Amazing new science and engineering

[Freegrass]

I didn't know where to put this video, and I've been coming across a lot of new awesome engineering projects lately, so thought I'd make a separate thread for it.

This video is about a new way of building tunnels with robots. So cool, and they think it could speed up tunnel construction tenfold.

[Sebastian Jones]

Very cool!
It could perhaps have fitted into the Boring Company thread?

[morganism]

CERN’s $17-billion supercollider in question as top funder criticizes cost
Germany has raised doubts about the affordability of the Large Hadron Collider’s planned successor.

Plans for a 91-kilometre European particle accelerator are facing a serious challenge after the German government said that the project was unaffordable.

CERN, the European particle-physics laboratory outside Geneva, Switzerland, has embarked on a detailed feasibility study for the first stage of its Future Circular Collider (FCC). This stage, known as FCC-ee, would involve a machine to smash electrons together with antielectrons, and could cost some 15 billion Swiss francs (US$17 billion) by the time it is completed in the mid-2040s. The initial phase of that study, focusing on the technical aspects, had a positive outcome, CERN said in February.

But Germany, which already contributes €267 million (US$290 million) annually to CERN — some 20% of the lab’s budget — cannot afford to spend more, said Eckart Lilienthal of the country’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) on 23 May, at a workshop for particle physicists in Bonn, Germany.

CERN’s supercollider plan: $17-billion ‘Higgs factory’ would dwarf LHC

The preliminary cost estimates for the FCC-ee “are subject to a large number of uncertainties, the effects of which are still largely unknown”, a BMBF spokesperson told Nature. “The financing plan is extremely vague and requires a high level of commitment from external partners, which is neither assured nor even in prospect at the present time. Given these conditions, Germany cannot support funding of the project at this point.”
(more)

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01671-8

[Freegrass]

And then there is this:

How light can vaporize water without the need for heat


It's the most fundamental of processes -- the evaporation of water from the surfaces of oceans and lakes, the burning off of fog in the morning sun, and the drying of briny ponds that leaves solid salt behind. Evaporation is all around us, and humans have been observing it and making use of it for as long as we have existed.

And yet, it turns out, we've been missing a major part of the picture all along.

In a series of painstakingly precise experiments, a team of researchers at MIT has demonstrated that heat isn't alone in causing water to evaporate. Light, striking the water's surface where air and water meet, can break water molecules away and float them into the air, causing evaporation in the absence of any source of heat.

The astonishing new discovery could have a wide range of significant implications. It could help explain mysterious measurements over the years of how sunlight affects clouds, and therefore affect calculations of the effects of climate change on cloud cover and precipitation. It could also lead to new ways of designing industrial processes such as solar-powered desalination or drying of materials.

...

A newfound phenomenon

The new work builds on research reported last year, which described this new "photomolecular effect" but only under very specialized conditions: on the surface of specially prepared hydrogels soaked with water. In the new study, the researchers demonstrate that the hydrogel is not necessary for the process; it occurs at any water surface exposed to light, whether it's a flat surface like a body of water or a curved surface like a droplet of cloud vapor.

Because the effect was so unexpected, the team worked to prove its existence with as many different lines of evidence as possible. In this study, they report 14 different kinds of tests and measurements they carried out to establish that water was indeed evaporating -- that is, molecules of water were being knocked loose from the water's surface and wafted into the air -- due to the light alone, not by heat, which was long assumed to be the only mechanism involved.

One key indicator, which showed up consistently in four different kinds of experiments under different conditions, was that as the water began to evaporate from a test container under visible light, the air temperature measured above the water's surface cooled down and then leveled off, showing that thermal energy was not the driving force behind the effect.

Other key indicators that showed up included the way the evaporation effect varied depending on the angle of the light, the exact color of the light, and its polarization. None of these varying characteristics should happen because at these wavelengths, water hardly absorbs light at all -- and yet the researchers observed them.

The effect is strongest when light hits the water surface at an angle of 45 degrees. It is also strongest with a certain type of polarization, called transverse magnetic tion. And it peaks in green light -- which, oddly, is the color for which water is most transparent and thus interacts the least.

Chen and his co-researchers have proposed a physical mechanism that can explain the angle and polarization dependence of the effect, showing that the photons of light can impart a net force on water molecules at the water surface that is sufficient to knock them loose from the body of water. But they cannot yet account for the color dependence, which they say will require further study.

...

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2024/04/240424160652.htm

Two Bit Da Vinci just posted a great video about this. Sounds like an important discovery.

[Freegrass]

This used to be my job for a few years when I worked at BASF in Antwerp. I really loved working with cranes, as a rigger. So when I saw this video just now, I was blown away. This crane is HUGE!!! OMG. The biggest crane I worked with was 800 ton. That was the biggest mobile crane at the time. This one is 5000. 

[morganism]

Gravitational wave researchers cast new light on Antikythera mechanism mystery



Techniques developed to analyse the ripples in spacetime detected by one of the 21st century’s most sensitive pieces of scientific equipment have helped cast new light on the function of the oldest known analogue computer.

Techniques developed to analyse the ripples in spacetime detected by one of the 21st century’s most sensitive pieces of scientific equipment have helped cast new light on the function of the oldest known analogue computer.
 
Astronomers from the University of Glasgow have used statistical modelling techniques developed to analyse gravitational waves to establish the likely number of holes in one of the broken rings of the Antikythera mechanism – an ancient artifact which was showcased in the movie Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
 
While the movie version enabled the intrepid archaeologist to travel through time, the Glasgow team’s results provide fresh evidence that one of the components of the Antikythera mechanism was most likely used to track the Greek lunar year. They also offer new insight into the remarkable craftsmanship of the ancient Greeks.

Decades of subsequent research and analysis have established that the mechanism dates from the second century BCE and functioned as a kind of hand-operated mechanical computer. Exterior dials connected to the internal gears allowed users to predict eclipses and calculate the astronomical positions of planets on any given date with an accuracy unparalleled by any other known contemporary device.
 
In 2020, new X-ray images of one of the mechanism’s rings, known as the calendar ring, revealed fresh details of regularly spaced holes that sit beneath the ring. Since the ring was broken and incomplete, however, it wasn’t clear how just how many holes were there originally. Initial analysis by Antikythera researcher Chris Budiselic and colleagues suggested it was likely somewhere between 347 and 367.
 
Now, in a new paper published today in the Horological Journal, the Glasgow researchers describe how they used two statistical analysis techniques to reveal new details about the calendar ring. They show that the ring is vastly more likely to have had 354 holes, corresponding to the lunar calendar, than 365 holes, which would have followed the Egyptian calendar. The analysis also shows that 354 holes is hundreds of times more probable than a 360-hole ring, which previous research had suggested as a possible count.
 
Professor Graham Woan, of the University of Glasgow’s School of Physics & Astronomy, is one of the authors of the paper. He said: “Towards the end of last year, a colleague pointed to me to data acquired by YouTuber Chris Budiselic, who was looking to make a replica of the calendar ring and was investigating ways to determine just how many holes it contained.
 
“It struck me as an interesting problem, and one that I thought I might be able to solve in a different way during the Christmas holidays, so I set about using some statistical techniques to answer the question.”
 
Professor Woan used a technique called Bayesian analysis, which uses probability to quantify uncertainty based on incomplete data, to calculate the likely number of holes in the mechanism using the positions of the surviving holes and the placement of the ring’s surviving six fragments. His results showed strong evidence that the mechanism’s calendar ring contained either 354 or 355 holes.
 
At the same time, one of Professor Woan’s colleagues at the University’s Institute for Gravitational Research, Dr Joseph Bayley, had also heard about the problem. He adapted techniques used by their research group to analyse the signals picked up by the LIGO gravitational wave detectors, which measure the tiny ripples in spacetime, caused by massive astronomical events like the collision of black holes, as they pass through the Earth, to scrutinise the calendar ring.
 
The Markov Chain Monte Carlo and nested sampling methods Woan and Bayley used provided a comprehensive probabilistic set of results, again suggested that the ring most likely contained 354 or 355 holes in a circle of radius 77.1mm, with an uncertainty of about 1/3 mm. It also reveals that the holes were precisely positioned with extraordinary accuracy, with an average radial variation of just 0.028mm between each hole.
 
Bayley, a co-author of the paper, is a research associate at the School of Physics & Astronomy. He said: “Previous studies had suggested that the calendar ring was likely to have tracked the lunar calendar, but the dual techniques we’ve applied in this piece of work greatly increase the likelihood that this was the case.
 
“It’s given me a new appreciation for the Antikythera mechanism and the work and care that Greek craftspeople put into making it – the precision of the holes’ positioning would have required highly accurate measurement techniques and an incredibly steady hand to punch them.
 
