NASA has yet to restore communications with a lunar science spacecraft launched last week, keeping it from completing its mission as originally planned.
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AST SpaceMobile’s plan to create a jointly owned European satellite operator for direct-to-smartphone services comes at a pivotal moment in the region’s push for greater space autonomy.
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Gen. Michael Guetlein, vice chief of space operations of the U.S. Space Force, said Golden Dome represents a significant challenge that demands unprecedented collaboration across defense and intelligence agencies.
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Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale said that for commercial firms to gain substantial ground, ‘the processes have to be transparent and open and fair.’
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The UK Space Agency has awarded SatixFy funds to develop software to speed up how quickly reprogrammable satellites can adapt to changing needs in orbit, the Israeli chipmaker announced March 5.
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The integrity of science could be threatened by publishers changing scientific papers after they have been published – but without making any formal public notification. That’s the verdict of a new study by an international team of researchers, who coin such changes “stealth corrections”. They want publishers to publicly log all changes that are made to published scientific research (Learned Publishing 38 e1660).
When corrections are made to a paper after publication, it is standard practice for a notice to be added to the article explaining what has been changed and why. This transparent record keeping is designed to retain trust in the scientific record. But last year, René Aquarius, a neurosurgery researcher at Radboud University Medical Center in the Netherlands, noticed this does not always happen.
After spotting an issue with an image in a published paper, he raised concerns with the authors, who acknowledged the concerns and stated that they were “checking the original data to figure out the problem” and would keep him updated. However, Aquarius was surprised to see that the figure had been updated a month later, but without a correction notice stating that the paper had been changed.
Teaming up with colleagues from Belgium, France, the UK and the US, Aquarius began to identify and document similar stealth corrections. They did so by recording instances that they and other “science sleuths” had already found and by searching online for for terms such as “no erratum”, “no corrigendum” and “stealth” on PubPeer – an online platform where users discuss and review scientific publications.
The researchers define a stealth correction as at least one post-publication change being made to a scientific article that does not provide a correction note or any other indicator that the publication has bee temporarily or permanently altered. The researchers identified 131 stealth corrections spread across 10 scientific publishers and in different fields of research. In 92 of the cases, the stealth correction involved a change in the content of the article, such as to figures, data or text.
The remaining unrecorded changes covered three categories: “author information” such as the addition of authors or changes in affiliation; “additional information”, including edits to ethics and conflict of interest statements; and “the record of editorial process”, for instance alterations to editor details and publication dates. “For most cases, we think that the issue was big enough to have a correction notice that informs the readers what was happening,” Aquarius says.
After the authors began drawing attention to the stealth corrections, five of the papers received an official correction notice, nine were given expressions of concern, 17 reverted to the original version and 11 were retracted. Aquarius says he believes it is “important” that reader knows what has happened to a paper “so they can make up their own mind whether they want to trust [it] or not”.
The researchers would now like to see publishers implementing online correction logs that make it impossible to change anything in a published article without it being transparently reported, however small the edit. They also say that clearer definitions and guidelines are required concerning what constitutes a correction and needs a correction notice.
“We need to have sustained vigilance in the scientific community to spot these stealth corrections and also register them publicly, for example on PubPeer,” Aquarius says.
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Whether you’re NASA Administrator nominee Jared Isaacman, Virgin Galactic Founder Richard Branson, Artemis mission specialist Christina Koch, or even fictional astronaut and self-proclaimed “space pirate” Mark Watney, setting out on […]
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Astronauts on the International Space Station said they disagreed with Elon Musk’s claim that the station was past its prime and should be deorbited soon.
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Sometimes an attention-grabbing title is the best thing about a book, but not in this case. Pistols in St Paul’s: Science, Music and Architecture in the Twentieth Century by historian Fiona Smyth, is an intriguing journey charting the development of acoustics in architecture during the first half of the 20th century.
The story begins with the startling event that gives the book its unusual moniker: the firing of a Colt revolver in the famous London cathedral in 1951. A similar experiment was also performed in the Royal Festival Hall in the same year (see above photo). Fortunately, this was simply a demonstration for journalists of an experiment to understand and improve the listening experience in a space notorious for its echo and other problematic acoustic features.
