists had arrived within the Araucania region around 800-kilometers (500 miles) south of the capital Santiago.

Dozens of amateur and professional scientists founded telescopes on the slopes of the Villarrica volcano - one among the foremost active in Chile - to look at the phenomenon when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth.

The total solar eclipse as seen from from Pucon, southern Chile, on 14 Dec 2020. (Martin Bernetti/AFP)

The eclipse was thanks to being visible along a 90-kilometer wide corridor from the coast in Chile across the Andes geological formation and into Argentina.

In July 2019, some 300,000 people clothed within the Atacama Desert in Chile's north, home to many observatories, to determine the previous eclipse.

Battle with evil force

Chilean authorities had been worried that the eclipse would attract large gatherings of individuals.

There are over 570,000 coronavirus cases amongst the 18 million population with almost 16,000 confirmed deaths.

Strict controls were announced for the areas where the full eclipse would be visible, with free movement banned both the day before and after.

This event was eagerly anticipated amongst Chile's Mapuche indigenous community, the most important such group within the country's south.

A Mapuche indigenous family watch the eclipse in Carahue in southern Chile. (Mario Quilodran/AFP)

"Today we were all hoping for a sunny day but nature gave us rain and at the identical time it's giving us something we want," Estela Nahuelpan, a frontrunner within the Mateo Nahuelpan community within the southern city of Carahue, told AFP.

"In Mapuche culture, the eclipse has different meanings: they discuss 'Lan Antu', just like the death of the Sun and also the conflict between the Moon and therefore the Sun," she said.

"It refers to the required balance that has got to exist in nature."

In another tradition, an eclipse signifies the temporary death of the Sun during a battle between the star and an evil force referred to as "Wekufu".

Indigenous people want to worship the Sun "like a God", astronomer Jose Maza told AFP last week.

According to indigenous expert Juan Nanculef, the people would light bonfires and launch "stones and arrows into the air" to assist the Sun in its battle against the Wekufu.

Nanculef actually performed a ritual because the eclipse began to ask nature to bring an end to the rains and make it visible.

"Previously it had been 100% effective," he said.

This time it seems to possess worked just to a tolerable degree to grant people a glimpse of the eclipse.

Japan Just Revealed The First Image of Ryugu's Asteroid Dust to The World

 

Black sandy dust found during a capsule delivered to Earth by a Japanese guided missile is from the distant asteroid Ryugu, scientists confirmed after opening it on Monday.

The discovery comes per week after the Hayabusa-2 probe dropped off its capsule, which entered the atmosphere in an exceeding streak of sunshine before landing within the desert then being transported to Japan.

The Japanese space agency (JAXA) released an image of a little deposit of sooty material inside the metal box - a primary glimpse at the results of an unprecedented six-year mission for the uncrewed probe.

(JAXA)

The dust was found within the capsule's outer shell, agency officials said, with more substantial samples expected to be found once they open the inner container, a fragile task.

"JAXA has confirmed that samples derived from the asteroid Ryugu are inside the sample container," the agency said.

"We were ready to confirm black, sand-like particles which are believed to be derived from the asteroid Ryugu."

The sample container inside the re-entry capsule was opened on December 14, and that we confirmed black grains thought to be from Ryugu were inside. this can be outside the most chambers, and sure particles attached to the sample catcher entrance. (English release available tomorrow) https://t.co/NAw1R1cjvy pic.twitter.com/5BfXxfH29h

— HAYABUSA2@JAXA (@haya2e_jaxa) December 14, 2020

Hayabusa-2 traveled about 300 million kilometers (200 million miles) from Earth to gather the samples, which scientists hope could help shed light on the origin of life and also the formation of the universe.

The probe collected both surface dust and pristine material from below the surface that was excited by firing an "impactor" into the asteroid.

"We will continue our work to open the sample-catcher within the sample container. Extraction of the sample and analysis of it'll be applied," JAXA said.

Hayabusa2 probe as it landed in Australia. (JAXA/Twitter)

Half of Hayabusa-2's samples are going to be shared between JAXA, US space agency NASA and other international organizations, and also the rest kept for future study as advances are made in analytic technology.

But work isn't over for the probe, which is able to now begin an extended mission targeting two new asteroids.

There's a Human-Made Barrier in Space, Surrounding The Entire Earth

 In 2017, NASA space probes detected a large, human-made 'barrier' surrounding Earth.

And tests have confirmed that it's actually having sway on space weather far beyond our planet's atmosphere.

That means we're not just changing Earth so severely, scientists are calling for an entirely new geological epoch to be named after us - our activities are changing space too.

But the great news is that unlike our influence on the world itself, that humungous bubble we created come in space is truly working in our favor.

Back in 2012, NASA launched two space probes to figure in tandem with one another as they whizzed through Earth's James Alfred Van Allen Belts at speeds of around 3,200 km/h (2,000 mph). 

Our planet is surrounded by two such radiation belts (and a short-lived third one) - the inner belt stretches from around 640 to 9,600 km (400 to six,000 miles) above Earth's surface, while the outer belt occupies an altitude of roughly 13,500 to 58,000 km (8,400 to 36,000 miles).

In 2017, the James Alfred Van Allen Probes detected something strange as they monitored the activity of charged particles caught within Earth's magnetic flux - these dangerous solar discharges were being kept cornered by some reasonably low-frequency barrier.

When researchers investigated, they found that this barrier had been actively pushing the Van Allen Belts faraway from Earth over the past few decades, and now the lower limits of the radiation streams are literally further faraway from us than they were within the 1960s.

So what's changed? 

A certain style of transmission called very low frequency (VLF) radio communications, became way more common now than within the 60s, and also the team at NASA confirmed that they'll influence how and where certain particles in space move about.

In other words, due to VLF, we now have anthropogenic (or human-made) space weather.

"A number of experiments and observations have found out that, under the proper conditions, radio communications signals within the VLF frequency range can, of course, affect the properties of the high-energy radiation environment around the Earth," said one amongst the team, Phil Erickson from the MIT Haystack Observatory in Massachusetts, back in 2017.

