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Published

Pair of merging quasars at cosmic dawn      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Astronomers have discovered a double-record-breaking pair of quasars. Not only are they the most distant pair of merging quasars ever found, but also the only pair confirmed in the bygone era of the Universe's earliest formation.

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Investigating the origins of the crab nebula      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

A team of scientists used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to parse the composition of the Crab Nebula, a supernova remnant located 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus.

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Quantum entanglement measures Earth rotation      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers carried out a pioneering experiment where they measured the effect of the rotation of Earth on quantum entangled photons. The work represents a significant achievement that pushes the boundaries of rotation sensitivity in entanglement-based sensors, potentially setting the stage for further exploration at the intersection between quantum mechanics and general relativity.

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High-precision measurements challenge our understanding of Cepheids      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Scientists have clocked the speed of Cepheid stars -- 'standard candles' that help us measure the size of the universe -- with unprecedented precision, offering exciting new insights about them.

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Published

A liquid crystal source of photon pairs      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Spontaneous parametric down-conversion (SPDC), as a source of entangled photons, is of great interest for quantum physics and quantum technology, but so far it could be only implemented in solids. Researchers have demonstrated, for the first time, SPDC in a liquid crystal. The results open a path to a new generation of quantum sources: efficient and electric-field tunable.

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Pair plasmas found in deep space can now be generated in the lab      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers have experimentally generated high-density relativistic electron-positron pair-plasma beams by producing two to three orders of magnitude more pairs than previously reported.

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Watery planets orbiting dead stars may be good candidates for studying life -- if they can survive long enough      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

The small footprint and dim light of white dwarfs, remnants of stars that have burned through their fuel, may make excellent backdrops for studying planets with enough water to harbor life. The trick is spotting the shadow of a planet against a former star that has withered to a fraction of its size and finding that it's a planet that has kept its water oceans for billions of years even after riding out the star's explosive and violent final throes. A new study of the dynamics of white dwarf systems suggests that, in theory, some watery planets may indeed thread the celestial needles necessary to await discovery and closer scrutiny.

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Published

Mysterious mini-Neptunes      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

This study discovered mini-Neptunes around four red dwarfs using observations from a global network of ground-based telescopes and the TESS space telescope. These four mini-Neptunes are close to their parent stars, and the three of them are likely to be in eccentric orbits.

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Published

Quantum data assimilation: A quantum leap in weather prediction      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Data assimilation is an important mathematical discipline in earth sciences, particularly in numerical weather prediction (NWP). However, conventional data assimilation methods require significant computational resources. To address this, researchers developed a novel method to solve data assimilation on quantum computers, significantly reducing the computation time. The findings of the study have the potential to advance NWP systems and will inspire practical applications of quantum computers for advancing data assimilation.

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Published

Uncovering the nature of emergent magnetic monopoles      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

To understand the unique physical phenomena associated with the properties of magnetic hedgehogs and antihedgehogs, which behave as virtual magnetic monopoles and antimonopoles respectively, it is essential to study their intrinsic excitations. In a new study, researchers revealed the dynamical nature of collective excitation modes in hedgehog lattices in itinerant chiral magnets. Their findings serve as the foundation for studying the dynamics of emergent magnetic monopoles in magnets.

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Published

Wind from black holes may influence development of surrounding galaxies      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Clouds of gas in a distant galaxy are being pushed faster and faster -- at more than 10,000 miles per second -- out among neighboring stars by blasts of radiation from the supermassive black hole at the galaxy's center. It's a discovery that helps illuminate the way active black holes can continuously shape their galaxies by spurring on or snuffing out the development of new stars.

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Published

How do supermassive black holes get super massive?      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

By combining forefront X-ray observations with state-of-the-art supercomputer simulations of the buildup of galaxies over cosmic history, researchers have provided the best modeling to date of the growth of the supermassive black holes found in the centers of galaxies.

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Scientists spot more Milky Way-like galaxies in early universe      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Scientists are peering into the past and uncovering new clues about the early universe. Since light takes a long time to travel through space, they are now able to see how galaxies looked billions of years ago. The astronomers have discovered that spiral galaxies were more common in the early universe than previously thought. The scientists found that nearly 30% of galaxies have a spiral structure about 2 billion years after the universe formed. The discovery provides a significant update to the universe's origin story as previously told using data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

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New technique could help build quantum computers of the future      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Researchers have demonstrated a new method that could enable the large-scale manufacturing of optical qubits. The advance could bring us closer to a scalable quantum computer.

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Published

How did a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way come to be?      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Crater 2, located approximately 380,000 light years from Earth, is one of the largest satellite galaxies of the Milky Way. Extremely cold and with slow-moving stars, Crater 2 has low surface brightness. How this galaxy originated remains unclear. A team of physicists now offers an explanation.

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Published

Switching nanomagnets using infrared lasers      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Physicists have calculated how suitable molecules can be stimulated by infrared light pulses to form tiny magnetic fields. If this is also successful in experiments, the principle could be used in quantum computer circuits.

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Lone Star State: Tracking a low-mass star as it speeds across the Milky Way      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Astronomers have discovered a rare hypervelocity L subdwarf star racing through the Milky Way. More remarkably, this star may be on a trajectory that causes it to leave the Milky Way altogether.

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Hubble finds surprises around a star that erupted 40 years ago      (via sciencedaily.com)     Original source 

Astronomers have used new data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the retired SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) as well as archival data from other missions to revisit one of the strangest binary star systems in our galaxy -- 40 years after it burst onto the scene as a bright and long-lived nova. A nova is a star that suddenly increases its brightness tremendously and then fades away to its former obscurity, usually in a few months or years.