threelonmusketeers
@threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on Scientist creates 'mini‑universe' to measure time without a clock 1 week ago:
“Peace among worlds.”
- Comment on Scientist creates 'mini‑universe' to measure time without a clock 1 week ago:
How the mini-universe works
Barontini used a cloud of 24,000 ultracold atoms—just a few billionths of a degree above absolute zero—to create a hermetically sealed quantum system that mimics a simple “universe.”
Okay, so they didn’t create a new universe. They just sectioned off a portion of the universe we already have, and did experiments on it. Still neat, though.
- Submitted 1 week ago to astronomy@mander.xyz | 7 comments
- Comment on What would be a nice open source alternative to paint ? 2 weeks ago:
He’s the person who holds the exclusive rights to use vantablack in art.
- Comment on What would be a nice open source alternative to paint ? 2 weeks ago:
Didn’t the person who developed the “pinkest pink” allow everyone to use it… except for the guy who tried to restrict vantablack, as a reciprocal !fuckyouinparticular@lemmy.world?
Edit: LOL, that exact story is one of the top posts on that sub.
- Comment on 'The mirror passed with flying colors': NASA just took its last look at the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope before launch 2 weeks ago:
named a telescope after Nancy Grace?
No, Nancy (Grace) Roman: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nancy_Roman
astronomer who made important contributions to stellar classification and stellar motions
- 'The mirror passed with flying colors': NASA just took its last look at the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope before launchwww.space.com ↗Submitted 2 weeks ago to astronomy@mander.xyz | 4 comments
- Comment on Does anyone else use !ask when they're low on mobile data? Gotta love the ban 2 weeks ago:
- Post a question on !ask@piefed.social
- People answer your question.
- Ancient black hole sheds new light on Webb’s Little Red Dots - NASASpaceFlight.comwww.nasaspaceflight.com ↗Submitted 2 weeks ago to astronomy@mander.xyz | 0 comments
- Comment on Every Signal We've Ever Sent Into Space 4 weeks ago:
I wonder how extraterrestrials would react to the moon landing.
If they’re technologically advanced enough to build radio telescope of sufficient size to detect such weak signals, they’d probably think we were cute. Like how we feel when we observe a crow or a squirrel solve a puzzle or navigate an obstacle course.
- Comment on UW physicists win 2026 Breakthrough Prize for study of enigmatic particle 1 month ago:
enigmatic particle
Muon
- Comment on At just four nanometers thick, this metal starts behaving in a way physicists did not expect 1 month ago:
Not for me.
Article text
Researchers in the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have discovered a powerful new way to control the electronic behavior of a metal—by manipulating the atomic properties of materials where they meet. The study, published in Nature Communications, demonstrates that interfacial polarization can tune the surface work function of metallic ruthenium dioxide (RuO2) by more than 1 electron volt (eV)—a tiny amount of energy—simply by adjusting film thickness at the nanometer scale. “We often think of polarization as something that belongs to insulators or ferroelectrics—not metals,” said Bharat Jalan, professor and Shell Chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota. “Our work shows that, through careful interface design, you can stabilize polarization in a metallic system and use it as a knob to tune electronic properties. This opens an entirely new way of thinking about controlling metals.” This specific change is most powerful when the metal layer is about 4 nanometers thick—roughly the width of a single strand of DNA. At this precise size, the metal shifts from being “stretched” by the material underneath it to a more “relaxed” state. This transition proves that the physical way atoms are packed together has a direct, measurable impact on how the metal handles electricity. “This was surprising,” said Seung Gyo Jeong, first author of the study and a researcher in Jalan’s group. “We expected subtle interface effects, but not such a large and controllable change in work function. Being able to visualize the polar displacements at the atomic scale and connect them directly to electronic measurements was especially exciting.” Beyond fundamental physics, the findings could impact the design of next-generation electronic, catalytic and quantum devices. In addition to Jalan and Low, the research team included members from the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Texas A&M University, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology and the School of Physics at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.
The original paper also appears to be open access.
- Comment on Is federation down for anyone else? 1 month ago:
Yup, my two recent posts on !nasa@lemmy.world haven’t gone through yet.
kersploosh said they’d look into it.
- Comment on Oxygen made from Moon dust for first time 2 months ago:
[Blue Origin] released footage from inside the machine, which is housed at the Space Resources Centre of Excellence in Los Angeles, showing bubbles of oxygen emerging from the melted regolith.
The reactor relies on electrolysis – a chemical process that uses direct electric current to split compounds into their basic elements.
The Moon dust is melted to 1,600C and then a current passes through, which separates the metal and silicon ions from the oxygen ions to which they were bound.
The positive metal and silicon ions migrate to one electrode and the negative oxygen ions to the other, where the gas bubbles out and can be collected to be used as air or propellant. Metals sink to the bottom.
The process can separate oxygen from metals such as iron, aluminium, and silicon.
Electrolysis of molten regolith seems pretty neat!
- Comment on Australia struggling with oversupply of solar power 1 year ago:
or that the idea of turning them off is simply inconceivable (why would I turn mine off and let others make money)
If that’s the issue, it seems like time-of-use rates or smart metering could be an easy solution. If the price of electricity were negative during periods of oversupply, I bet people would figure out how to disconnect their solar panels pretty quickly. This would simultaneously incentivize energy storage projects.
- Comment on Australia struggling with oversupply of solar power 1 year ago:
This seems like a good problem to have, no? Just need some batteries or some interuptable industrial processes to absorb the excess.
- Submitted 1 year ago to energy@slrpnk.net | 7 comments