Professor Woan added: “It’s a neat symmetry that we’ve adapted techniques we use to study the universe today to understand more about a mechanism that helped people keep track of the heavens nearly two millennia ago.
 
“We hope that our findings about the Antikythera mechanism, although less supernaturally spectacular than those made by Indiana Jones, will help deepen our understanding of how this remarkable device was made and used by the Greeks.”
 
The paper, titled ‘An Improved Calendar Ring Hole-Count for the Antikythera Mechanism: A Fresh Analysis’, is published in Horological Journal.

https://www.gla.ac.uk/news/headline_1086643_en.html

[morganism]

Raising the energy state of an atom’s nucleus using a laser

Nuclear spectroscopy breakthrough could rewrite the fundamental constants of nature.

Recently, Eric Hudson and his team at UCLA successfully embedded a thorium atom within a highly transparent crystal and used lasers to stimulate the thorium nucleus to absorb and emit photons, akin to the behavior of electrons in an atom.

The improved technology allows for measurements of time, gravity, and other fields with significantly higher accuracy than current measurements using atomic electrons. This is because the influence of various environmental factors on atomic electrons affects their absorption and emission of photons, limiting their accuracy. In contrast, neutrons and protons are tightly bound within the nucleus and experience minimal environmental disturbance.

With this new technology, scientists may have the ability to investigate potential variations in fundamental constants, such as the fine-structure constant, which determines the strength of the force holding atoms together.

Astronomical clues indicate that the fine-structure constant may not be constant throughout the universe or across different points in time. The fine-structure constant’s precise measurement using the nuclear clock has the potential to fundamentally redefine some of the most basic laws of nature.

“Nuclear forces are so strong it means the energy in the nucleus is a million times stronger than what you see in the electrons, which means that if the fundamental constants of nature deviate, the resulting changes in the nucleus are much bigger and more noticeable, making measurements orders of magnitude more sensitive,” Hudson said. “Using a nuclear clock for these measurements will provide the most sensitive test of ‘constant variation’ to date, and it is likely no experiment for the next 100 years will rival it.”

Hudson’s team put forth the initial proposal for a set of experiments aimed at exciting thorium-229 nuclei embedded in crystals using a laser. They have dedicated the past 15 years to achieving the recently published findings. The challenge lies in exciting neutrons in the atomic nucleus with laser light due to their interaction with surrounding electrons, which readily respond to light and can diminish the number of photons capable of reaching the nucleus. When a particle elevates its energy level, such as through photon absorption, it is described as being in an “excited” state.

The researchers at UCLA placed thorium-229 atoms inside a transparent crystal that is abundant in fluorine. Fluorine has a strong ability to create bonds with other atoms, trapping the atoms and revealing the nucleus like a fly caught in a spider’s web. The electrons were tightly bound to the fluorine, requiring a high amount of energy to excite them, which allowed low-energy light to reach the nucleus.

The thorium nuclei were able to absorb these photons and emit them back, enabling the detection and measurement of nucleus excitation. By altering the photon energy and observing the frequency of nucleus excitation, the team managed to determine the energy of the excited nuclear state.

“We have never been able to drive nuclear transitions like this with a laser before,” Hudson said. “If you hold the thorium in place with a transparent crystal, you can talk to it with light.”

Hudson expressed that the new technology has potential applications in fields requiring extreme precision in timekeeping, such as sensing, communications, and navigation. Current electron-based atomic clocks are large, requiring vacuum chambers to trap atoms and cooling equipment. In contrast, a thorium-based nuclear clock would be much smaller, more robust, more portable, and more accurate.

In addition to commercial uses, the new nuclear spectroscopy has the potential to unveil some of the universe’s greatest mysteries. Precise measurement of an atom’s nucleus provides a new approach to understanding its properties and interactions with energy and the environment. As a result, scientists will be able to test some of their most fundamental concepts about matter, energy, and the laws of space and time.

The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

“For many decades, increasingly precise measurements of fundamental constants have allowed us to better understand the universe at all scales and subsequently develop new technologies that grow our economy and strengthen our national security,” said Denise Caldwell, acting assistant director of NSF’s Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate, which provided funding for the research. “This nucleus-based technique could one day allow scientists to measure some fundamental constants so precisely that we might have to stop calling them ‘constant.'”

https://www.techexplorist.com/raising-energy-state-atoms-nucleus-using-laser/85800/

....

(effect only lasts a few seconds, but wonder if this could be a cheap and small grav wave detector too. Dark matter background hum would be very interesting too...)

....

Laser Excitation of the 229Th Nuclear Isomeric Transition in a Solid-State Host.

LiSrAlF6 crystals doped with Th229 are used in a laser-based search for the nuclear isomeric transition. Two spectroscopic features near the nuclear transition energy are observed. The first is a broad excitation feature that produces redshifted fluorescence that decays with a timescale of a few seconds. The second is a narrow, laser-linewidth-limited spectral feature at 148.382 19(4)stat(20)sys  nm [2020 407.3(5)stat(30)sys  GHz] that decays with a lifetime of 568(13)stat(20)sys  s. This feature is assigned to the excitation of the Th229 nuclear isomeric state, whose energy is found to be 8.355 733(2)stat(10)sys  eV in Th229:LiSrAlF6.

[morganism]

DARPA Brings Next-Gen US Microelectronics Manufacturing Closer to Reality

New agreement to establish domestic 3DHI production capability

The Next-Generation Microelectronics Manufacturing program, known as NGMM, aims to unlock accessible prototyping for the chips of tomorrow with a new agreement to establish the first-ever national center for advancing U.S.-based microelectronics manufacturing.

DARPA will work with the University of Texas at Austin and its existing Texas Institute for Electronics research center to establish a consortium to support 3D heterogeneous integration (3DHI) microsystems research, development, and low-volume production. Building on the program’s Phase 0 foundational research, NGMM’s next two phases focus on a domestic capability that comprehensively addresses key challenges and strengthens U.S. technological leadership and innovation.

“We’re holistically addressing tomorrow’s challenges and solutions. That starts with an onshore, open-access center for 3DHI microsystems prototyping and pilot line manufacturing,” said Dr. Whitney Mason, director of DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office. “This accessibility to researchers from academia, government, and industry will break down silos and foster an ecosystem that enhances the U.S. competitive advantage.”

The consortium will leverage partnerships spanning organizations – across the defense industrial base, domestic foundries, vendors and startups, designers and manufacturers, members of academia, and other stakeholders – to achieve a shared vision of national and economic security.

DARPA’s work in microelectronics R&D align with, but are separate from, broader government initiatives to secure microchip supply chains. NGMM is funded by the Defense Department budget, rather than the CHIPS and Science Act of 2022 aimed at near-term domestic semiconductor manufacturing. However, cross-collaboration remains integral to building onshore capacity. For DOD, that includes programmatic investment in over-the-horizon technologies for both national security and commercial applications – a key goal for NGMM.

“We can’t overstate need for constant and unwavering forward momentum in microelectronics capabilities. The CHIPS Act’s near-term emphasis can help reinforce NGMM’s work toward realizing the next major wave of microelectronics innovation,” Mason said. “Supply chain resilience and reducing overseas reliance requires working together as a community, with both traditional and non-traditional members. That’s what this program is about.”

https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2024-07-18

[morganism]

NIST Releases First 3 Finalized Post-Quantum Encryption Standards       August 13, 2024

    NIST has released a final set of encryption tools designed to withstand the attack of a quantum computer.
    These post-quantum encryption standards secure a wide range of electronic information, from confidential email messages to e-commerce transactions that propel the modern economy.
    NIST is encouraging computer system administrators to begin transitioning to the new standards as soon as possible.

(after releasing a backdoored/flawed algo last go-round, lets see if folks pick this apart again. IBM submissions, i heard...)


https://www.schneier.com/

[morganism]

 Electrostatic Motors Reach the Macro Scale   (this could be huge in the drone space.)

It turns out that Benjamin Franklin was on to something in 1747

(...)
For decades, however, engineers have been tantalized by the virtues of motors based on an entirely different principle: electrostatics. In some applications, these motors could offer an overall boost in efficiency ranging from 30 percent to close to 100 percent, according to experiment-based analysis. And, perhaps even better, they would use only cheap, plentiful materials, rather than the rare-earth elements, special steel alloys, and copious quantities of copper found in conventional motors.

“Electrification has its sustainability challenges,” notes Daniel Ludois, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. But “an electrostatic motor doesn’t need windings, doesn’t need magnets, and it doesn’t need any of the critical materials that a conventional machine needs.”
(more)
Their current prototype is capable of delivering torque as high as 18 newton meters and power at 360 watts (0.5 horsepower)—characteristics they claim are “the highest torque and power measurements for any rotating electrostatic machine.”

