SAN ANTONIO — November 5, 2024 —Southwest Research Institute’s Dr. James Walker has received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Hypervelocity Impact Society. This honor recognizes individuals who have made a significant and lasting contribution to the field of hypervelocity science. Hypervelocity impact is typically viewed as impacts at speeds above 2 kilometers per second (4,475 miles per hour); for some materials, however, lower speed impacts display hypervelocity impact effects.

An advanced aqueous battery design incorporating photothermal technology enables rapid self-heating, making it well-suited for low-temperature environments. The battery uses photothermal current collectors to convert sunlight into heat, which is efficiently distributed throughout the system by high-conductivity suspension electrodes. This design mitigates common cold-climate challenges such as electrolyte freezing and slow ion transfer, ensuring stable performance in sub-zero conditions.

Materials called cubic rare earth hydrides could be superconductors in everyday conditions

To expand the potential use of diamond in semiconductor and quantum technologies, researchers are developing improved processes for growing the material at lower temperatures that won’t damage the silicon in computer chips. These advances include insights into creating protective hydrogen layers on quantum diamonds without damaging crucial properties like nitrogen-vacancy centers.

Using muon spin rotation at the Swiss Muon Source SmS, researchers have discovered that a quantum phenomenon known as time-reversal symmetry breaking occurs at the surface of the Kagome superconductor RbV₃Sb₅ at temperatures as high as 175 K. This sets a new record for the temperature at which time-reversal symmetry breaking is observed among Kagome systems.

“What?” we hear you ask. Kagome? Time reversal symmetry breaking? Don’t worry, we’re here to break it down. Read more to find out why this matters for future quantum technologies.

Based on an experiment at CERN, a collaboration led by the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, can predict hitherto unchartered changes in the shape of nuclei.

Professor Ruth Britto, from Trinity College Dublin’s School of Mathematics, will work with three colleagues in an international project that seeks to develop new algorithmic methods with applications in mathematics, particle physics and gravity, after the team secured nearly €10 million in winning a highly prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Synergy Grant. 

Prof. Britto will work with colleagues Prof. Francis Brown, University of Oxford; Prof. Axel Kleinschmidt, MPI for Gravitational Physics, Potsdam; and Prof. Oliver Schlotterer, Uppsala University, Sweden on their Mathematics of Scattering Amplitudes (MaScamp) project. The team will tackle longstanding computational bottlenecks and push the boundaries of numerous areas of theoretical physics, such as quantum field theory, gravity and string theory, as well as inspiring new mathematical research. 

“Scattering amplitudes” are used to produce theoretical predictions necessary in many areas of physics, but the process for deriving them is currently labour intensive and difficult to compute. In addition, the team will develop a widely applicable computer software implementation that will enable physicists to make previously inaccessible predictions for present and future experiments.