Most people won't have much to try and do with VLF signals in our daily life, but they are a mainstay in many engineering, scientific, and military operations.

With frequencies between 3 and 30 kilohertz, they're far too weak to hold audio transmissions, but they're perfect for broadcasting coded messages across long-distances or deep underwater.

One of the foremost common uses of VLF signals is to speak with deep-sea submarines, but because their large wavelengths can diffract around large obstacles like mountain ranges, they're also accustomed achieve transmissions across tricky terrain.

It was never the intention for VLF signals to travel anywhere aside from on Earth, but it seems they have been leaking into the space surrounding our planet, and have lingered long enough to make a large protective bubble.

When the James Alfred Van Allen Probes compared the situation of the VLF bubble to the bounds of Earth's radiation belts, they found what initially gave the impression of a remarkable coincidence - "The outward extent of the VLF bubble corresponds almost exactly to the inner fringe of the Van Allen radiation belts," said NASA.

But once they realized that VLF signals can actually influence the movement of the charged particles within these radiation belts, they realized that our unintentional human-made barrier has been progressively pushing them back.

One of the team, Dan Baker, from the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, stated this because of the "impenetrable barrier".

While our protective VLF bubble is maybe the simplest influence we humans have made on the space surrounding our planet, it's on no account the sole one - we've been making our mark on space since the 19th century, and particularly over the past 50 years, when nuclear explosions were all the fad.

"These explosions created artificial radiation belts near Earth that resulted in major damages to many satellites," the NASA team explained.

"Other anthropogenic impacts on the space environment include chemical release experiments, high-frequency wave heating of the ionosphere and therefore the interaction of VLF waves with the radiation belts."

Astronomer Carl Sagan once wanted to search out unequivocal indications of life on Earth from up in space - seems, there are a bunch of them if you recognize where to appear.

Astronomers Admit: We Were Wrong—100 Billion Habitable Earth-Like Planets In Our Galaxy Alone

 Estimates by astronomers indicate that there could be more than 100 BILLION Earth-like worlds in the Milky Way that could be home to life. Think that’s a big number? According to astronomers,  there are roughly 500 billion galaxies in the known universe, which means there are around 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (5×1022) habitable planets. That’s of course if there’s just ONE universe.

In fact, just inside our own Milky Way Galaxy experts now believe are some 400 BILLION STARS, but this number may seem small as some astrophysicists believe that stars in our galaxy could figure the TRILLION. This means that the Milky Way alone could be home to more than 100 BILLION planets.

However, since astronomers aren’t able to see our galaxy from the outside, they can’t really know for sure the number of planets the Milky Way is home to. They can only provide estimates.

To do this, experts calculate our galaxy’s mass and calculate how much of that mass is composed of stars. Based on these calculations scientists believe our galaxy is home to at least 400 billion stars, but as I mentioned above, this number could drastically rise.

There are some calculations that suggest that the Milky Way is home on an average between 800 billion and 3.2 trillion planets, but there are some experts who believe the number could be as high as eight trillion.

Furthermore, if we take a look at what NASA has to say, well find out how the space agency believes there are at least 1,500 planets located within 50 light-years from Earth. These conclusions are based on observations taken over a period of six years by the PLANET—Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork—collaboration, founded in 1995. The study concluded that there are way more Earth-sized planets than Jupiter-sized worlds.

Scientists Think They've Discovered a New Species of Beaked Whale

Scientists may have discovered a large-toothed mammal off the western coast of Mexico that they say looks and sounds unlike anything else on Earth.

Researchers collected environmental genetic samples of this strange creature that are still being analyzed, but the images and acoustic recordings have researchers "highly confident" it is a never-before-described species of toothed whale.

"We saw something new. Something that was not expected in this area, something that doesn't match, either visually or acoustically, anything that is known to exist," announced Jay Barlow, a marine mammal researcher who worked with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a non-profit, marine wildlife conservation organization, during the expedition.

"It just sends chills up and down my spine when I think that we might have accomplished what most people would say was truly impossible – finding a large mammal that exists on this earth that is totally unknown to science."

A snapshot of the possibly new species. (Simon Ager/Sea Shepherd)

It all started in 2018 when a strange sound was picked up in the waters around Mexico's San Benito Islands (and, before that, off the coast of California). Whales, dolphins, and porpoises are all known to have their own unique calls, but this sound, known as BW43, was harder to place. It didn't really fit in anywhere.

At the time, scientists suspected it might belong to an elusive species of deep-diving beaked whale – a kind that had never before been observed alive. In fact, Perrin's beaked whale (Mesoplodon perrini), as it is known, was only identified as its own species after five corpses washed up on California's beaches between 1975 and 1997. Before that, it was lumped in with Hector's beaked whale (Mesoplodon hectori), which looks similar.

This year, while searching for the source of BW42 a hundred kilometers off the coast of Mexico, an expedition from the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society ended up finding what they think may be a different species entirely.

Researchers say the images taken don't resemble Perrin's toothed whale or the other member of the Hyperoodontidae family. Nor do its acoustics, picked up on an underwater microphone, sound like any other known cetacean.

As such, the team of beaked whale experts thinks it must be a newly discovered species, although verification is still needed.

"The discovery of a new species of beaked whale proves how much mystery there is left to discover in the oceans that our captains, crews, and research partners fight to defend," says Peter Hammarstedt, the campaign director for Sea Shepherd.

 

Beaked whales are one of the least well-known groups of mammals in the world, largely because of their preference for the deep sea, spending the vast majority of their time thousands of meters below the waves.

For instance, just last month, Cuvier's toothed whale (Ziphius cavirostris) set a record for the longest drive ever recorded during a marine mammal, spending nearly four hours underwater without a breath.

Hundreds of years after naming the primary toothed whale, scientists are still finding new species of this massive, deep-diving mammal. At first, scientists thought there were only two species. Now, we've identified a minimum of 23, a number of which haven't been seen alive. Only a couple are studied in any detail.