The results are reported in a paper, “Synchronous Electrostatic Machines for Direct Drive Industrial Applications,” to be presented at the 2024 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition, which will be held from 20 to 24 October in Phoenix, Ariz. In the paper, Ludois and four colleagues describe an electrostatic machine they built, which they describe as the first such machine capable of “driving a load performing industrial work, in this case, a constant-pressure pump system.”
(snio)
“Electrostatic motors are amazing once you get below about the millimeter scale, and they get better and better as they get smaller and smaller,” says Philip Krein, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “There’s a crossover at which they are better than magnetic motors.”

For larger motors, however, the opposite is true. “At macro scale, electromagnetism wins, is the textbook answer,” notes Ludois. “Well, we’ve decided to challenge that wisdom.”

For this quest he and his team found inspiration in a lesser-known accomplishment of one of the United States’ founding fathers. “The fact is that Benjamin Franklin built and demonstrated a macroscopic electrostatic motor in 1747,” says Krein. “He actually used the motor as a rotisserie to grill a turkey on a riverbank in Philadelphia”
(snip)
Let’s unpack that. A conventional electric motor works because a rotating magnetic field, set up in a fixed structure called a stator, engages with the magnetic field of another structure called a rotor, causing that rotor to spin. The force involved is called the Lorentz force. But what makes an electrostatic machine go ‘round is an entirely different force, called the Coulomb force. This is the attractive or repulsive physical force between opposite or like electrical charges.

Overcoming the Air Gap Problem

C-Motive’s motor uses nonconductive rotor and stator disks on which have been deposited many thin, closely spaced conductors radiating outward from the disk’s center, like spokes in a bicycle wheel. Precisely timed electrostatic charges applied to these “spokes” create two waves of voltage, one in the stator and another in the rotor. The phase difference between the rotor and stator waves is timed and controlled to maximize the torque in the rotor caused by this sequence of attraction and repulsion among the spokes. To further wring as much torque as possible, the machine has half a dozen each of rotors and stators, alternating and stacked like compact discs on a spindle.
(snip)
A dielectric with high permittivity concentrates the electric field between oppositely charged electrodes, enabling greater energy to be stored in the space between them. After screening hundreds of candidates over several years, the C-Motive team succeeded in producing an organic liquid dielectric with low viscosity and a relative permittivity in the low 20s. For comparison, the relative permittivity of air is 1.

Another challenge was supplying the 2,000 volts their machine needs to operate. High voltages are necessary to create the intense electric fields between the rotors and stators. To precisely control these fields, C-Motive was able to take advantage of the availability of inexpensive and stupendously capable power electronics, according to Ludois. For their most recent motor, they developed a drive system based on readily available 4.5-kilovolt insulated-gate bipolar transistors, but the rate of advancement in power semiconductors means they have many attractive choices here, and will have even more in the near future.

Ludois reports that C-Motive is now testing a 750-watt (1 hp) motor in applications with potential customers. Their next machines will be in the range of 750 to 3,750 watts (1 to 5 hp), he adds. These will be powerful enough for an expanded range of applications in industrial automation, manufacturing, and heating, ventilating, and air conditioning.
(fin)

https://spectrum.ieee.org/electrostatic-motor

[morganism]

Japan on edge of EUV lithography chip-making revolution
(...)
To paraphrase OIST, this is how it works: In traditional optical systems such as cameras, telescopes and older lithography tools, the aperture and lenses are symmetric to the central axis – i.e., arranged in a straight line. This configuration enables high optical performance with minimal aberrations, resulting in high-quality images.

However, this is not possible with extremely short-wave EUV light, which is absorbed by most materials and cannot travel through transparent lenses. For this reason, in EUV lithography systems, the light is directed using crescent-shaped mirrors that reflect the rays in an asymmetrical zigzag pattern.

This method “sacrifices important optical properties and reduces the overall performance of the system,” according to OIST.

To eliminate this problem, Professor Shintake aligned two axis-symmetric mirrors in a straight line and used a total of only four mirrors instead of ten.

Because highly absorbent EUV light weakens by 40% with each reflection, only about 1% of the energy from the light source reaches the wafer when bounced off ten mirrors while more than 10% does when only four mirrors are used.

This makes it possible to use a smaller EUV light source with only one-tenth the power.

Over 20 years ago, Phil Ware, an American engineer working for Japan’s Canon, told a technology seminar at the Semicon West industry exhibition in San Francisco that the problem with EUV lithography was that its power consumption was measured in “HDEs – Hoover Dam Equivalents.”

If Professor Shintake’s design works as intended, this problem may finally be solved. “Like the egg of Columbus, [it] may seem impossible at first glance, but once solved, it becomes very simple,” Shintake said about the problem of EUV power consumption.

As for the projector that transfers the circuit pattern on the photomask to the silicon wafer, OIST’s design consists of only two reflective mirrors, like an astronomical telescope.

“This configuration is unimaginably simple,” Shintake says, “given that conventional projectors require at least six reflective mirrors. This was made possible by carefully rethinking the aberration correction theory of optics.”

https://asiatimes.com/2024/08/japan-on-edge-of-euv-lithography-chip-making-revolution/

[morganism]

Electrified thermochemical reaction systems with high-frequency metamaterial reactors

Context & scale
The chemical industry is challenging to decarbonize because of its need for high-grade heat, which is typically supplied by combusting fossil fuels. Our research introduces metamaterial reactors as a new electrified heating platform for decarbonizing thermochemical processes. With proper co-design of the reactor metamaterial baffle with power electronics, volumetric heating is achieved with near-unity conversion of electricity to internal heat.
Reactor scaling to industrially relevant sizes can be readily achieved by customization of the metamaterial baffle. As reactor size increases, the total system efficiency naturally increases and approaches the efficiency of the power electronics (>90%). Our reactor additionally features enhanced heat transfer properties that can enable operation under process-intensified conditions, yielding significant opportunities to reduce reactor size and capital costs in scaled systems.
Highlights
•
A metamaterial reactor powered using high-frequency magnetic induction is implemented
•
Volumetric heating is realized by metamaterial baffle and power electronics co-design
•
The conversion efficiency of electricity to internal reactor heat is over 85%
•
Near-equilibrium conversion of the reverse water-gas shift reaction is demonstrated
Summary
We present metamaterial reactors as an innovative class of electrified thermochemical reactors that utilize high-frequency magnetic induction of an open-lattice metamaterial baffle to generate volumetric heat. A central design feature is the modeling of the metamaterial as an effective electrically conducting medium, abstracting its detailed microscopic geometry to a macroscopic susceptor description suitable for reactor-scale electromagnetic characterization. Co-design of the power electronics with the metamaterial provides design rules for efficient and volumetric heating, including the requirement for high induction frequencies. We implement lab-scale reactors with ceramic metamaterial baffles (39 mm in diameter) and megahertz-frequency power amplifiers to perform the reverse water-gas shift reaction, demonstrating reactor operation with near-unity heating efficiencies and radially uniform heating profiles. These clean energy concepts provide a broader context for structured reactors in which volumetric internal heating and complementary reaction engineering properties are collectively tailored to enable ideal operation regimes.
(more, and pdf)

https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(24)00346-5?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2542435124003465%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

[morganism]

How Origami-Inspired Phased Arrays are Reshaping the Future of Antennas

Folding antennas into different shapes to create near infinite radiation patterns.
(...)
To freshen things up a bit, I decided to look up latest research from the 2024 International Microwave Symposium, the premier conference in the field of RF and Microwave engineering. What I found was an idea so interesting that I felt compelled to write about it.

As it turns out, there is a new class of RF circuits that draw inspiration from Origami, the Japanese1 art of paper folding. Just like you can make different shapes out of paper, you can physically reconfigure circuits to operate differently.

Hani Al Jamal, a PhD student, and a team of researchers led by Prof. Manos Tentzeris at Georgia Tech, authored a paper titled Beyond Planar: An Additively Manufactured, Origami-Inspired Shape-Changing, and RFIC-Based Phased Array for Near-Limitless Radiation Pattern Reconfigurability in 5G/mm-Wave Applications, which won the Best Paper Award at the 2024 International Microwave Symposium.

This paper describes a phased array antenna from which you can synthesize any radiation pattern. It uses both electronic and physical modifications to achieve this.

Special thanks to Hani for providing additional information, pictures and for reviewing a draft of this post.

In this post, we will get into the details of exactly how this works.

