In the world of organic chemistry, some rules are taught as absolute boundaries. One of the most famous is Bredt’s rule, a guideline that has dictated the limits of molecular architecture for nearly a century. This rule essentially places a “keep off the grass” sign on certain parts of a molecule, specifically forbidding the formation […]
Authors: Florian Bonnet, Démographe et économiste, spécialiste des inégalités territoriales, Ined (Institut national d’études démographiques); Carlo Giovanni Camarda, Docteur, spécialiste des méthodes de prévision (mortalité, longévité, etc.), Ined (Institut national d’études démographiques); France Meslé, Démographe, Ined (Institut national d’études démographiques), and Josselin Thuilliez, Economiste, Directeur de recherche au CNRS, Centre national de la recherche scientifique […]
In order to build the computers and devices of tomorrow, we have to understand how they use energy today. That’s harder than it sounds. Memory storage, information processing, and energy use in these technologies involve constant energy flow—systems never settle into thermodynamic balance. To complicate things further, one of the most precise ways to study […]
In my last entry we had a glimpse on the ideas of one of the three main ‘fathers’ of ‘the’ scientific method, Francis Bacon. As I told then, inverted commas are justified because there is nothing like ‘the’ scientific method, only a family of different, and at times mutually inconsistent, sets of procedures, rules and […]
Condensed matter • DIPC Advanced materials • Materials • Quantum physics
When we study solid-state physics, we usually begin with crystals. In a crystal, atoms repeat in a strict and regular pattern, much like tiles on a bathroom floor. Because every small region looks the same as every other, electrons move through a predictable landscape. This repeating order is the reason we can explain electricity, magnetism […]
Author: Florian Neukart, Assistant professor of Physics, Leiden University Time feels like the most basic feature of reality. Seconds tick, days pass and everything from planetary motion to human memory seems to unfold along a single, irreversible direction. We are born and we die, in exactly that order. We plan our lives around time, measure […]
A Univerity of Sydney Ph.D. student has recreated a tiny piece of the universe inside a bottle in her laboratory, producing cosmic dust from scratch. The results shed new light on how the chemical building blocks of life may have formed long before Earth existed. Linda Losurdo, a Ph.D. candidate in materials and plasma physics […]
The material at the heart of the digital revolution, silicon, is now a leading candidate for building large-scale quantum computers. This strategy leverages the most mature and powerful manufacturing technology on Earth to control the fundamental quantum property of an electron: its spin. Recent breakthroughs in silicon-based spin qubits have demonstrated gate fidelities that meet […]
If you’ve ever sat by a quiet pond and tapped the surface of the water with your finger once every second, you’d expect to see a ripple travel outward once every second. In the world of classical physics, the effect follows the cause in a predictable, rhythmic march. But imagine for a moment that you […]
Authors: Maxime Aubert, Professor of Archaeological Science, Griffith University; Adam Brumm, Professor of Archaeology, Griffith University; Adhi Oktaviana, Research Centre of Archeometry, Badan Riset dan Inovasi Nasional Indonesia (BRIN), and Renaud Joannes-Boyau, Professor in Geochronology and Geochemistry, Southern Cross University When we think of the world’s oldest art, Europe usually comes to mind, with famous […]