Some, like True's toothed whale (Mesoplodon mirus) can weigh thousands of pounds, and yet even then, only a couple of individuals have ever seen them swimming within the wild.

In 2016, DNA analysis confirmed a replacement toothed whale species had washed abreast of the coast of Japan and Alaska with a rare black coloring. After several genetic lines of evidence, the creature was officially named Berardius minimus, or Sato's toothed whale, in 2019.

Now, a year later, it looks like we've found yet another. But this time, they were alive and singing.

Two individuals of a possible newly discovered whale species. (Simon Ager/Sea Shepherd)

Describing a new species of animal requires several lines of evidence and an independent review. The expedition was able to take photographs, record acoustic recordings, and collect environmental genetic sampling.

"We're literally taking water samples from where the whale's dove, so right where they were," Elizabeth Henderson, a bioacoustics scientist at the Naval IW Center Pacific and another research on the Sea Shepherd expedition, tells Mongabay.

"The hope is that there's some genetic material left in the water, whether that's sloughed skin, whether it's some remnants of fecal matter."

Distinguishing between species is difficult enough, but for the beaked whale, it's especially challenging. The sheer lack of data on each species makes it hard to match them without proper genetic samples.

In many cases, we will not even find out their conservation status. Without knowing their population numbers, whether or not they migrate, and what their habitats are like, it's hard to mention how beaked whales are coping during a rapidly changing world.

"Sea Shepherd strongly believes in the critical role that scientific research plays in supporting strong conservation action," says Hammarstedt.

"To properly protect something, you have to love it; and you cannot love that which you do not know."

Gruesome 'Tower of Skulls' Discovery in Mexico Unearths Over 100 Aztec Sacrifices

 Mexican archaeologists said Friday that they had found remains of 119 more people, including women and a number of other children, during a centuries-old Aztec "tower of skulls" within the heart of the capital.

The new discovery was announced after an eastern section of the Huei Tzompantli was uncovered along with the outer facade, five years after the northeastern side was found.

Archaeologists believe that a lot of the skulls belonged to captured enemy warriors which the tower was intended as a warning to rivals of the Aztec empire, which was overthrown by Spanish conquistadors in 1521.

Some of the remains might be of individuals who were killed in ritual sacrifices to appease the gods, consistent with experts quoted during a statement released by the National Anthropology and History Institute.

"Although we cannot determine how many of these individuals were warriors, perhaps some were captives set aside for sacrificial ceremonies," archaeologist Barrera Rodriguez said.

The tower, 4.7 meters (15.4 feet) in diameter, is assumed to possess been built around the end of the 15th century.

It is located within the area of the Templo Mayor, one among the most temples of the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan within the historic district of modern-day Mexico City.

In total, more than 600 skulls have now been found at the site, which Mexican authorities have described as one of the country's most important archaeological discoveries in years.

"At every step, the Templo Mayor continues to surprise us," Culture Minister Alejandra Frausto said in a statement.

"The Huei Tzompantli is, without a doubt, one among the foremost impressive archaeological finds in our country in recent years."

The statement noted that in Mesoamerica human sacrifice was seen as a way of ensuring the continued existence of the universe.

For that reason, experts consider the tower to be "a building of life instead of death," it said.

Scientists Just Set a New World Record in Solar Cell Efficiency

 Improving the efficiency of solar cells can make a huge difference to the amount of energy produced from the same surface area and the same amount of sunshine, and another world record has been beaten in the push for better yields.

Researchers have now hit efficiency of 29.15 percent in the perovskite/silicon tandem solar cell category, which is just one of several different types of cells. There are currently a variety of different technologies in use to convert solar energy into electricity.

For this type of panel, the long-term target of more than 30 percent is now tantalizingly within reach. The latest lab tests edge ahead of the maximum 28 percent efficiency that perovskite/silicon cells have managed up to this point.

The layers of the tandem solar cell. (Eike Köhnen/HZB)

"Tandem solar cells that pair silicon with a metal halide perovskite are a promising option for surpassing the single-cell efficiency limit," write the researchers in their published paper. "We report a monolithic perovskite/silicon tandem with a certified power conversion efficiency of 29.15 percent."

Perovskite and silicon have actually been developed separately as semiconductor materials for solar panel use: silicon cells have been around for longer, and are currently the standard in solar farms around the world.

Perovskite is the up and coming new challenger, which scientists think could eventually eclipse silicon in terms of usefulness.

That's why scientists have long been experimenting with different perovskite compound combinations and adding other materials – silicon, in this case. The so-called tandem cell uses two semiconductors that can capture two different parts of the light spectrum, extending beyond infrared light (captured by silicon) into visible light too (captured by the perovskite compounds).

More good news is that putting perovskite and silicon together doesn't substantially add to the cost of making the panels. Keeping the price down is important for getting solar technology rolled out as far and as quickly as possible.

In this new research, the 29.15 percent efficiency record was managed with a 1 cm x 1 cm (0.4-inch x 0.4 inch) panel, so some serious scaling up will be required. The team says that should be possible, however. After 300 hours of simulated use, the tandem cell retained 95 percent of its original efficiency, which is another promising sign.

The new record was actually first reported earlier this year, though the peer-reviewed paper detailing the feat has just been published. The scientists used specially tweaked layer compositions for both connecting the electrode layer and keeping the two types of cells together in order to reach their new record.

It's another moment to celebrate, but the scientists aren't stopping: previous research suggests that tandem solar cell technology should be able to reach efficiency rates of well above 30 percent, and the team says "initial ideas for this are already under discussion".

Scientists Capture Incredibly Rare Footage of Deep-Sea Fish Devouring a Whole Shark

 Feasts are rare on the barren landscape of the ocean depths. So researchers couldn't believe their luck after they chanced on a feeding frenzy of deep-sea sharks chowing down on a fallen swordfish off the US coast in July 2019.