    Need for Adaptive RF Circuits

    Eggbox Phased Array

    Interconnect Systems

    Practical Applications

Need for Adaptive RF Circuits

Fixed RF systems are not optimum for changing RF environments. It is preferable if RF blocks are context aware and adjust to give optimal overall system performance. Previously, reconfigurability meant that components such as antennas were mounted on large servos and moved about to point to the source of the signal. In fact, radio astronomers continue to build big parabolic dishes on train tracks and move them about to make various configurations in order to receive faint signals from space. This is often too slow for modern applications.

Engineers soon realized that they could achieve the same outcomes by steering antennas with phased arrays. Instead of shifting the antennas, they could achieve the same result by adjusting the phase shift between separate antennas. The constructive and destructive interference between the array's antennas helped to steer the radiated beam without physically moving it. Because everything is electronic, steering antennas takes only a few microseconds.

If you need an introduction to antenna and phased arrays, check out my earlier posts.

What if we could combine physical alteration and electronic beam steering? This is an excellent use for foldable phased arrays, as it allows for slow, origami-like physical transformations, followed by quick directional changes via electronic beam steering. Can we create any antenna pattern we desire and then direct the beam?

Eggbox Phased Array

The phased array antenna in the Georgia Tech research paper was inspired by the design of an eggbox made of paper. It's just a grid of upside-down square-base pyramids with an open base for eggs. The research study describes how one of these open-base pyramids might be utilized as a foundation for bigger reconfigurable arrays. When looking at just one of them, the unit cell resembles an origami fortune teller, which my children frequently build.

A 4-element phased array antenna is installed on all four faces of this eggbox-unit/fortune-teller, and the beam is steered in 11.25° increments by a Qorvo AWMF-0108 28 GHz beamformer RFIC.

This unit cell, like an origami design, may be folded across either axis or laid flat, allowing you to physically change the direction of radiation. Because the phased array antenna on each face can steer the beam further, the antenna can be utilized to generate almost any radiation pattern using a combination of physical folding and electronic beam steering.

Here are some ways to shape the radiated beam from this antenna.

    360° azimuth coverage: In its pyramidal arrangement, activate only one phased array and direct the beam to its maximum value before switching to the phased array on the next face. This ensures a continuous handoff between multiple phased arrays on the faces while also providing 360° azimuth beam steering.

    Bending along an axis: Fold the array along any one axis, and as the fold angle reduces the radiation pattern changes from a four-beam to a two-beam configuration, as illustrated in the image.

    Arbitrary shaped beams: Fold the array by an arbitrary angle across either axis, turn on anywhere from a single phased array to all four phased arrays, apply digital weights to the phased array to control both amplitude and phase to antenna elements (even gain tapering to control grating lobes), and you can virtually synthesize any radiation pattern you are looking for.
(more)

https://www.viksnewsletter.com/p/origami-inspired-phased-arrays

....

Beyond Planar: An Additively Manufactured, Origami-Inspired Shape-Changing, and RFIC-Based Phased Array for Near-Limitless Radiation Pattern Reconfigurability in 5G/mm-Wave Applications

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/10531260

This letter presents an origami-inspired phased array operating at 28 GHz, with on-structure beamformer RFICs and a flexible feeding network that utilizes a foldable hinge interconnect. The mm-wave origami phased array therein operates at a substantially smaller scale compared with prior literature and achieves remarkable integration with on-structure beamforming circuitry. It introduces the first additively manufactured fully foldable hinge interconnect, exhibiting near-constant insertion loss across various folding angles and cycles. Leveraging origami principles, the phased array offers near 360° continuous beam steering in the azimuth plane with reconfigurable multibeam or quasi-isotropic radiation patterns. Additive manufacturing techniques, including 3-D and inkjet printing, are used to fabricate a low-cost and lightweight prototype. Measurements demonstrating near-limitless pattern reconfigurability due to mechanical shape change and electrical beam steering signify a significant leap in overcoming challenges faced by traditional phased arrays.

Published in: IEEE Microwave and Wireless Technology Letters ( Volume: 34, Issue: 6, June 2024)
Page(s): 841 - 844
Date of Publication: 16 May 2024
ISSN Information:
DOI: 10.1109/LMWT.2024.3396026

[morganism]

(a thread that started out as a Xbox repair discussion, gets into an amazing explanation of those chip capacitors...)

https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/113084315488845513

[morganism]

 New organic thermoelectric device that can harvest energy at room temperature

Researchers have succeeded in developing a framework for organic thermoelectric power generation from ambient temperature and without a temperature gradient


Fukuoka, Japan—Researchers have developed a new organic thermoelectric device that can harvest energy from ambient temperature. While thermoelectric devices have several uses today, hurdles still exist to their full utilization. By combining the unique abilities of organic materials, the team succeeded in developing a framework for thermoelectric power generation at room temperature without any temperature gradient. Their findings were published in the journal Nature Communications.

Thermoelectric devices, or thermoelectric generators, are a series of energy-generating materials that can convert heat into electricity so long as there is a temperature gradient—where one side of the device is hot and the other side is cool. Such devices have been a significant focus of research and development for their potential utility in harvesting waste heat from other energy-generating methods.

Perhaps the most well-known use of thermoelectric generators is in space probes such as the Mars Curiosity rover or the Voyager probe. These machines are powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators, where the heat generated from radioactive isotopes provides the temperature gradient for the thermoelectric devices to power their instruments. However, due to issues including high production cost, use of hazardous materials, low energy efficiency, and the necessity of relatively high temperatures, thermoelectric devices remain underutilized today.

“We were investigating ways to make a thermoelectric device that could harvest energy from ambient temperature. Our lab focuses on the utility and application of organic compounds, and many organic compounds have unique properties where they can easily transfer energy between each other.” explains Professor Chihaya Adachi of Kyushu University’s Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics Research (OPERA) who led the study. “A good example of the power of organic compounds can be found in OLEDs or organic solar cells.”

The key was to find compounds that work well as charge transfer interfaces, meaning that they can easily transfer electrons between each other. After testing various materials, the team found two viable compounds: copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) and copper hexadecafluoro phthalocyanine (F16CuPc).

“To improve the thermoelectric property of this new interface, we also incorporated fullerenes and BCP,” continues Adachi. “These are known to be good facilitators of electron transport. Adding these compounds together significantly enhanced the device’s power. In the end, we had an optimized device with a 180 nm layer of CuPc, 320 nm of F16CuPc, 20 nm of fullerene, and 20 nm of BCP.”

The optimized device had an open-circuit voltage of 384 mV, a short-circuit current density of 1.1 μA/cm2, and a maximum output of 94 nW/cm2. Moreover, all these results were achieved at room temperature without the use of a temperature gradient.

“There have been considerable advances in the development of thermoelectric devices, and our new proposed organic device will certainly help move things forward,” concludes Adachi. “We would like to continue working on this new device and see if we can optimize it further with different materials. We can even likely achieve a higher current density if we increase the device’s area, which is unusual even for organic materials. It just goes to show you that organic materials hold amazing potential.”
(fin)

https://www.kyushu-u.ac.jp/en/researches/view/299/

....

Organic thermoelectric device utilizing charge transfer interface as the charge generation by harvesting thermal energy

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-52047-5


We propose an organic thermoelectric device having a new power generation mechanism that extracts small-scale thermal energy, i.e., a few tens of millielectronvolts, at room temperature without a temperature gradient. We demonstrate a new operating mechanism based on an organic thermoelectric power generation architecture that uses the charge separation capabilities of organic charge transfer (CT) interfaces composed of copper (II) phthalocyanine and copper (II) 1,2,3,4,8,9,10,11,15,16,17,18,22,23,24,25-hexadecafluoro-29H,31H-phthalocyanine as the donor and acceptor, respectively. With the optimized device architecture, values of open-circuit voltage VOC of 384 mV, short-circuit current density JSC of 1.1 μA/cm2, and maximum output Pmax of 94 nW/cm2 are obtained. The temperature characteristics of the thermoelectric properties yield activation energy values of approximately 20–60 meV, confirming the low-level thermal energy’s contribution to the power generation mechanism. Furthermore, from surface potential analysis using a Kelvin probe, we confirm that charges are generated at the CT interface, and the electrons and holes are diffused to the counter-electrodes with the aid of Fermi-level alignment between adjacent layers.

[morganism]

(there was a story about the Flow corp further up-thread. Looks like they built a FPGA mock-up and have been working on the software for pipelining and parallelization. Says can be used with existing CPU's)

 Startup Says It Can Make a 100x Faster CPU

Flow Computing aims to boost central processing units with their ‘parallel processing units’

(...)
According to Forsell, there are four main requirements for a computer architecture that’s optimized for parallelism: tolerating memory latency, which means finding ways to not just sit idle while the next piece of data is being loaded from memory; sufficient bandwidth for communication between so-called threads, chains of processor instructions that are running in parallel; efficient synchronization, which means making sure the parallel parts of the code execute in the correct order; and low-level parallelism, or the ability to use the multiple functional units that actually perform mathematical and logical operations simultaneously. For Flow Computing new approach, “we have redesigned, or started designing an architecture from scratch, from the beginning, for parallel computation,” Forsell says.

