Tag Archive for 'Spin'

An artist’s depiction of the X-ray binary system 4U 1820-30 in the core of the globular cluster NGC 6624. Image credit: NASA.

NICER X-ray Telescope Discovers Fast-Spinning Neutron Star

Oct 29, 2024 by Enrico de Lazaro

A neutron star in the X-ray binary system 4U 1820-30 spins 716 times per second, making it one of the fastest-spinning objects ever observed, according...

Structure of SOT spin-LED: controlling the intensity of emitted light and charge current is the basis of transferring and processing information; by contrast, robust information storage and magnetic random-access memories are implemented using the spin of the carrier and the associated magnetization in ferromagnets; the missing link between the respective disciplines of photonics, electronics and spintronics is to modulate the circular polarization of the emitted light, rather than its intensity, by electrically controlled magnetization; Dainone et al. demonstrated that this missing link is established at room temperature and zero applied magnetic field in light-emitting diodes through the transfer of angular momentum between photons, electrons and ferromagnets. Image credit: Dainone et al., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07125-5.

Physicists Transfer Electron Spin to Photons

Mar 28, 2024 by News Staff

A team of physicists led by Dr. Yuan Lu from the Université de Lorraine’s Institut Jean Lamour has used electrical pulses to manipulate magnetic information...

Daly et al. found Sagittarius A* is spinning with 60% of the maximum possible rate of spin, a limit set by material not being able to travel faster than the speed of light. This image shows Sagittarius A* in X-ray light from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory. Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of Wisconsin / Bai et al.

Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole is Spinning Very Rapidly, New Research Shows

Feb 12, 2024 by News Staff

Sagittarius A*, the 4.3-million-solar-mass black hole that resides at the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, is spinning so quickly it is warping the spacetime...

Schematic representation of the tilted accretion disk model. The black hole spin axis is assumed to be straight up and down in this illustration. The jet direction points almost perpendicular to the disk plane. The misalignment between the black hole spin axis and disk rotation axis triggers the precession of the disk and jet. Image credit: Cui et al. / Intouchable Lab@Openverse / Zhejiang Lab.

Messier 87’s Supermassive Black Hole is Indeed Spinning, Astronomers Say

Sep 27, 2023 by Enrico de Lazaro

Messier 87 is a giant elliptical galaxy located some 53 million light-years away in the constellation of Virgo. In April 2019, astronomers from the Event...

An artist’s impression of the InSight lander on Mars. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Mars is Spinning Faster, Planetary Researchers Say

Aug 9, 2023 by News Staff

To track the Red Planet’s spin rate, planetary scientists relied on the Rotation and Interior Structure Experiment (RISE) onboard NASA’s InSight lander....

Like humans, great apes voluntarily seek and engage in altered experiences of self-perception and situational awareness. Image credit: We-o.

Great Apes Spin Themselves to Deliberately Make Themselves Dizzy, Scientists Say

Mar 17, 2023 by News Staff

Among animals, humans stand out in their consummate propensity to self-induce altered states of mind. Archaeology, history and ethnography show these activities...

An artist’s impression of a magnetar eruption. Image credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Astronomers Detect Spin-Down Glitch in Distant Magnetar

Jan 27, 2023 by News Staff

Magnetars are a special subset of the isolated neutron star family, with X-ray and radio emission mainly powered by the decay of their immense magnetic...

The phi meson is made of a strange quark and strange antiquark held together by the exchange of gluons. Image credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory.

Local Fluctuations in Nuclear Strong Force May Influence Spin Orientation of Particles

Jan 18, 2023 by News Staff

Physicists from the STAR Collaboration at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, an atom smasher at Brookhaven National Laboratory, have tracked pairs of...

This composite image of H1821+643 contains X-rays from Chandra (blue) that have been combined with radio data from NSF’s Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (red) and an optical image from the PanSTARRS telescope on Hawaii (white and yellow). Image credit: NASA / CXC / University of Cambridge / Sisk-Reynés et al. / NSF / NRAO / VLA / PanSTARRS.