But they never imagined they might also capture footage of 1 of these sharks becoming the prey for an additional deep-sea creature.

With their rover hovering nearby, a late arrival took advantage of the submersible's shadow. Nobody might blame a wary fish for holding back while ravenous sharks feed, but this heavyweight had plans to show one amongst the diners into its dinner.

A video posted by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows the aftermath of the ambush by a hungry wreckfish. you'll watch it for yourself within the clip below, with shark lunch being served at around 1:42.

The action materialized at a depth of about 450 metres (roughly 1,480 ft) near an increase within the seafloor 130 kilometres (80 miles) off the coast of South Carolina.

While scouting for the wreck of the tanker SS Bloody Marsh, NOAA's remotely operated vehicle Deep Discoverer chanced upon the remains of a 2.5 metre (8 ft) long swordfish being chewed on by nearly a dozen deep-sea sharks.

"The reason behind the death of this majestic animal is unclear, perhaps as a result of age, disease, or another injury," says marine scientist Peter J. Auster from the University of Connecticut.

"There was no visible hook or trail of cord suggesting this was a lost catch. However, any variety of injury would are masked by the huge damage caused by many shark bites."

The sharks were two species of slow-moving, deep-sea dogfish commonly spoken as sleeper sharks. Two of the larger individuals were likely to be rough skin dogfish (Centroscymnus owstonii).

Others belonged to a comparatively newly discovered animal: Genie's dogfish (Squalus clarkae), named in honour of Mote Marine Laboratory founder Eugenie 'Shark Lady' Clark in 2018.

Both of the sleeper shark species are commonly found at these types of depths, sluggishly cruising about until some morsel happens by. Or, as during this case, happens to precipitate like manna from heaven somewhere within the area.

Sniffing out food on the currents, or perhaps detecting the vibrations of earlier arrivals, it's believed they might have journeyed from far just to stock up on the food drop.

Whatever attracted the scavengers, it wasn't long before what looks to be a solitary trouble Atlantic wreckfish (Polyprion americanus) also homed in on the scene for a simple meal.

These massive fish also are named as sea bass and bass gropers. they will exceed 2 metres (about 7 feet) long and typically hang around trouble caves and shipwrecks.

Whether it came for the daily special but stayed for the party isn't clear. But because the feast continued, the wreckfish emerged from the glare of the Deep Discover's lights to wrap its lips around one amongst the sharks.

"This rare and startling event leaves us with more questions than answers, but such is that the nature of scientific exploration," says Auster.

Astronomers Just Found Cosmic 'Superhighways' For Fast Travel Through The Solar System

 Invisible structures generated by gravitational interactions within the scheme have created a "space superhighway" network, astronomers have discovered.

These channels enable the fast travel of objects through space and will be harnessed for our own space exploration purposes, moreover because of the study of comets and asteroids.

By applying analyses to both observational and simulation data, a team of researchers led by Nataša Todorović of Belgrade Astronomical Observatory in Serbia observed that these superhighways encompass a series of connected arches inside these invisible structures, called space manifolds - and every planet generates its own manifolds, together creating what the researchers have called "a true celestial autobahn".

This network can transport objects from Jupiter to Neptune in an exceedingly matter of decades, instead of them for much longer timescales, on the order of many thousands to voluminous years, normally found within the scheme.

Finding hidden structures in space is not easy, but watching the way things move around can provide helpful clues. specifically, comets and asteroids.

There are several groups of rocky bodies at different distances from the Sun. There's the Jupiter-family comets (JFCs), those with orbits of but 20 years, that do not go farther than Jupiter's orbital paths.

Centaurs are icy chunks of rocks that hang around between Jupiter and Neptune. and also the trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) are those within the far reaches of the scheme, with orbits larger than that of Neptune.

To model the pathways connecting these zones, as TNOs transition through the Centaur category and find yourself as JFCs, timescales can range from 10,000 to a billion years. But a recent paper identified an orbital gateway connected to Jupiter that seems much quicker, governing the paths of JFCs and Centaurs.

Although that paper didn't mention Lagrange points, it's known that these regions of relative gravitational stability, created by the interaction between two orbiting bodies (in this case, Jupiter and therefore the Sun), can generate manifolds. So Todorović and her team set about investigating.

They employed a tool called the fast Lyapunov indicator (FLI), usually wont to detect chaos. Since chaos within the scheme is linked to the existence of stable and unstable manifolds, on short timescales, the FLI can capture traces of manifolds, both stable and unstable, of the dynamical model it's applied to.

"Here," the researchers wrote in their paper, "we use the FLI to detect the presence and global structure of space manifolds, and capture instabilities that act on orbital time scales; that's, we use this sensitive and well-established numerical tool to more generally define regions of fast transport within the scheme."

They collected numerical data on numerous orbits within the system and computed how these orbits fit with known manifolds, modeling the perturbations generated by seven major planets, from Venus to Neptune.

And they found that the foremost prominent arches, at increasing heliocentric distances, were linked with Jupiter; and most strongly with its Lagrange point manifolds. All Jovian close encounters, modeled using test particles, visited the vicinity of Jupiter's first and second Lagrange points.

A few dozen roughly particles were then flung into the earth on a collision course; but an enormous number more, around 2,000, became uncoupled from their orbits around the Sun to enter hyperbolic escape orbits. On average, these particles reached Uranus and Neptune 38 and 46 years later, respectively, with the fastest reaching Neptune in under a decade.

The majority - around 70 percent - reached a distance of 100 astronomical units (Pluto's average orbital distance is 39.5 astronomical units) in but a century.

Jupiter's huge influence isn't a large surprise. Jupiter is, except for the Sun, the foremost massive object within the scheme. But the identical structures would be generated by all the planets, on timescales commensurate with their orbital periods, the researchers found.

This new understanding could help us better understand how comets and asteroids move around the inner scheme and their potential threat to Earth. And, of course, there's the aforementioned benefit to future scheme exploration missions.