Any CPU can be potentially upgraded

To hide the latency of memory access, the PPU implements multi-threading: when each thread calls to memory, another thread can start running while the first thread waits for a response. To optimize bandwidth, the PPU is equipped with a flexible communication network, such that any functional unit can talk to any other one as needed, also allowing for low-level parallelism. To deal with synchronization delays, it utilizes a proprietary algorithm called wave synchronization that is claimed to be up to 10,000 times more efficient than traditional synchronization protocols.

To demonstrate the power of the PPU, Forsell and his collaborators built a proof-of-concept FPGA implementation of their design. The team says that the FPGA performed identically to their simulator, demonstrating that the PPU is functioning as expected. The team performed several comparison studies between their PPU design and existing CPUS. “Up to 100x [improvement] was reached in our preliminary performance comparisons assuming that there would be a silicon implementation of a Flow PPU running at the same speed as one of the compared commercial processors and using our microarchitecture,” Forsell says.

Now, the team is working on a compiler for their PPU, as well as looking for partners in the CPU production space. They are hoping that a large CPU manufacturer will be interested in their product, so that they could work on a co-design. Their PPU can be implemented with any instruction set architecture, so any CPU can be potentially upgraded.

“Now is really the time for this technology to go to market,” says Keller. “Because now we have the necessity of energy efficient computing in mobile devices, and at the same time, we have the need for high computational performance.”

https://spectrum.ieee.org/parallel-processing-unit

[morganism]

Why Mark Zuckerberg thinks AR glasses will replace your phone
Meta’s CEO on his first pair of AR glasses, partnering with Ray-Ban, why he’s done with politics, and more.

https://www.theverge.com/24253481/meta-ceo-mark-zuckerberg-ar-glasses-orion-ray-bans-ai-decoder-interview

[morganism]

Are there individual protons and neutrons in a nucleus?



The popular science material always talks about the number of protons and neutrons in a nucleus, but I've always wondered if that's a real thing nuclear physicists believe or if it is just a convenient model. In other words, is there some reason to believe that an atomic nucleus isn't just a single particle with mass and charge equal to a certain number of protons and neutrons instead of a clump of individual protons and neutrons? Are there experiments to distinguish one situation from the other? It's hard to imagine what such an experiment would be like. Anything that produces a fragment of a nucleus could be interpreted in either of two ways: a certain number of protons and neutrons broke off of the clump, or the single particle transmutes into smaller particles.

https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/828872/are-there-individual-protons-and-neutrons-in-a-nucleus

[morganism]

 Build a No-Fuss Particle Detector

The BetaBoard is an inexpensive and robust way to see the invisible

There’s nothing like particle physics to make you aware that we exist in an endless three-dimensional pinball game. All around us, subatomic particles arc, collide, and barrel along with merry abandon. Some originate within our own bodies, others come from the far ends of the cosmos. But detecting this invisible tumult requires equipment, which can be costly. I wanted to create a way to detect at least some of the pinballs for less than US $15.

My main reason was to have a new teaching tool. I’m doing a Ph.D. in the Physics Institute III B at RWTH Aachen University, and I realized such a detector would help satisfy my teaching obligations while tapping into my interests in physics, electronics, and software design.

Fortunately, I didn’t have to start from scratch. Oliver Keller at CERN’s S’Cool Lab has created a DIY particle detector that relies on inexpensive silicon photodiodes to detect alpha and beta particles (helium nuclei and free electrons whizzing through the air, respectively) and estimate their energy. Normally, photodiodes are used to respond to light, such as the signals used in fiber-optic communications. But a charged particle striking the photodiode will also produce a pulse of current, with higher-energy particles generating bigger pulses. In practice, given typical conditions and the sensitivity of the photodiodes, this primarily means detecting beta particles.

In Keller’s design, these pulses are amplified, converted to voltages, and transmitted via a cable from an audio jack on the detector to the microphone input of a laptop or smartphone. The data is then digitized and recorded.

A colleague of mine had built the CERN device, but I realized there was room for improvement. Passing the analog pulse signal through the length of an audio cable left the detector prone to noise from various sources. In addition, the design requires its own power source, in the form of a 9-volt battery. Apart from the hassle of having a separate battery, this also means that if you miswire the device, you’ll send an unacceptable voltage into an expensive smartphone!

https://spectrum.ieee.org/diy-handheld-radiation-detector

[morganism]

(but, but, but....I had the same trouble with osmosis.)

Chemist challenges traditional views on crystal growth

by Tracey Peake, North Carolina State University
Graphical abstract. Credit: Matter (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.matt.2024.08.011

Remember that old high school chemistry experiment where salt crystals precipitate out of a saltwater solution—or maybe the one where rock candy crystals form from sugar water? It turns out that your understanding of how crystals formed in those solutions might be wrong.

A new theory demystifies the crystallization process and shows that the material that crystallizes is the dominant component within a solution—which is the solvent, not the solute. The theory could have implications for everything from drug development to understanding climate change.

The paper is published in the journal Matter.

"Crystals are ubiquitous—we use them in everything from technology to medicine—but our actual understanding of the crystallization process has been lacking," says James Martin, professor of chemistry at North Carolina State University and author of a paper in Matter that outlines the theory.

"The prevailing ideas around dissolving and precipitating are that they're essentially the reverse of each other, but they aren't. In reality, they are completely different processes," Martin says.

"Using the high school chemistry experiment with getting precipitate out of a solution as an example: when I dissolve salt (the solute) into water (the solvent), the water is dominant. It dissolves the salt by essentially ripping it apart," Martin says. "If I then want to grow a salt crystal from that solution, the dominant phase must become the salt—which is the solvent at that point and is the one that forms the crystal."

Thermodynamic phase diagrams, which describe concentration and temperature-dependent transition points in solutions, can be used to illustrate the new theory, dubbed the transition-zone theory.

The theory demonstrates that crystallization happens in two steps: first a melt-like pre-growth intermediate forms. Then that intermediate can organize into the crystal structure.

"To grow a crystal out of a solution, you have to quickly separate the solvent and solute," Martin says. "When we refer to the 'melt' here, we're talking about the pure phase of the solvent prior to crystal formation. The difference here is that my theory shows you get better, faster crystal growth by moving your solution toward conditions that emphasize the solvent; in other words, the solvent—not the impurity within it—controls the rate of crystal growth."

Martin applied his theory to a number of different solutions, concentrations and temperature conditions and found that it accurately describes the rate and size of crystal formation.

"The main issue with previous descriptions of crystallization was the perception that crystals grow by having independent solute particles diffuse to, and then attach to a growing crystal interface," Martin says. "Instead, it is necessary to understand cooperative ensembles of the solvent to describe crystal growth."

According to Martin, the important aspect of the new theory is its focus on understanding how solute impurities disrupt that cooperative ensemble of solvent.

"By understanding the interplay of temperature and concentration, we can predict exactly how fast and large crystals will grow out of solution."

Martin believes the phase diagrams could have important applications for not just crystal formation, but for preventing crystal formation, such as preventing kidney stones from growing.

"Crystals underpin technology—they're all around us and impact our daily lives," Martin says. "This theory gives researchers simple tools to understand the 'magic' of crystal growth and make better predictions. It's an example of how foundational science lays the foundation for solving all kinds of real-world problems."

https://phys.org/news/2024-10-chemist-traditional-views-crystal-growth.html

....
Solutes don’t crystallize! Insights from phase diagrams demystify the “magic” of crystallization

https://www.cell.com/matter/abstract/S2590-2385(24)00443-0



Progress and potential
Whether growing crystals for solar cells, modeling ice formation in clouds, or preventing kidney stones, there is a need for accurate mechanistic descriptions of crystal growth. Traditional models presume that crystals grow by diffusion and attachment of individual solute particles to a growth interface. However, that assumption is thermodynamically invalid since equilibrium-phase diagrams establish only the solvent-phase crystallizes.
A new paradigm for solution crystal growth, grounded in thermodynamics and reliant on the cooperative-ensemble nature of condensed matter, is presented. Our transition-zone theory demonstrates that solution crystallization proceeds by the formation of a melt-like pre-growth intermediate followed by the rate-determining cooperative organization into the long-range order of a crystal. This new paradigm resolves mechanistic riddles and provides important mechanistic insights into the grand challenges of climate and earth changes, sustainable energy, and health.