Chandra Finds Slow-Rotating Supermassive Black Hole in Distant Quasar

Jul 1, 2022 by News Staff

A supermassive black hole in the center of H1821+643, a quasar about 3.4 billion light-years away from Earth, is rotating at about half the speed of light. This...

MeerKAT image of the PSR J0901-4046 region at 1.28 GHz. Image credit: Caleb et al., doi: 10.1038/s41550-022-01688-x.

Astronomers Discover Unusual Radio-Emitting Neutron Star

May 31, 2022 by News Staff

Radio-emitting neutron stars are objects with spin periods ranging from milliseconds to tens of seconds; as they age and spin more slowly, their radio...

Photons emitted near rotating black holes encode quantum information that can be measured by actual quantum information technology. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Astronomers Measure Mass and Spin of Intermediate-Mass Black Hole

Sep 17, 2021 by News Staff

The intermediate-mass black hole in question was caught in the act of swallowing a star, called a tidal disruption event. Dubbed 3XMM J215022.4-055108,...

This composite image, taken by JAXA’s Akatsuki spacecraft, shows Venus. Image credit: JAXA / ISAS / DARTS / Damia Bouic.

Radio Astronomers Measure Fundamental Properties of Venus

Apr 30, 2021 by News Staff

Astronomers using Earth-based radar observations have measured some of the fundamental properties of the planet Venus: the precise length of a day, the...

Siraj & Loeb explore the possibility that accretion flares resulting from the tidal disruption of small Oort Cloud bodies by a putative primordial black hole could power an observable optical signal that could be searched for with the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time. Image credit: Sci-News.com / Zdeněk Bardon / ESO.

Physicists Use Rapidly-Spinning Black Holes to Look for Dark Matter

Apr 14, 2021 by News Staff

Ultralight bosons — hypothetical particles with masses less than a billionth the mass of an electron — could be responsible for the Universe’s...

An artist’s rendition of a giant star in orbit around a low-mass black hole. Image credit: Sci-News.com.

Physicists Propose New Way to Extract Energy from Black Holes

Jan 19, 2021 by News Staff

Spinning black holes store rotational energy that can be extracted; when a black hole is immersed in an externally supplied magnetic field, reconnection...

Supermassive black holes at the cores of galaxies blast radiation and ultra-fast winds outward, as illustrated in this artist’s conception. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Milky Way’s Supermassive Black Hole is Spinning Slowly, Astronomers Say

Oct 28, 2020 by News Staff

Supermassive black holes are characterized by just two numbers: mass and spin, but have a critical influence on the formation and evolution of galaxies....

An artist’s impression of the dissolving of the electronic ‘traffic jam:’ the red atoms are different in their quantum nature and allow transport of electrons in their surroundings. Image credit: Berend Zwartsenberg.

Physicists Pioneer New Way to Turn Metal into Insulator

Feb 14, 2020 by News Staff

A team of physicists led by the University of British Columbia has demonstrated a novel way to precisely control electrical currents by leveraging the...

3D render of the semiconductor nanostructure. Image credit: Hermann Edlbauer.

Researchers Control Quantum State of Single Electron Using High-Frequency Sound Waves

Oct 15, 2019 by News Staff

An international team of scientists sent high-frequency sound waves across a modified semiconductor device to direct the behavior of a single electron,...

The nanoscale heat engine. Image credit: John Goold, Trinity College Dublin.

World’s Tiniest Engine Created

Aug 23, 2019 by News Staff

A team of researchers from Trinity College Dublin and the Universität Mainz has developed the world’s smallest engine. The nanoscale heat engine. Image...

The lattice structure of diamond contains a nitrogen-vacancy center with surrounding carbon nuclear spins; the carbon isotope 13C (green) is first entangled with an electron (blue) in the vacancy, which then wait for a photon (red) to absorb, resulting in quantum teleportation-based state transfer of the photon into the carbon memory. Image credit: Tsurumoto et al, doi: 10.1038/s42005-019-0158-0.

Physicists Teleport Quantum Information inside Diamond

Jul 4, 2019 by News Staff

A team of physicists at the Yokohama National University, Japan, has successfully demonstrated quantum teleportation — the remote exchange of quantum...