But we might have to urge a stronger fix on how these gateways work, to avoid those collision courses; and it won't be easy.

"More detailed quantitative studies of the discovered phase-space structures … could provide deeper insight into the transport between the 2 belts of minor bodies and also the planet region," the researchers wrote in their paper.

"Combining observations, theory, and simulation will improve our current understanding of this short-term mechanism functioning on the TNO, Centaur, comet, and asteroid populations and merge this information with the normal picture of the long-term chaotic diffusion through orbital resonances; a formidable task for the big range of energies considered."

New Evidence Supports Controversial Claim of Humans in The Americas 130,000 Years Ago

 Three years ago, a team of archaeologists within u.  s. proposed a rare idea: the primary human settlers within the Americas received least 100,000 years previous we thought.

The evidence came from a set of mastodon bones and ancient stones dating back to around 130,000 years ago, which perceived to are hammered and scraped by early humans. 

The remains were found within the suburbs of the point of entry within the 1990s, and therefore the researchers think that the nearby stones may are used as hammers and anvils to figure on the bones. But outside of that, no other traces of human action were found.

Today, the Cerutti Mastodon (CM) site remains one of the foremost controversial archaeological digs within the world. For years, scientists are going back and forth over the results and whether or not they indicate the presence of humans in North America 130,000 years ago, but the first authors aren't let go. 

The team has now published a follow-up paper that claims to possess found traces of ancient mastodon bones on the upward-facing sides of two cobblestones collected from the location. 

According to the paper, mastodon bones were indeed placed on top of those rocky 'anvils' and struck with some variety of hammers - presumably by humans.

If the bones were merely in passive contact with the rocks, you'd expect to determine their influence everywhere they were touching, not just the highest part. 

There also doesn't appear to be any modern contamination, the authors add. the traditional artifacts were found near a road work site, so some critics think the bones were broken and scraped by the activity of trucks and other similar disturbances.

While this can be much possible, researchers say it doesn't explain the residue on the stones.

When collecting bones and stones from the positioning, the team in the urban center claims to own taken care. they are saying there was no opportunity for bone material to disintegrate or "float" into the air and onto a stone at the initial site or within the lab afterward.

Even within the soil, bone residues from these mastodons were discovered at much lower concentrations than what was measured on some parts of the cobblestones.

"Fossil bone residues documented with the Raman microscope were only found in residue extractions sampled from the doubtless used surfaces and are therefore considered to be more likely use-related," the authors write.

"As our investigations have indicated that the bone residues are less likely to originate from sediments or contact with bones within the bone bed as discussed above, the foremost parsimonious explanation is that the residues (and wear) derive from deliberate contact with bone. We consider this scenario to be the foremost likely." 

Still, there's one key missing ingredient: collagen. this can be a very important part of mammal bones, and if stones were wont to break apart the mastodon skeleton, you'd expect to search out some traces of collagen.

It's very possible that the collagen during this case had already disintegrated from the passing of your time. Or it might be that measurements simply didn't acquire its presence.

But archaeologist Gary Haynes, who wasn't involved in the study, told Science News he thinks the more likely scenario is that road work vehicles buried these stones next to the mastodon bones, long after their collagen had disappeared.

He's not the sole one who's skeptical. Today, most evidence suggests human settlers arrived within the Americas roughly 14,000 to 20,000 years ago. A date of 130,000 years is kind of the claim, and it requires extraordinary evidence, which some scientists argue is lacking.

A rebuttal to the initial 2017 paper argued that other processes outside of human hammering produced the bone damage, especially from heavy construction equipment.

Even before humans came along there was probably disturbance within the area. Over time, as fluvial deposits slowly covered the remains, these mastodon bones would have remained somewhat flexible, and this implies they might are trampled, displaced, fractured, abraded, and reoriented by other mammals that used the traditional muddy watercourse.

"The extraordinary claim by Holen et al. of prehistoric hominin involvement at the CM site shouldn't be dependant on evidence that's receptive multiple, contrasting interpretations," the authors of the rebuttal argue.

"Until unambiguous evidence of hominin activities is presented, like formal stone tools or an abundance of percussion pits, caution requires us to line aside from the claims of Holen et al. of prehistoric hominin activities at the CM site."

Shortly afterward, the first authors wrote a rebuttal to the rebuttal. In it, they argued that there's no evidence of fluvial deposits in which the bones were broken before they were buried and not trampled afterward.

"Healthy skepticism is that the foundation of excellent science, and also the publication of this discovery is that the beginning of a scientific debate, which I welcome and encourage,"  Tom Deméré, a paleontologist at the port of entry explanation Museum and one in all the initial authors, argued some years ago.

"What I didn't expect was the reluctance of scientists to have interaction in a very two-way conversation to objectively evaluate our hypothesis." 

Archaeologist David Meltzer from Southern Methodist University is skeptical but receptive the controversy. He says he can be convinced that humans arrived within the Americas a 100,000 years previous we thought, but that he hasn't seen enough evidence yet. 

"Given everything we all know, it makes no sense," he told Nature in 2018. "You're not visiting flip people's opinion 180 degrees unless you have absolutely unimpeachable evidence, and this ain't it."

Perhaps this new bout of evidence will help clear up a number of that doubt. More likely than not, however, it'll merely trigger a series of latest rebuttals.

Physicists Suggest All Matter May Be Made Up of Energy 'Fragments'

 The matter is what makes up the Universe, but what makes up matter? This question has long been tricky for people who consider it – especially for the physicists.

Reflecting recent trends in physics, my colleague Jeffrey Eischen and that I have described an updated thanks to giving some thought to the matter. We propose that matter isn't made from particles or waves, as was long thought, but – more fundamentally – that matter is created of fragments of energy.

From five to 1

The ancient Greeks conceived of 5 building blocks of matter – from bottom to top: earth, water, air, fire, and aether. Aether was the matter that filled the heavens and explained the rotation of the celebs, as observed from the planet viewpoint.