[morganism]

(wow,wow, wow!)

At Rapid Liquid Print, we enable mass customization and unlock previously impossible designs for products of all sizes across industries. By transforming elastomer manufacturing with our patented Gravity Free Manufacturing™ technology, we're pushing the boundaries of what's possible.​​​​‌‍​‍​‍‌‍‌​‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‌‌‍‍‌‌‍‍​‍​‍​‍‍​‍​‍‌​‌‍​‌‌‍‍‌‍‍‌‌‌​‌‍‌​‍‍‌‍‍‌‌‍​‍​‍​‍​​‍​‍‌‍‍​‌​‍‌‍‌‌‌‍‌‍​‍​‍​‍‍​‍​‍‌‍‍​‌‌​‌‌​‌​​‌​​‍‍​‍​‍‌​‍‌‍​‌​​​‍‍‌​‌‍​‌‌‍‍‌‍‍‌‌‌​‌‍‌​‍‍‌​‌‌​‌‌‌‌‍‌​‌‍‍‌‌‍​‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‍‌‌​‌‍‌‌‌‍‍‌‌​​‍‌‍‌‌‌‍‌​‌‍‍‌‌‌​​‍‌‍‌‌‍‌‍‌​‌‍‌‌​‌‌​​‌​‍‌‍‌‌‌​‌‍‌‌‌‍‍‌‌​‌‍​‌‌‌​‌‍‍‌‌‍‌‍‍​‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‌​​‌‌‌​‌‍‌‌‌‍​‌‍‍​‌‍‍‌‍‌‍​‌‍‌‍‌‌‍‌​‍‌‌​‌‍‌‌​​‌‍‌‌​‌‌‌​‌‍‌‌‌‍​‌‍‍​‌‍‍‌‍‌‍​‌‍‌‍‌‌‍‌​‍‌​​‌‍​‌‌‌​‌‍‍​​‌‌‍‍​‌‍‌‌‌​‍‌‍‌‌​‌‍‌‌‌‍​‌‌​‌‍‍‌‌‍‌‍‍​‍‍‌‍‌​‌‍‌‌‌​‌‍​‌​‍‌‍‍‌‌​​‌‌​‌‍‍‌‌‍‌‍‍​‌‍​‍‌‍​‌‌​‌‍‌‌‌‌‌‌‌​‍‌‍​​‌‌‍‍​‌‌​‌‌​‌​​‌​​‍‌‌​​‌​​‌​‍‌‌​​‍‌​‌‍​‍‌‌​​‍‌​‌‍‌​‍‌‍​‌​​​‍‍‌​‌‍​‌‌‍‍‌‍‍‌‌‌​‌‍‌​‍‍‌​‌‌​‌‌‌‌‍‌​‌‍‍‌‌‍​‍‌‍‌‍‍‌‌‍‌​​‌‌‌​‌‍‌‌‌‍​‌‍‍​‌‍‍‌‍‌‍​‌‍‌‍‌‌‍‌​‍‌‍‌‌​‌‍‌‌​​‌‍‌‌​‌‌‌​‌‍‌‌‌‍​‌‍‍​‌‍‍‌‍‌‍​‌‍‌‍‌‌‍‌​‍‌‍‌​​‌‍​‌‌‌​‌‍‍​​‌‌‍‍​‌‍‌‌‌​‍‌‍‌‌​‌‍‌‌‌‍​‌‌​‌‍‍‌‌‍‌‍‍​‍‍‌‍‌​‌‍‌‌‌​‌‍​‌​‍‌‍‍‌‌​​‌‌​‌‍‍‌‌‍‌‍‍​‍​‍‌‌

https://www.rapidliquidprint.com/

[morganism]

Chemists break 100-year-old rule that may rewrite textbooks and change drug development
(carbon double bonds)


In a discovery that’s sending ripples through the chemistry world, UCLA scientists have proven that a fundamental rule of organic chemistry – one that has held back researchers for 100 years – isn’t as unbreakable as everyone thought. The breakthrough could open new paths for drug development and pharmaceutical research.

The rule in question, known as Bredt’s rule, has been chemistry gospel since 1924. It’s like telling architects they can never build a certain type of bridge because the laws of physics won’t allow it. But now, UCLA researchers have not only built that “impossible” bridge – they’ve shown others how to do it too.

“People aren’t exploring anti-Bredt olefins because they think they can’t,” says Neil Garg, UCLA’s Kenneth N. Trueblood Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, who led the research, in a media release. “We shouldn’t have rules like this — or if we have them, they should only exist with the constant reminder that they’re guidelines, not rules. It destroys creativity when we have rules that supposedly can’t be overcome.”

To understand why this matters, imagine organic molecules as tiny 3D structures, like molecular Lego builds. These structures often contain what chemists call “double bonds” between carbon atoms. According to the traditional rules, these double bonds must lie flat – like a tabletop – and can’t exist in certain twisted positions within the molecule. Bredt’s rule specifically said you couldn’t put these double bonds at certain junction points in more complex molecular structures.

However, Garg’s team found a way around this limitation. Using a clever chemical strategy, they created these supposedly impossible structures by treating specific molecules (called silyl pseudohalides) with fluoride. Because these “forbidden” structures are highly unstable – think of a house of cards in a windstorm – the team also developed a way to “trap” them, making them useful for further chemical reactions. The implications could be significant for drug development.

“There’s a big push in the pharmaceutical industry to develop chemical reactions that give three-dimensional structures like ours because they can be used to discover new medicines,” Garg explains.
(more)

https://studyfinds.org/chemists-break-100-year-old-rule/

....
A solution to the anti-Bredt olefin synthesis problem

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq3519

Editor’s summary
One hundred years ago, Julius Bredt published an observation that certain molecules that constrained several adjacent carbon centers in a particular nonplanar arrangement could not form double bonds between them. These hypothetical double bonds became known as “anti-Bredt” olefins, and the doctrine that they were inaccessible remains widespread even with the occasional hint to the contrary. McDermott et al. now report a general strategy to prepare these olefins as fleeting intermediates that can be captured in cycloaddition reactions. The protocol relies on the driving force of silicon-fluorine bond formation from a precursor, which is akin to approaches used to access strained aromatics.

[morganism]

OpenFlexure Vendors

This list of vendors is maintained for the OpenFlexure project by the Open Science Shop. Please note that as an open source project you are not buying a product from OpenFlexure, but a product from these manufacturers based on our design.


OpenFlexure Microscope

An open-source, 3D-printed microscope, including a precise mechanical stage to move the sample and focus the optics.

OpenFlexure Delta Stage

A 3D-printed delta-geometry stage, suitable for motorised microscopy with maximum stability.

OpenFlexure Block Stage

A 3D printable stage including sub-micron mechanical positioning, with a focus on good mechanical stability.


https://openflexure.org/

[morganism]

(big deal in 3D printing/additive. Has always been a void problem in powder forming. Ring type laser seems to solve it.)

3D-printing advance mitigates three defects simultaneously for failure-free metal parts

(...)
 Led by Lianyi Chen, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at UW-Madison, the team discovered the mechanisms and identified the processing conditions that can lead to this significant reduction in defects. The researchers detailed their findings in a paper published on November 16, 2024, in the International Journal of Machine Tools and Manufacture.

"Previous research has normally focused on reducing one type of defect, but that would require the usage of other techniques to mitigate the remaining types of defects," Chen says. "Based on the mechanisms we discovered, we developed an approach that can mitigate all the defects - pores, rough surfaces and large spatters - at once. In addition, our approach allows us to produce a part much faster without any quality compromises."

Multiple industries, including aerospace, medical and energy, are increasingly interested in using additive manufacturing, also known as 3D printing, to produce metal parts with complex shapes that are difficult or impossible to create using conventional methods.

But the big challenge is that metal parts created with additive manufacturing have defects - like pores, or "voids," rough surfaces and large spatters - that significantly compromise the finished part's reliability and durability. These quality problems prevent 3D-printed parts from being used for critical applications where failure is not an option.

By providing a path for simultaneously increasing part quality and manufacturing productivity, the UW-Madison team's advance could lead to widespread industry adoption of laser powder bed fusion.

Laser powder bed fusion uses a high-energy laser beam to melt and fuse thin layers of metal powder, constructing a part layer by layer from the bottom up. In this research, the UW-Madison team used an innovative ring-shaped laser beam, provided by a leading laser company called nLight, instead of the usual Gaussian-shaped beam.

The ring-shaped laser beam played a key role in this breakthrough - as did critical "in-situ" experiments, says Jiandong Yuan, the lead author of the paper and a PhD student in Chen's group.