St Paul’s was completed in 1711 and Smyth, a historian of architecture, science and construction at the University of Cambridge in the UK, explains that until the turn of the last century, the only way to evaluate the quality of sound in such a building was by ear. The book then reveals how this changed. Over five decades of innovative experiments, scientists and architects built a quantitative understanding of how a building’s shape, size and interior furnishings determine the quality of speech and music through reflection and absorption of sound waves.
The evolution of architectural acoustics as a scientific field was driven by a small group of dedicated researchers
We are first taken back to the dawn of the 20th century and shown how the evolution of architectural acoustics as a scientific field was driven by a small group of dedicated researchers. This includes architect and pioneering acoustician Hope Bagenal, along with several physicists, notably Harvard-based US physicist Wallace Clement Sabine.
Details of Sabine’s career, alongside those of Bagenal, whose personal story forms the backbone for much of the book, deftly put a human face on the research that transformed these public spaces. Perhaps Sabine’s most significant contribution was the derivation of a formula to predict the time taken for sound to fade away in a room. Known as the “reverberation time”, this became a foundation of architectural acoustics, and his mathematical work still forms the basis for the field today.
The presence of people, objects and reflective or absorbing surfaces all affect a room’s acoustics. Smyth describes how materials ranging from rugs and timber panelling to specially developed acoustic plaster and tiles have all been investigated for their acoustic properties. She also vividly details the venues where acoustics interventions were added – such as the reflective teak flooring and vast murals painted on absorbent felt in the Henry Jarvis Memorial Hall of the Royal Institute of British Architects in London.
Other locations featured include the Royal Albert Hall, Abbey Road Studios, White Rock Pavilion at Hastings, and the Assembly Chamber of the Legislative Building in New Delhi, India. Temporary structures and spaces for musical performance are highlighted too. These include the National Gallery while it was cleared of paintings during the Second World War and the triumph of acoustic design that was the Glasgow Empire Exhibition concert hall – built for the 1938 event and sadly dismantled that same year.
Unsurprisingly, much of this acoustic work was either punctuated or heavily influenced by the two world wars. While in the trenches during the First World War, Bagenal wrote a journal paper on cathedral acoustics that detailed his pre-war work at St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. His paper discussed timbre, resonant frequency “and the effects of interference and delay on clarity and harmony”.
In 1916, back in England recovering from a shellfire injury, Bagenal started what would become a long-standing research collaboration with the commandant of the hospital where he was recuperating – who happened to be Alex Wood, a physics lecturer at Cambridge. Equally fascinating is hearing about the push in the wake of the First World War for good speech acoustics in public spaces used for legislative and diplomatic purposes.
Smyth also relates tales of the wrangling that sometimes took place over funding for acoustic experiments on public buildings, and how, as the 20th century progressed, companies specializing in acoustic materials sprang up – and in some cases made dubious claims about the merits of their products. Meanwhile, new technologies such as tape recorders and microphones helped bring a more scientific approach to architectural acoustics research.
The author concludes by describing how the acoustic research from the preceding decades influenced the auditorium design of the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank in London, which, as Smyth states, was “the first building to have been designed from the outset as a manifestation of acoustic science”.
As evidenced by the copious notes, the wealth of contemporary quotes, and the captivating historical photos and excerpts from archive documents, this book is well-researched. But while I enjoyed the pace and found myself hooked into the story, I found the text repetitive in places, and felt that more details about the physics of acoustics would have enhanced the narrative.
But these are minor grumbles. Overall Smyth paints an evocative picture, transporting us into these legendary auditoria. I have always found it a rather magical experience attending concerts at the Royal Albert Hall. Now, thanks to this book, the next time I have that pleasure I will do so with a far greater understanding of the role physics and physicists played in shaping the music I hear. For me at least, listening will never be quite the same again.