These were the primary most elementary elements from which one could build up a world. Their conceptions of the physical elements didn't change dramatically for nearly 2,000 years.

Then, about 300 years ago, Sir mathematician introduced the concept that every one matter exists at points called particles. 100 fifty years afterward, James Clerk Maxwell introduced the radiation – the underlying and infrequently invisible type of magnetism, electricity, and light-weight.

The particle served because the building blocks for mechanics and also the wave for electromagnetism – and therefore the public settled on the particle and also the wave because of the two building blocks of matter. Together, the particles and waves became the building blocks of all types of matter.

This was an unlimited improvement over the traditional Greeks' five elements but was still flawed. in a very famous series of experiments, referred to as the double-slit experiments, light sometimes acts sort of a particle and at other times acts sort of a wave. And while the theories and math of waves and particles allow scientists to form incredibly accurate predictions about the Universe, the foundations break down at the biggest and tiniest scales.

Einstein proposed a remedy in his theory of general relativity theory. Using the mathematical tools available to him at the time, Einstein was ready to better explain certain physical phenomena and also resolve a longstanding paradox referring to inertia and gravity.

But rather than improving on particles or waves, he eliminated them as he proposed the warping of space and time.

Using newer mathematical tools, my colleague and that i have demonstrated a brand new theory that will accurately describe the Universe. rather than basing the idea on the warping of space and time, we considered that there might be a building block that's more fundamental than the particle and therefore the wave.

Scientists understand that particles and waves are existential opposites: A particle could be a source of matter that exists at one point, and waves exist everywhere except at the points that make them.

My colleague and that I thought it made logical sense for there to be an underlying connection between them.

Flow and fragments of energy

Our theory begins with a replacement fundamental idea – that energy always "flows" through regions of space and time.

Think of energy as made from lines that replenish a locality of space and time, flowing into and out of that region, never beginning, never-ending, and never crossing each other.

Working from the concept of a universe of flowing energy lines, we hunted for one building block for the flowing energy. If we could find and define such a thing, we hoped we could use it to accurately make predictions about the Universe at the biggest and tiniest scales.

There were many building blocks to decide on from mathematically, but we sought one that had the features of both the particle and wave – concentrated just {like the} particle but also opened up over space and time like the wave.

The answer was a building block that appears sort of a concentration of energy – reasonably sort of a star – having energy that's highest at the middle, which gets smaller farther aloof from the middle.

Much to our surprise, we discovered that there have been only a limited number of the way to explain the amount of energy that flows. Of those, we found only 1 that works in accordance with our mathematical definition of flow.

We named it a fraction of energy. For the mathematics and physics aficionados, it's defined as A = -⍺/r where ⍺ is intensity and r is that the distance function.

Using the fragment of energy as a building block of matter, we then constructed the mathematics necessary to unravel physics problems. the ultimate step was to check it out.

Back to Einstein, adding universality

More than 100 ago, Einstein had turned to 2 legendary problems in physics to validate general relativity: the ever-so-slight yearly shift – or precession – in Mercury's orbit, and therefore the tiny bending of sunshine because it passes the Sun.

These problems were at the 2 extremes of the scale spectrum. Neither wave nor particle theories of matter could solve them, but the general theory of relativity did.

The theory of Einstein's theory of relativity warped space and time in such a way on cause the trajectory of Mercury to shift and lightweight to bend in barely the amounts seen in astronomical observations.

If our new theory was to possess an opportunity at replacing the particle and also the wave with the presumably more fundamental fragment, we might just be ready to solve these problems with our theory, too.

For the precession-of-Mercury problem, we modeled the Sun as an unlimited stationary fragment of energy and Mercury as a smaller but still enormous slow-moving fragment of energy. For the bending-of-light problem, the Sun was modeled the identical way, but the photon was modeled as a minuscule fragment of energy moving at the speed of sunshine.

In both problems, we calculated the trajectories of the moving fragments and got identical answers as those predicted by the speculation of relativity theory. We were stunned.

Our initial work demonstrated how a brand new building block is capable of accurately modeling bodies from the large to the minuscule. Where particles and waves break down, the fragment of energy building block held strong.

The fragment can be one potentially universal building block from which to model reality mathematically – and update the way people give some thought to the building blocks of the Universe.

One of The Blackest Planets in The Galaxy Is Headed For a Fiery Death

 WASP-12b is one in every of the more interesting exoplanets we all know of. Orbiting a plant disease star a bit bigger than the Sun 1,410 light-years away, the ultra-black planet is what's called a "hot Jupiter" - a superior planet exoplanet with similar mass and size to Jupiter, but so near the star that it's scorching hot.

WASP-12b has never exactly been within the most secure position. With an orbital period of just over each day, the Jovian planet exoplanet is so near its star that a continuing stream of fabric is being siphoned removed from its atmosphere.

But its death won't necessarily be by slow stellar slurping. Careful observations have found it is also on a noticeably decaying orbit. And, consistent with new research, that orbit is decaying a touch faster than we initially thought.

Rather than the three.25 million years initially estimated, WASP-12b will meet its fiery end in mere 2.9 million years.

According to current models of planet formation, technically hot Jupiters shouldn't exist. A Jovian planet can't form that near a star because the gravity, radiation, and intense stellar winds should keep the gas from clumping together. But they are doing exist - several hundred are identified within the exoplanet data.

However they form, hot Jupiters that are particularly near their star are a number of the foremost studied exoplanets out there. this can be because they will tell us lots about the tidal interactions between a planet and a star.

WASP-12b is among the closest hot Jupiters to its star. And it has been a superb example for studying tidal interactions.

It was discovered in 2008, which implies astronomers are able to collect a comparatively long-term dataset; and its short orbit means we are able to observe plenty of transits. That's when the exoplanet passes between us and therefore the star, causing the latter's light to ever slightly dim.

It was in 2017 that astronomers noticed something strange about WASP-12b's transits. They were occurring just a fraction of a second off once they should are, supported previous measurements of the orbital period.

