Category Archives: Scicomm
Sniffing out the mystery chemistry of superheavy atoms
Remember the periodic table from your high school classroom? The table orders elements by how the valence electrons in their atoms are arranged. However, quantum physics calculations predict that in elements with atomic number greater than 103, the electrons are … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged berkelium, dubnium, FIONA, flerovium, gas chromatography, gas-filled separator, holmium, livermorium, magnetic rigidity, Periodic Table, physical chemistry, radioactive decay, rutherfordium, special theory of relativity, superheavy elements, valence electrons
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Sharks don’t do math
From ’Sharks hunt via Lévy flights’, Physics World, June 11, 2010: They were menacing enough before, but how would you feel if you knew sharks were employing advanced mathematical concepts in their hunt for the kill? Well, this is the … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm, Science
Tagged animal foraging, Brownian motion, Gaussian distribution, Lévy flight, probability distribution function, random walk, sharks, Wiener process
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The hidden heatwave
A heatwave is like the COVID-19 virus. During the pandemic, the virus infected and killed many people. When vaccines became available, the mortality rate dropped even though the virus continued to spread. But vaccines weren’t the only way to keep … Continue reading
Posted in Analysis, Scicomm
Tagged ambient temperature, COVID-19 pandemic, drinking water, heatwave, privatisation, public health, relative humidity, sugary beverages, Tamil Nadu, urinary tract infection, ventilation
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Quantum clock breaks entropy barrier
In physics, the second law of thermodynamics says that a closed system tends to become more disordered over time. This disorder is captured in an entity called entropy. Many devices, especially clocks, are affected by this law because they need … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged coherent transport, dissipative transport, entropy, Hamiltonian, precision, quantum clock, quantum physics, second law of thermodynamics, spin chain, thermodynamic bias, thermodynamics, time reversal symmetry
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A new beast: antiferromagnetic quasicrystals
Scientists have made a new material that is both a quasicrystal and antiferromagnetic — a combination never seen before. Quasicrystals are a special kind of solid. Unlike normal crystals, whose atoms are arranged in repeating patterns, quasicrystals have patterns that … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged antiferromagnetism, approximant crystals, arc melting, crystallography, Curie-Weiss temperature, electron diffraction, ferromagnetism, magnetic order, magnetisation, neutron diffraction, quantum spin, quasicrystals, quasiperiodic order, rare-earth elements, specific heat, spintronics, Tsai quasicrystal, X-ray diffraction
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Tracking the Meissner effect under pressure
In the last two or three years, groups of scientists from around the world have made several claims that they had discovered a room-temperature superconductor. Many of these claims concerned high-pressure superconductors — materials that superconduct electricity at room temperature … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged diamond anvil cell, flux-pinning, magnetic field, materials science, Meissner effect, nitrogen vacancy centres, optical magnetometry, quantum spin, room-temperature superconductor, superconductivity
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Why do quasicrystals exist?
Featured image: An example of zellij tilework in the Al Attarine Madrasa in Fes, Morocco (2012), with complex geometric patterns on the lower walls and a band of calligraphy above. Caption and credit: just_a_cheeseburger (CC BY) ‘Quasi’ means almost. It’s … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm
Tagged crystallography, Dan Shechtman, density functional theory, DFT-FE, enthalpy, entropy, finite element analysis, fivefold symmetry, graphics processing unit, Linus Carl Pauling, nucleation, phase diagram, quasicrystals, scandium-zinc, surface energy, translational symmetry, unit cell, ytterbium-cadmium
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Technical foundation for a muon collider laid at J-PARC
A particle collider is a machine that energises two beams of subatomic particles and smashes them head on. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe is the world’s largest and most famous particle collider. It accelerates (with the effect of … Continue reading
Posted in Scicomm, Science
Tagged electron-positron collider, ionisation laser, J-PARC, Large Hadron Collider, linear collider, muon collider, muons, proton-proton collider, radiofrequency cavity, radiofrequency quadrupole, synchrotron radiation, thermal energy, transverse emittance
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