The mesosphere, at heights between 85 and 100 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, contains a layer of atomic sodium. Astronomers use laser beams to create artificial stars, or laser guide stars (LGS), in this layer for improving the quality of astronomical observations. In 2011, researchers proposed that artificial guide stars could also be used to…
Detecting Damage In Non-Magnetic Steel With Magnetism
Wear, corrosion, material fatigue are signs of degradation that are common to most materials. This makes it all the more important to detect damage early, preferably on the micrometer scale. Magnetic test methods are often used for this purpose, which was previously impossible with non-magnetic steel. Researchers from Kaiserslautern and Mainz have now developed a…
New Record High for Superconductivity Observed
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz in Germany observed that hydrogen sulfide becomes superconductive at minus 70 degree Celsius – when the substance is placed under a pressure of 1.5 million bar. This corresponds to half of the pressure of the earth’s core. With their high-pressure…
Multifunctional Topological Insulator Material with Combined Superconductivity
New material combines different, at first view contradicting properties with a high potential for future quantum electronics and computation Most materials show one function, for example, a material can be a metal, a semiconductor, or an insulator. Metals such as copper are used as conducting wires with only low resistance and energy loss. Superconductors are…
Quantum Teleportation: Transfer of Flying Quantum Bits
Hybrid technology makes possible highly reliable transmission of photonic qubits By means of the quantum-mechanical entanglement of spatially separated light fields, researchers in Tokyo and Mainz have managed to teleport photonic qubits with extreme reliability. This means that a decisive breakthrough has been achieved some 15 years after the first experiments in the field of…