That slight timing variation could are the results of the exoplanet's orbit changing direction, so a team of astronomers led by Samuel Yee of Princeton University decided to closely examine not just the transits, but the occultations when the exoplanet passes behind the star. If WASP-12b was changing direction, the occultations should be slightly delayed.

A transit causes a faint dimming of the star's light; an occultation causes an excellent fainter dimming. this is often because the exoplanet, reflecting the star's heat and light-weight, adds to the system's overall brightness when it is not behind the star.

WASP-12b is extremely dark, optically; it absorbs 94 percent of all light that shines on that, making it blacker than asphalt.

Astronomers believe that this can be because the exoplanet is so hot; at 2,600 degrees Celsius (4,700 degrees Fahrenheit) on its dayside, hydrogen molecules are diminished into atomic hydrogen, causing its atmosphere to behave more sort of a low-mass star. But because it is so hot, it glows in infrared.

Yee's team used the Spitzer Space Telescope to do to look at occultations. Although they observed the star, WASP 12, for 16 orbital periods, they only managed to seek out four faint occultations within the data. it absolutely was enough, though.

These occultations may be matched to transits… and therefore the researchers found that the occultations were occurring more quickly - in keeping with an orbital decay of 29 milliseconds p.a.. At that rate, the planet's lifespan was, the astronomers calculated, around 3.25 million years.

Now, a brand new team of researchers led by Jake Turner of the university has a probe for signs of orbital decay during a different dataset - observations taken by NASA's planet-hunting telescope TESS, specifically designed to watch transits and occultations.

TESS studied the region of the sky that included WASP-12 from 24 December 2019 to twenty January 2020. during this data, the team found 21 transits. The occultations were too shallow to be detected individually, but the team was able to model them to search out a best-fit for the TESS data.

These transit and occultation times were combined with the sooner data for timing analysis. And Turner and his team were ready to confirm that WASP-12b's orbit is indeed decaying. But it's doing so a touch faster than we thought - at a rate of 32.53 milliseconds per annum, for a complete lifespan of two.9 million years.

That looks like an extended time, but on cosmic timescales, it's practically an eyeblink. And it's dramatically shortened the exoplanet's lifespan from the estimated 10 million years it might deem the world to die from atmospheric stripping.

But, although it doesn't have long to measure, studying WASP-12b has the potential to show us lots. And while it is the only exoplanet that we've got robust evidence of orbital decay, there are other hot Jupiter exoplanets that are expected to exhibit similar rates of orbital decay.

"Hence, additional data could reveal whether [these exoplanets] indeed exhibit hitherto undetected tidal decay or whether the theoretical predictions must be improved," Turner and his team wrote.

"Timing observations of additional systems are warranted because they assist us to understand the formation, evolution, and supreme fate of hot Jupiters."

China Claims It's Achieved 'Quantum Supremacy' With The World's Fastest Quantum Computer

 A team of Chinese scientists has developed the foremost powerful quantum computer within the world, capable of engaging at least one task 100 trillion times faster than the world's fastest supercomputers.

In 2019, Google said it had built the primary machine to attain "quantum supremacy," the primary to outperform the world's best supercomputers at quantum calculation, Live Science previously reported. (IBM disputed Google's claim at the time.)

The Chinese team, based primarily at the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei, reported their quantum computer, named Jiuzhang, is 10 billion times faster than Google's. an outline of Jiuzhang and its feat of calculation was published December 3 within the journal Science.

Assuming both claims interference, Jiuzhang would be the second quantum computer to realize quantum supremacy anywhere within the world.

China has invested heavily in quantum computing, with Xi Jinping's government spending US$10 billion on the country's National Laboratory for Quantum Information Sciences, NDTV reported.

The country is additionally a world leader in quantum networking, where data encoded using quantum physics is transmitted across great distances, as Live Science has reported.

Quantum computers can exploit the weird mathematics governing the quantum world to outperform classical computers on certain tasks, as Live Science reported.

Where classical computers perform calculations using bits, which may have one amongst two states (typically represented by a 1 or a 0), quantum bits, or qubits, can exist in many countries simultaneously. this permits them to unravel problems more quickly than classical computers.

But while the theories predicting that quantum computing would beat classical computing are around for many years, building practical quantum computers has proved far more challenging. 

The Chinese computer makes its calculations (limited to particular questions about the behavior of sunshine particles) using optical circuits.

Google's device, Sycamore, uses superconducting materials on a chip and more nearly resembles the fundamental structure of classical computers.

Neither would be particularly useful on its own as a computer and therefore the Chinese device was built to unravel only one kind of problem.

To test Jiuzhang, the researchers assigned it a "Gaussian boson sampling" (GBS) task, where the pc calculates the output of a fancy circuit that uses light. That output is expressed as a listing of numbers. (Light is formed of particles referred to as photons, which belongs to a category of particles called bosons.) 

Success is measured in terms of the number of photons detected. Jiuzhaigou, which itself is an optical circuit, detected a maximum of 76 photons in one test and a mean of 43 across several tests.

Its calculation time to provide the list of numbers for every experimental run was about 200 seconds, while the fastest Chinese supercomputer, TaihuLight, would have taken 2.5 billion years to gain an identical result.

That suggests the quantum computer can do GBS 100 trillion times faster than a classical supercomputer.

This doesn't mean that China includes a fully practical quantum computer yet, in keeping with Xinhua. China's device is specialized and mostly useful as a tool for doing GBS. But it is a major milestone on the way there.

Our Sun Has Entered a New Cycle, And It Could Be One of The Strongest Ever Recorded

The Sun may be in for a very busy time. According to new predictions, the next maximum in its activity cycles could be one of the strongest we've seen.

This is in direct contradiction to the official solar weather forecast from NASA and the NOAA, but if it bears out, it could confirm a theory about solar activity cycles that scientists have been working on for years.