To see how the material behaved within the part as it was printing, researchers went to the Advanced Photon Source, an ultra-bright, high-energy synchrotron X-ray user facility at Argonne National Laboratory. Combining high-speed synchrotron X-ray imaging, theoretical analysis and numerical simulation, the researchers revealed the defect mitigation mechanisms, which involve phenomena that reduce instabilities in the laser powder bed fusion process.

The researchers also demonstrated that they could use the ring-shaped beam to drill deeper into the material without causing instabilities in the process. This enabled them to print thicker layers, increasing the manufacturing productivity. "Because we understood the underlying mechanisms, we could more quickly identify the right processing conditions to produce high-quality parts using the ring-shaped beam," says Chen.

https://www.energy-daily.com/reports/3D_printing_advance_mitigates_three_defects_simultaneously_for_failure_free_metal_parts_999.html

....
Revealing mechanisms of processing defect mitigation in laser powder bed fusion via shaped beams using high-speed X-ray imaging

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0890695524001184?via%3Dihub

Highlights

    •
    The dynamics of ring-shaped beam induced mitigation of pore formation, melt pool fluctuation and liquid spattering in laser powder bed fusion process are characterized and quantified by in-situ high-speed X-ray imaging.
    •
    The keyhole pore mitigation is attributed to the stabilization of the unstable keyhole tip through spatial manipulation of incident and reflected laser rays.
    •
    The melt pool fluctuation mitigation is ascribed to the reduction of disturbances to the melt pool through improved keyhole stability.
    •
    The liquid spatter mitigation is attributed to the improved keyhole stability and powder capture enabled by high-energy forefront of the ring-shaped beam.
    •
    The condition and mechanism for simultaneous mitigation of pore formation, melt pool fluctuation and liquid spattering are identified.

(more)

....

https://www.nlight.net/semiconductor-lasers

[morganism]

I Built a 4 Axis 3D Printer Unlike Anything You’ve Seen  (rotating nozzle with forced air cooling)



....
(open source Mathmatica modeler , python)

https://github.com/Mathics3/mathics-core/releases/tag/7.0.0

[morganism]

2024 Small World in Motion Competition
A baby tardigrade riding a nematode

https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2024-small-world-in-motion-competition/baby-tardigrade-and-nematode

[SteveMDFP]

2024 Small World in Motion Competition
A baby tardigrade riding a nematode

https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2024-small-world-in-motion-competition/baby-tardigrade-and-nematode

Giddyup!
Next, tardigrades will invent a saddle.

[Freegrass]

2024 Small World in Motion Competition
A baby tardigrade riding a nematode

https://www.nikonsmallworld.com/galleries/2024-small-world-in-motion-competition/baby-tardigrade-and-nematode

Giddyup!
Next, tardigrades will invent a saddle.

Tardigrades are my favorite life form, together with the immortal jellyfish, Turritopsis dohrnii (I had to look that up)

[NeilT]

(there was a story about the Flow corp further up-thread. Looks like they built a FPGA mock-up and have been working on the software for pipelining and parallelization. Says can be used with existing CPU's)

This sounds rather close to Inmos Transputers and the occam programming language.

However I'd assume that modern technology and programming/Compiling, have made this far more viable.

Transputers failed with the massive ramp of normal CPU speed and the fact that Occam was a total bastard to program in.

Sounds like one to watch because the transputer advantage has not gone away.

[morganism]

(wait, what, "against Gravity" ?  Sputtering ensues, Inertia folks chuckle.)

Alena Tensor—a new hope for unification in physics

(...)
Any movement under the influence of forces can be mathematically represented as movement along a curved path. Using differential geometry, one may equally well assume that the trajectory was straight, while the space in which the move took place is curved. It may sound complicated, but it can be assumed that there is a mathematical transformation that allows us to describe curved space-time equivalently as flat space-time where certain forces act.

It has long been suspected that such a transformation exists, although opinions on this matter are divided. Some physicists believe that the metric tensor, a mathematical object describing the curvature of space-time, is simply a feature of space-time. Some physicists, most often mathematical physicists, are of the opinion that such a transformation should exist.

Alena Tensor provides just such a transformation. In short, Alena Tensor can straighten curved space-time while preserving all conclusions from general relativity. This property alone makes Alena Tensor an extremely valuable tool, but this is just the beginning.

Alena Tensor in flat and curved space-time

We used Alena Tensor to describe a system with an electromagnetic field, obtaining three forces in flat space-time: electromagnetism (which is not surprising), "against gravity," and radiation reaction force.

The radiation reaction force is already known in physics. It safeguards the principle of conservation of energy and ensures that the energy of an accelerating body does not exceed the energy available in the physical system.

The "against gravity" force generalizes classical Newton's equation for gravity, providing a relativistic description of gravity in flat space-time, fully consistent with general relativity:

    It faithfully reproduces the motion described in curved space-time.
    This force does not act in freefall, respecting the equivalence principle.
    Gravity in this description is not a force but the counteraction to gravity is.

The Alena Tensor allows for a smooth transition to the description used in the electromagnetic theory and then it turns out that:

    Charged particles cannot remain at complete rest and should have spin, which agrees with quantum mechanics.
    The reason for the existence of mass (and energy) of charged particles is the magnetic moment.

The above result basically explains what matter is, although so far it only applies to charged elementary particles and requires generalization to other fields.

The Alena Tensor also allows a smooth transition to the equations of general relativity. The obtained results provide some answers to the questions that have long puzzled physicists, concerning, e.g., singularities of black holes, cosmological constant, dark energy and dark matter.

Do we finally have quantum gravity?

Most mainstream efforts in the search for quantum gravity so far have focused on trying to translate the laws of quantum mechanics to curved space-time. Alena Tensor completely reverses this approach. It is much easier now to describe gravity in flat space-time in a way that mathematically reproduces general relativity and then uses the known tools of quantum mechanics.

Therefore, in the article we derived quantum equations describing the entire physical system with all previously mentioned forces. It turns out that these are three currently known main quantum equations. This leads to the completely surprising conclusion: It would mean that gravity has been present in quantum mechanics from the very beginning. It must be admitted that probably no one expected such a solution to the puzzle. In the article we also explain why it was so hard to spot gravity in quantum equations.

What happens next?

There are interesting times ahead, but no one should expect an immediate revolution. Science does not develop at the pace of messages on social networks. It will take several months for this research paper to get noticed, several months before researchers take an interest in it, read it and use its results. It also takes many months to conduct and describe research using the new mathematical apparatus, then go through the peer review process and publish it.

In the first articles, we should expect attempts to falsify Alena Tensor, because in physics, like in all science, we need to be sure that our next steps lead in the right direction. If falsification deceives and further research and experiments confirm the results obtained from Alena Tensor, we may hope that in the next three to 10 years, this will lead to the unification and reconciliation of many descriptions currently used in physics.
(more, on getting published)

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-alena-tensor-unification-physics.html

....
Alena Tensor in unification applications

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1402-4896/ad98ca

(...)
This paper will analyze a new unifying dualistic approach, called the Alena Tensor, using it to describe a physical system with an electromagnetic field. Previous publications [14, 15] have already shown, that Alena Tensor allows to obtain a coherent solution combining relativistic electrodynamics, continuum mechanics, QED and GR equations, so it is not just a purely theoretical, mathematical construction and seems worth further development. This method also indicates that the description of the physical system in curved spacetime and its description in flat spacetime with fields are equivalent, thanks to an appropriately constructed definition of the energy-momentum tensor for the system, which allows analysis in both flat and curved spacetime. Thanks to the equivalence of descriptions, as will be shown in this article, in the resulting picture of interactions in flat spacetime, gravity is not a force, which is indeed a direct consequence of GR. The force related to gravity occurring in a system in flat spacetime, will be found to act against gravity (e.g. centrifugal force) and result from any motion other than free fall, respecting equivalence principle.

In Alena Tensor approach, the metric tensor is not a property of spacetime, but only a way of describing it. The tensor of the field present in the system is responsible for all forces in flat spacetime, and thus also the field tensor defines the metric tensor for which all forces vanish and may be completely replaced by curvature in curvilinear description. According to this approach, gravity is not a body force (in the sense of Continuum Mechanics), but a side effect of existence of the energy of other, more fundamental fields (e.g. EM, Electroweak). As was shown in [14, 15], creation of the energy-momentum tensor taking into account the above assumptions, allows for a dualistic description (curvilinear, classical and quantum), leads to compatibility with currently used descriptions of physical systems and opens the way to many further studies. In this paper this analysis will be continued, using smooth transitions between the description of gravity, electromagnetism and the quantum picture, which is possible with the use of the Alena Tensor.

