Bhupendra Singh Chundawat For the first time, researchers were able to study quantum interference in a three-level quantum system and thereby control the behavior of individual electron spins. To this end, they used a novel nanostructure, in which a quantum system is integrated into a nanoscale mechanical oscillator in form of a diamond cantilever. Nature Physics has published … Read more
Whereas ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) can observe very faint astronomical objects in great detail, when astronomers want to understand how the huge variety of galaxies come into being they must turn to a different sort of telescope with a much bigger field of view. The VLT Survey Telescope (VST) is such a telescope. It … Read more
The Icelandic Sagas tell of Erik the Red: exiled for murder in the late 10th century he fled to southwest Greenland, establishing its first Norse settlement. The colony took root, and by the mid-12th century there were two major settlements with a population of thousands. Greenland even gained its own bishop. By the end of … Read more
The compounds behind the perfumes and colognes you enjoy have been eliciting olfactory excitement since dinosaurs walked the Earth amid the first appearance of flowering plants, new research reveals. Oregon State University entomologist George Poinar Jr. and his son Greg, a fragrance collector, found evidence that floral scents originated in primitive flowers as far back … Read more
California has been dealing with record breaking fires for the past month and they aren’t even halfway through their fire season. The Mendocino Complex eclipsed last year’s Thomas fire which burned 283,800 acres last December 2017 in Ventura and Santa Barbara. Besides the huge and horrifying Mendocino Complex, there are four other extremely large fires … Read more
Bird communities in the Mojave Desert straddling the California/Nevada border have collapsed over the past 100 years, most likely because of lower rainfall due to climate change, according to a new University of California, Berkeley, study. A three-year survey of the area, which is larger than the state of New York, concludes that 30 percent, … Read more
The oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere was thanks, in part, to iron and silica particles in ancient seawater, according to a new study by geomicrobiologists at the University of Alberta. But these results solve only part of this ancient mystery. Early organisms called cyanobacteria produced oxygen through oxygenic photosynthesis, resulting in the oxygenation of Earth’s atmosphere. … Read more