"Scientists have struggled to predict both the length and the strength of sunspot cycles because we lack a fundamental understanding of the mechanism that drives the cycle," said solar physicist Scott McIntosh of the US National Center for Atmospheric Research.

"If our forecast proves correct, we will have evidence that our framework for understanding the Sun's internal magnetic machine is on the right path."

The Sun's activity levels are actually quite variable, and its activity cycles are bound up with its magnetic field.

Every 11 years, the Sun's poles swap places; south becomes north and north becomes south. It's not clear what drives these cycles, but we do know that the poles switch when the magnetic field is at its weakest.

Because the Sun's magnetic field controls its activity - sunspots (temporary regions of strong magnetic fields), solar flares, and coronal mass ejections (produced by magnetic field lines snapping and reconnecting) - this stage of the cycle manifests as a period of very minimal activity. It's called the solar minimum.

Once the poles have switched, the magnetic field strengthens, and solar activity rises to a solar maximum before subsiding for the next polar switch.

Generally, we track solar minima by keeping a careful eye on solar activity and working out after the fact that one has occurred. By this metric, the most recent solar minimum took place in December 2019. We're now in the 25th solar cycle since record-keeping began, headed into a solar maximum.

According to NASA and the NOAA, this is expected to be a quiet maximum, with a sunspot peak of around 115 sunspots in July 2025. This is pretty similar to Solar Cycle 24, which had a sunspot peak of 114.

But McIntosh and his colleagues believe differently. In 2014, he and his colleagues published a paper describing their observations of the Sun on a 22-year cycle.

This has long been considered the full solar cycle when the poles return to their starting positions, but McIntosh noticed something interesting. Over the course of about 20 years or so, flickers of extreme ultraviolet light called coronal bright points seem to move from the poles towards the equator, meeting in the middle.

The movement of these bright points across the mid-latitudes seems to coincide with sunspot activity.

(Scott McIntosh/NCAR)

These bright points, McIntosh believes, are linked with bands of magnetic fields that wrap around the Sun, propagating from the poles to the equator every 11 years or so.

Because they have opposite polarity, when they meet in the middle, they cancel each other out - what the researchers call a "terminator". These terminator events mark the end of a solar magnetic cycle, and the start of the next.

But they don't always take exactly the same amount of time. Sometimes these bands slow down as they reach mid-latitudes, which means that the length of time between terminator events varies. And the team noticed that there's a correlation between the length of time between terminators and the intensity of the following solar maximum.

"When we look back over the 270-year long observational record of terminator events, we see that the longer the time between terminators, the weaker the next cycle," said astronomer Bob Leamon of the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

"And, conversely, the shorter the time between terminators, the stronger the next solar cycle is."

The longest cycle on record based on the time between terminators is Solar Cycle 4, which lasted over 15 years. It was followed by the famous Dalton minimum - a peak of just 82 sunspots in Solar Cycle 5, which lasted nearly 14 years, and 81 sunspots in Solar Cycle 6.

But shorter solar cycles - those that are less than 11 years - are followed by maxima with peaks well above 200 sunspots.

Solar Cycle 23, according to McIntosh's team's metric, was pretty long. It lasted nearly 13 years. And Solar Cycle 24 was much quieter than the cycles that preceded it. But it was also really short, coming in under the 10-year mark. If the team's analyses are in point, we should be in for a lot of sunspots by the mid-2020s.

There's only one way to find out - we have to wait and see. But McIntosh and his team are confident in their interpretation of the Sun's activity. And, if they're right, that will give us a whole new toolset for understanding how the Sun works.

"Once you identify the terminators in the historical records, the pattern becomes obvious," McIntosh said.

"A weak Sunspot Cycle 25, as the community is predicting, would be a complete departure from everything that the data has shown us up to this point."

Physicists have a massive problem as Higgs boson refuses to misbehave

 Physicists have spotted the Higgs boson performing a brand new trick, but one that brings us no closer to understanding the workings of fundamental particles.

The Higgs boson, discovered at the CERN high energy physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, in 2012, is that the particle that offers all other fundamental particles mass, in keeping with the quality model of high-energy physics. However, despite the work of thousands of researchers around the world, nobody has been ready to determine exactly how it does that or why some particles are more massive than others.

The only thanks to trying and solve that problem is by observing how the Higgs interacts with other particles using the massive Hadron Collider (LHC). For the primary time, both of the most important groups that use it – the CMS and ATLAS collaborations – have observed the Higgs decaying into two muons, a kind of particle we've never directly seen it interact with before. Members of the collaborations presented this work at the virtual International Conference on High Energy Physics.

Some researchers have suggested that particles have different masses because there's over one style of Higgs boson, with each sort of Higgs coupled to a special mass range of other particles.

Muons are much less massive than the opposite styles of particles we’ve seen the regular Higgs interact with, therefore the new discovery makes it more likely there's only 1 Higgs. That behavior is precisely what we expect from the quality model. Adam Gibson-Even at Valparaiso University in Indiana, who hasn’t committed to this work, says that it's an instance of “Higgs boson, exactly as ordered”.

But that leaves the mystery of why particles have different masses completely unanswered. While this result might not be surprising, Gibson-Even says, it's somewhat frustrating because we all know the quality model is incomplete – additionally, to not explaining why particles have different masses, it also doesn’t account for the substance or dark energy. Nevertheless, experimental results are entirely in line with the model.

“It’s a controversy within the sense that we all know that the Higgs boson as-is doesn’t explain this stuff,” says CMS researcher Freya Blekman at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium. If the identical Higgs interacts with both muons and heavier particles, that's another avenue to solving the question of mass closed.

The next step, Blekman says, is to require even more precise measurements of the Higgs interacting with a variety of various particles. Many of those measurements have to be more precise than those the LHC can provide, which is an element of the argument for building a more powerful “Higgs factory” collider, she says.

“We have removed scenarios, but we don’t have a proof yet,” says Beekman. “But this can be what high energy physics is about – we've got tens of thousands of predictions and that we should eliminate them.”