[morganism]

Exotic New Superconductors Delight and Confound
Three new species of superconductivity were spotted this year, illustrating the myriad ways electrons can join together to form a frictionless quantum soup.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/exotic-new-superconductors-delight-and-confound-20241206/

...
Future of Antimatter Production, Storage, Control, and Annihilation Applications in Propulsion Technologies

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2666202724004518


Abstract
Antimatter propulsion is a groundbreaking technology with potential to transform space exploration, enabling travel to distant locations once deemed impossible. Utilizing antimatter annihilation, this propulsion method boasts an unmatched energy density of 9 × 10¹⁶ J/kg, released with 100% efficiency when antimatter meets matter. Approximately 70% of this energy can be harnessed for propulsion, offering superior efficiency compared to existing technologies, despite some practical losses. Spacecrafts can traverse the Solar System to reach nearby stars in span of days to weeks (within a human lifetime) due to this enormous energy potential. Compared to traditional rocket fuel and nuclear power, antimatter propulsion promises significant environmental benefits by reducing carbon emissions and radioactive waste. However, obstacles including the difficulties of creating, storing, and identifying antimatter have restricted the field's study and applications. For practical implementation, existing concepts require to be further honed and remain theoretical. The salient features of antimatter generation and storage, as well as the present state of affairs and prospects for revolutionary uses in aerospace engineering, are outlined in this article. Antimatter propulsion is a promising technology that requires more research and development to reach its full potential.

(note to developers: SETI guys warn that the most dangerous signal you could make to announce yourself in the Dark Forest, is anti-matter use. They point out that this makes your civ a danger to other civs, and calls in the near C attack. )

[El Cid]

...Spacecrafts can traverse the Solar System to reach nearby stars in span of days to weeks (within a human lifetime) due to this enormous energy potential....

The laws of physics seem to have chnaged while I was away since the nearest star is 4,3 light years away. To get there in a shorter time than 4,3 years you need to go faster than the speed of light. Days and weeks?

[gerontocrat]

...Spacecrafts can traverse the Solar System to reach nearby stars in span of days to weeks (within a human lifetime) due to this enormous energy potential....

The laws of physics seem to have chnaged while I was away since the nearest star is 4,3 light years away. To get there in a shorter time than 4,3 years you need to go faster than the speed of light. Days and weeks?

Am I right when I say that for those on a spacecraft travelling at a speed close to that of light time slows down? So the journey looking from earth may take years, but not for those on the spacecraft.

Or is that me as a teenager reading too many sci-fi stories?

[morganism]

(yes. The amount of time to get to Alpha Centauri is the distance, plus the turnover time to slow down to stop there. So going to Sirius B is actually faster - you get to speed up more on the way there, and the decel time is shorter, than going to a closer target. Makes the targeting of more earthlike planets a better cost/benefit tradeoff. Is an Arvix paper on it. Think the english conversion must have been wonky in the article, maybe Welsh?
The decel feature still holds tho, i think in the Arvix paper they posited that faster to Saturn, than Jupiter, cuz of the turnover and decel features.)

[morganism]

A new class of magnetism called altermagnetism has been imaged for the first time in a new study. The findings could lead to the development of new magnetic memory devices with the potential to increase operation speeds of up to a thousand times.

Altermagnetism is a distinct form of magnetic order where the tiny constituent magnetic building blocks align antiparallel to their neighbours but the structure hosting each one is rotated compared to its neighbours.

Scientists from the University of Nottingham’s School of Physics and Astonomy have shown that this new third class of magnetism exists and can be controlled in microscopic devices. The findings have been published today in Nature.

    Altermagnets consist of magnetic moments that point antiparallel to their neighbours. However, each part of the crystal hosting these tiny moments is rotated with respect to its neighbours. This is like antiferromagnetism with a twist! But this subtle difference has huge ramifications.

Magnetic materials are used in the majority of long term computer memory and the latest generation of microelectronic devices. This is not only a massive and vital industry but also a significant source of global carbon emissions. Replacing the key components with altermagnetic materials would lead to huge increases in speed and efficiency while having the potential to massively reduce our dependency on rare and toxic heavy elements needed for conventional ferromagnetic technology.

Altermagnets combine the favourable properties of ferromagnets and antiferromagnets into a single material. They have the potential to lead to a thousand fold increase in speed of microelectronic components and digital memory while being more robust and energy efficient.

    Our experimental work has provided a bridge between theoretical concepts and real-life realisation, which hopefully illuminates a path to developing altermagnetic materials for practical applications.

The new experimental study was carried out at the MAX IV international facility in Sweden. The facility, which looks like a giant metal doughnut, is an electron accelerator, called a synchrotron, that produces x-rays.

X-rays are shone onto the magnetic material and the electrons given off from the surface are detected using a special microscope. This allows an image to be produced of the magnetism in the material with resolution of small features down to the nanoscale.

https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/news/researchers-discover-new-third-class-of-magnetism-that-could-transform-digital-devices

...
Nanoscale imaging and control of altermagnetism in MnTe

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08234-x

Nanoscale detection and control of the magnetic order underpins a spectrum of condensed-matter research and device functionalities involving magnetism. The key principle involved is the breaking of time-reversal symmetry, which in ferromagnets is generated by an internal magnetization. However, the presence of a net magnetization limits device scalability and compatibility with phases, such as superconductors and topological insulators. Recently, altermagnetism has been proposed as a solution to these restrictions, as it shares the enabling time-reversal-symmetry-breaking characteristic of ferromagnetism, combined with the antiferromagnetic-like vanishing net magnetization. So far, altermagnetic ordering has been inferred from spatially averaged probes.

 Here we demonstrate nanoscale imaging of altermagnetic states from 100-nanometre-scale vortices and domain walls to 10-micrometre-scale single-domain states in manganese telluride (MnTe)2,7,9,14,15,16,18,20,21. We combine the time-reversal-symmetry-breaking sensitivity of X-ray magnetic circular dichroism12 with magnetic linear dichroism and photoemission electron microscopy to achieve maps of the local altermagnetic ordering vector. A variety of spin configurations are imposed using microstructure patterning and thermal cycling in magnetic fields. The demonstrated detection and controlled formation of altermagnetic spin configurations paves the way for future experimental studies across the theoretically predicted research landscape of altermagnetism, including unconventional spin-polarization phenomena, the interplay of altermagnetism with superconducting and topological phases, and highly scalable digital and neuromorphic spintronic devices

[El Cid]

...Spacecrafts can traverse the Solar System to reach nearby stars in span of days to weeks (within a human lifetime) due to this enormous energy potential....

The laws of physics seem to have chnaged while I was away since the nearest star is 4,3 light years away. To get there in a shorter time than 4,3 years you need to go faster than the speed of light. Days and weeks?

Am I right when I say that for those on a spacecraft travelling at a speed close to that of light time slows down? So the journey looking from earth may take years, but not for those on the spacecraft.

Or is that me as a teenager reading too many sci-fi stories?

Yes, I also read all the scifi books my library had as a teenager

If you are very very close to the speed of light then time IS slower for the starship traveller but I don't believe achieving that speed is realistic. Besides, when you are that fast then collision with even a small speck of spacedust destroys your starship immediately. But I am sure Elon will solve that problem too

[Freegrass]

...Spacecrafts can traverse the Solar System to reach nearby stars in span of days to weeks (within a human lifetime) due to this enormous energy potential....

The laws of physics seem to have chnaged while I was away since the nearest star is 4,3 light years away. To get there in a shorter time than 4,3 years you need to go faster than the speed of light. Days and weeks?

Am I right when I say that for those on a spacecraft travelling at a speed close to that of light time slows down? So the journey looking from earth may take years, but not for those on the spacecraft.

Or is that me as a teenager reading too many sci-fi stories?

Yes, I also read all the scifi books my library had as a teenager

If you are very very close to the speed of light then time IS slower for the starship traveller but I don't believe achieving that speed is realistic. Besides, when you are that fast then collision with even a small speck of spacedust destroys your starship immediately. But I am sure Elon will solve that problem too

Space isn't empty, there are molecules in there. What would happen to a spaceship traveling near the speed of light if it hit those molecules? How much force would an impact of a carbon or water molecule have?

And if time is slower for the traveler at the speed of light, would he ever reach the speed of light if time slows down? I know it's impossible for mass to reach the speed of light, but ignore that.

[morganism]

(gonna have to have magnetic and electrical shielding anyway, for cosmic rays. Why so many believe that digital life forms are the galactic inhabitants and travelers.  Most folk have used Bussard Ramjet like fields to push away particles and ions, but, yeah.

if you want all the details, you need to hang out at Centauri Dreams and the rabbit hole that is Atomic Rockets.

https://projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/



https://www.niac.usra.edu/studies/studies.html

https://einsteintoolkit.org/documentation/ThornGuide.php