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As service lifetimes of electric vehicle (EV) and grid storage batteries continually improve, it has become increasingly important to understand how Li-ion batteries perform after extensive cycling. Using a combination of spatially resolved synchrotron x-ray diffraction and computed tomography, the complex kinetics and spatially heterogeneous behavior of extensively cycled cells can be mapped and characterized under both near-equilibrium and non-equilibrium conditions.
This webinar shows examples of commercial cells with thousands (even tens of thousands) of cycles over many years. The behaviour of such cells can be surprisingly complex and spatially heterogeneous, requiring a different approach to analysis and modelling than what is typically used in the literature. Using this approach, we investigate the long-term behavior of Ni-rich NMC cells and examine ways to prevent degradation. This work also showcases the incredible durability of single-crystal cathodes, which show very little evidence of mechanical or kinetic degradation after more than 20,000 cycles – the equivalent to driving an EV for 8 million km!
Toby Bond is a senior scientist in the Industrial Science group at the Canadian Light Source (CLS), Canada’s national synchrotron facility. He is a specialist in x-ray imaging and diffraction, specializing in in-situ and operando analysis of batteries and fuel cells for industry clients of the CLS. Bond is an electrochemist by training, who completed his MSc and PhD in Jeff Dahn’s laboratory at Dalhousie University with a focus in developing methods and instrumentation to characterize long-term degradation in Li-ion batteries.
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The Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems (SQMS) Center, led by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Chicago, Illinois), is on a mission “to develop beyond-the-state-of-the-art quantum computers and sensors applying technologies developed for the world’s most advanced particle accelerators”. SQMS director Anna Grassellino talks to Physics World about the evolution of a unique multidisciplinary research hub for quantum science, technology and applications.
Established as part of the US National Quantum Initiative (NQI) Act of 2018, SQMS is one of the five National Quantum Information Science Research Centers run by the US Department of Energy (DOE). With funding of $115m through its initial five-year funding cycle (2020-25), SQMS represents a coordinated, at-scale effort – comprising 35 partner institutions – to address pressing scientific and technological challenges for the realization of practical quantum computers and sensors, as well as exploring how novel quantum tools can advance fundamental physics.
Our mission is to tackle one of the biggest cross-cutting challenges in quantum information science: the lifetime of superconducting quantum states – also known as the coherence time (the length of time that a qubit can effectively store and process information). Understanding and mitigating the physical processes that cause decoherence – and, by extension, limit the performance of superconducting qubits – is critical to the realization of practical and useful quantum computers and quantum sensors.
SQMS has brought together an outstanding group of researchers who, collectively, have utilized a suite of enabling technologies from Fermilab’s accelerator science programme – and from our network of partners – to realize breakthroughs in qubit chip materials and fabrication processes; design and development of novel quantum devices and architectures; as well as the scale-up of complex quantum systems. Central to this endeavour are superconducting materials, superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) cavities and cryogenic systems – all workhorse technologies for particle accelerators employed in high-energy physics, nuclear physics and materials science.
Take our research on decoherence channels in quantum devices. SQMS has made significant progress in the fundamental science and mitigation of losses in the oxides, interfaces, substrates and metals that underpin high-coherence qubits and quantum processors. These advances – the result of wide-ranging experimental and theoretical investigations by SQMS materials scientists and engineers – led, for example, to the demonstration of transmon qubits (a type of charge qubit exhibiting reduced sensitivity to noise) with systematic improvements in coherence, record-breaking lifetimes of over a millisecond, and reductions in performance variation.
First of all, we have worked on technology transfer. By developing novel chip fabrication processes together with quantum computing companies, we have contributed to our industry partners’ results of up to 2.5x improvement in error performance in their superconducting chip-based quantum processors.
We have combined these qubit advances with Fermilab’s ultrahigh-coherence 3D SRF cavities: advancing our efforts to build a cavity-based quantum processor and, in turn, demonstrating the longest-lived superconducting multimode quantum processor unit ever built (coherence times in excess of 20 ms). These systems open the path to a more powerful qudit-based quantum computing approach. (A qudit is a multilevel quantum unit that can be more than two states.) What’s more, SQMS has already put these novel systems to use as quantum sensors within Fermilab’s particle physics programme – probing for the existence of dark-matter candidates, for example, as well as enabling precision measurements and fundamental tests of quantum mechanics.
