Science Innovations

Posted by: Tarun Kumar Helium, the most parsimonious element that invariably sits with its arms tightly folded and refuses to participate in chemistry, turns out to be surprisingly generous when it is in the right environment, willing to donate not just one but two electrons to neighbouring species. Researchers from Austria and the UK made the surprising discovery by generating for the first time isolated dianions – which are inherently unstable and therefore rare – in nanodroplets of helium. The work opens the way to creating other dianions and also to the wider study of helium as an unlikely electron donor. ‘Dianions are important building blocks in chemistry but are often unstable and difficult to make in isolation because of the strong Coulomb repulsion between the two electrons: bringing an electron to an anion has a very high energy barrier,’ explains Jan Verlet of Durham University in the UK, who was not involved in the research. The t...

Posted by: Tarun Kumar An international team of scientists has made a compound containing iridium in the +9 oxidation state – something that has been predicted by theoretical models but never formed experimentally before. Until now, the highest oxidation state any element was shown to exist at was +8. Iridium, with nine valence electrons, can exist in a variety of oxidation states – the most common under normal conditions are +3 and +4. In 2009, researchers made molecules of IrO – a form of iridium oxide where iridium was formally in the +8 state, with an outer shell electron configuration of 5d . Subsequent theoretical models suggested the last d-orbital electron could be 'removed' to create a stable iridium oxide cation where iridium could be counted as being in the +9 oxidation state. Now, a team led by Mingfei Zhou at Fudan University in China have successfully formed the [IrO ] cation in the gas phase using pulsed-laser vaporisation of an iri...

Posted by: Tarun Kumar Researchers have succeeded in cooling a molecular magnet to below 1K , the first time this has been achieved with a nanomagnet. The finding is important because it demonstrates experimentally that such low temperatures are achievable, opening the possibility of novel refrigeration systems. The work has also shed light on aspects of the nanomagnet’s quantum behaviour. Certain molecular systems exhibit unusual and exotic magnetic behaviour, driven by quantum mechanics, which might one day be harnessed for applications such as quantum computing. One phenomenon of interest is the magnetocaloric effect (MCE), whereby when an applied external magnetic field is removed from a magnetic material, there is a reduction in temperature. Eric McInnes, of the University of Manchester in the UK, and colleagues prepared a molecular cluster containing seven gadolinium centres, with six forming a hexagon and one sitting in the centre. ‘Each gadolini...

Posted by: Tarun Kumar Researchers believe they have confirmed the existence of a new type of chemical bond , first proposed some 30 years ago but never convincingly demonstrated because of the lack of experimental evidence and the relatively poor accuracy of the quantum chemistry methods that prevailed at the time. The new work also shows how substituting isotopes can result in fundamental changes in the nature of chemical bonding. In the early 1980s it was proposed that in certain transition states consisting of a very light atom sandwiched between two heavy ones, the system would be stabilised not by conventional van der Waal’s forces, but by vibrational bonding, with the light atom shuttling between its two neighbours. However, despite several groups searching for such a system none was demonstrated and the hunt fizzled out. Now, Jörn Manz , of the Free University of Berlin and Shanxi University in China, and colleagues believe they have the theoreti...

Posted by: Tarun Kumar Griffith University academics are challenging the foundations of quantum science with a radical new theory based on the existence of, and interactions between, parallel universes. In a paper published in the prestigious journal Physical Review X, Professor Howard Wiseman and Dr Michael Hall from Griffith's Centre for Quantum Dynamics, and Dr Dirk-Andre Deckert from the University of California, take interacting parallel worlds out of the realm of science fiction and into that of hard science. The team proposes that parallel universes really exist, and that they interact. That is, rather than evolving independently, nearby worlds influence one another by a subtle force of repulsion. They show that such an interaction could explain everything that is bizarre about quantum mechanics Quantum theory is needed to explain how the universe works at the microscopic scale, and is believed to apply to all matter. But it is notoriously difficult to ...

Posted by: Tarun Kumar Teleportation is no longer science fiction - thanks to quantum mechanics scientists can teleport information securely from one place to another. The latest episode of Quantum Around You explains how. When most people think about teleportation, they think about someone disappearing in one spot and appearing in another instantly, Star Trek style. While that would be extremely useful, so far scientists haven't found a way to do it. But what they have managed to do is teleport information, and in some ways that’s even cooler. Quantum teleportation, as its known, is a crucial area of research because it’s the only way humans can transmit information completely securely, with no risk of interception. To do this, scientists exploit the special characteristics of quantum entanglement. You may have heard of it before, but the latest episode of University of New South Wales (UNSW) 's Quantum Around You does an amazing job of breaking down t...

Posted by: Tarun Kumar An international team of researchers has developed the fastest network cable in the world. It can transmit 255 terabits per second, which is equivalent to all of the traffic flowing through the Internet at peak time. Right now, the fastest fibre optic line on the market is capable of transmitting 100 gigabits per second (gbps), which converts to 12.5 gigabytes per second (GBps). That’s pretty impressive, but an international team of researchers has decided that it really isn’t enough, and is developing a new fibre optic line that can carry a whopping 2,500 times more data. That means 255 terabits per second (tbps), which works out to be 32 terabytes per second (TBps). In other words, you could transfer 1 GB in 0.003 of a second. "255 tbps is mindbogglingly quick; it’s greater, by far, than the total capacity of every cable - hundreds of glass fibres - currently spanning the Atlantic Ocean,” says Sebastian Anthony at Extreme Tech. "In fac...