Best of Last Week – Hyperentanglement across roof tops, diamond rain and dancing to slow aging
Bob Yirka
news contributor
It was a good week for physics as a team at the National Graphene Institute demonstrated that electrons flowing like liquid in graphene could start a new wave of physics regarding the future of nano-electronic circuits. Also, a team with members from Vienna and China announced that hyperentanglement across rooftops should pave the way to a global quantum internet—their work showed that hyperentangled photons could be transmitted in free space. And a team of physicists from China, Japan and Canada found that unconventional quantum systems may lead to novel optical devices by demonstrating an optical system based on an unconventional class of quantum mechanical systems. Also, a team with members from the U.S., China and Russia, demonstrated that liquid water can generate THz waves, a concept that was once though impossible.
In other news, a team at UNSW Sydney resolved the mathematical mystery of an ancient Babylonian clay tablet—turns out the 3,700-year-old tablet represents the world's oldest trigonometric table. Also, an international team of researchers announced that they had developed energy-harvesting yarns that generate electricity when stretched or twisted. And a team working at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory announced that they had created "diamond rain" of the type that forms in the interiors of icy giant planets, confirming a long-held theory that it was possible. Also, a team at the University of California came up with a new theory that suggests the heavy elements are created when primordial black holes eat neutron stars from within, causing conditions that could lead to an r-process. Also, a team at the APC Microbiome Institute at University College Cork shed new light on the link between gut bacteria and anxiety—such bacteria, they found, might actually be influencing anxiety-like behaviors.
And finally, if you've been looking for ways to slow the impact of father time on your cognitive skills, you might want to take a look at a study conducted by a team at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases—they found that dancing can reverse the signs of aging in the brain.
