Scientists at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada have created the most dense, solid-state memory in history that could soon exceed the capabilities of current hard drives by 1,000 times.

Countless times a day, seabirds dive-catch prey from the ocean, boats enter the water from dry land, and seaplanes touch down gently amid the waves. The phenomenon of objects entering water is commonplace, yet a full understanding of the physics of water entry remains elusive, especially as it pertains to instances where a solid object enters a body of water that contains other solid objects, such as a gull diving into a rocky patch of sea.

Quantum communication and cryptography are the future of high-security communication. But many challenges lie ahead before a worldwide quantum network can be set up, including propagating the quantum signal over long distances. One of the major challenges is to create memories with the capacity to store quantum information carried by light. Researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, in partnership with CNRS, France, have discovered a new material in which an element, ytterbium, can store and protect the fragile quantum information even while operating at high frequencies. This makes ytterbium an ideal candidate for future quantum networks, where the aim is to propagate the signal over long distances by acting as repeaters. These results are published in the journal Nature Materials.

Scientists from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have, for the first time, succeeded in producing, controlling and understanding complex quantum states based on two electron spins connected to a superconductor. The result has been published in Nature Communications, and has come about in a collaboration between the scientists of the Niels Bohr Institute, a scientist from abroad and last, but not least, a Master's thesis student.

Majorana fermions are particles that are their own antiparticles. In condensed matter physics, zero-energy Majorana fermions obey non-abelian statistics, and can be used in fault-tolerant topological quantum computation. They are thus the subject of extensive studies. However, as Majorana fermions carry no electric charge, detecting them experimentally is still a challenge. A current noise study now provides a direct method for the detection of these novel particles.

Scientists need individual photons for quantum cryptography and quantum computers. Leiden physicists have now experimentally demonstrated a new production method. Publication in Physical Review Letters on July 23rd.

Researchers have created the fastest man-made rotor in the world, which they believe will help them study quantum mechanics.

Ordinary sound waves—small oscillations of density—can propagate through all fluids, causing the molecules in the fluid to compress at regular intervals. Now physicists have theoretically shown that in one-dimensional quantum fluids not one, but two types of sound waves can propagate. Both types of waves move at approximately the same speed, but are combinations of density waves and temperature waves.

Ordinary sound waves—small oscillations of density—can propagate through all fluids, causing the molecules in the fluid to compress at regular intervals. Now physicists have theoretically shown that in one-dimensional quantum fluids not one, but two types of sound waves can propagate. Both types of waves move at approximately the same speed, but are combinations of density waves and temperature waves.

Watch a movie backwards and you'll likely get confused—but a quantum computer wouldn't. That's the conclusion of researcher Mile Gu at the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) at the National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University and collaborators.

An international team of scientists has discovered a new, exotic form of insulating material with a metallic surface that could enable more efficient electronics or even quantum computing. The researchers developed a new method for analyzing existing chemical compounds that relies on the mathematical properties like symmetry that govern the repeating patterns seen in everyday wallpaper.

A pair of physicists at Aix-Marseille University has offered a possible way to measure the speed of our own galaxy more accurately as it moves through space. In their paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, Julien Bel and Christian Marinoni describe their theory and how it might be tested.

A team that includes nuclear physicists, a machine-learning researcher and an NC State mathematician has created a new approach for narrowing down huge calculations – such as those involved in quantum physics – by focusing on a single, predictive parameter. This approach, dubbed the eigenvector continuation, could prove useful in solving other scientific and engineering problems where the calculations are simply too large for computer memory to handle.

Studying the photochemistry, or chemical results of light, has shown that ultraviolet radiation can set off harmful chemical reactions in the human body and, alternatively, can provide "photo-protection" by dispersing extra energy. To better understand the dynamics of these photochemical processes, a group of scientists irradiated the RNA base uracil with ultraviolet light and documented its behavior on a picosecond timescale.

Major data breaches have made worldwide headlines of late but an international consortium of scientists—including a professor from Heriot-Watt—have developed a new technique that could result in hack-proof systems.

In a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) "Special Feature" paper published online June 26, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and University of Michigan researchers reported on recent experiments and techniques designed to improve understanding and control of hydrodynamic (fluid) instabilities in high energy density (HED) settings such as those that occur in inertial confinement fusion implosions on the National Ignition Facility (NIF).

Magnets have fascinated humans for several thousand years and enabled the age of digital data storage. They occur in various flavors. Ferrimagnets form the largest class of magnets and consist of two types of atoms. Similar to a compass needle, each atom exhibits a little magnetic moment, also called spin, which arises from the rotation of the atom's electrons about their own axes. In a ferrimagnet, the magnetic moments point in opposite directions for the two types of atoms (see panel A). Thus, the total magnetization is the sum of all magnetic moments of type 1 (M1) (blue arrows) and type 2 (M2) (green arrows). Due to the opposite direction, the magnitude of the total magnetization is M1-M2.

With companies like Google, Microsoft and IBM all racing to create the world's first practical quantum computer, scientists worldwide are exploring the potential materials that could be used to build them. Now, Associate Professor Yang Hyunsoo and his team from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Faculty of Engineering have demonstrated a new method which could be used to bring quantum computing closer to reality.