Elsewhere, we have been pushing early-stage societal impacts of quantum technologies and applications – including the use of quantum computing methods to enhance data analysis in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Here, SQMS scientists are working alongside clinical experts at New York University Langone Health to apply quantum techniques to quantitative MRI, an emerging diagnostic modality that could one day provide doctors with a powerful tool for evaluating tissue damage and disease.
There are several important examples, but I will highlight two of specific note. For starters, there’s our R&D effort to efficiently scale millikelvin-regime cryogenic systems. SQMS teams are currently developing technologies for larger and higher-cooling-power dilution refrigerators. We have designed and prototyped novel systems allowing over 20x higher cooling power, a necessary step to enable the scale-up to thousands of superconducting qubits per dilution refrigerator.
Also, we are working to optimize microwave interconnects with very low energy loss, taking advantage of SQMS expertise in low-loss superconducting resonators and materials in the quantum regime. (Quantum interconnects are critical components for linking devices together to enable scaling to large quantum processors and systems.)
Partnerships are foundational to the success of SQMS. The DOE National Quantum Information Science Research Centers were conceived and built as mini-Manhattan projects, bringing together the power of multidisciplinary and multi-institutional groups of experts. SQMS is a leading example of building bridges across the “quantum ecosystem” – with other national and federal laboratories, with academia and industry, and across agency and international boundaries.
In this way, we have scaled up unique capabilities – multidisciplinary know-how, infrastructure and a network of R&D collaborations – to tackle the decoherence challenge and to harvest the power of quantum technologies. A case study in this regard is Ames National Laboratory, a specialist DOE centre for materials science and engineering on the campus of Iowa State University.
Ames is a key player in a coalition of materials science experts – coordinated by SQMS – seeking to unlock fundamental insights about qubit decoherence at the nanoscale. Through Ames, SQMS and its partners get access to powerful analytical tools – modalities like terahertz spectroscopy and cryo transmission electron microscopy – that aren’t routinely found in academia or industry.
All told, SQMS quantum platforms and experiments involve the collective efforts of more than 500 experts from 35 partner organizations, among them the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), NASA Ames Research Center and Northwestern University; also leading companies in the quantum tech industry like IBM and Rigetti Computing. Our network extends internationally and includes flagship tie-ins with the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL), the Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Italy, and the Institute for Quantum Computing (University of Waterloo, Canada).
The SQMS strategy for industry engagement is clear: to work hand-in-hand to solve technological challenges utilizing complementary facilities and expertise; to abate critical performance barriers; and to bring bidirectional value. I believe that even large companies do not have the ability to achieve practical quantum computing systems working exclusively on their own. The challenges at hand are vast and often require R&D partnerships among experts across diverse and highly specialized disciplines.
I also believe that DOE National Laboratories – given their depth of expertise and ability to build large-scale and complex scientific instruments – are, and will continue to be, key players in the development and deployment of the first useful and practical quantum computers. This means not only as end-users, but as technology developers. Our vision at SQMS is to lay the foundations of how we are going to build these extraordinary machines in partnership with industry. It’s about learning to work together and leveraging our mutual strengths.
Our collaboration with Rigetti Computing, a Silicon Valley company that’s building quantum computers, has been exemplary throughout: a two-way partnership that leverages the unique enabling technologies within SQMS to boost the performance of Rigetti’s superconducting quantum processors.
The partnership with IBM, although more recent, is equally significant. Together with IBM researchers, we are interested in developing quantum interconnects – including the development of high-Q cables to make them less lossy – for the high-fidelity connection and scale-up of quantum processors into large and useful quantum computing systems.
At the same time, SQMS scientists are exploring simulations of problems in high-energy physics and condensed-matter physics using quantum computing cloud services from Rigetti and IBM.
Correct. We challenge our suppliers of advanced materials and fabrication equipment to go above and beyond, working closely with them on continuous improvement and new product innovation. In this way, for example, our suppliers of silicon and sapphire substrates and nanofabrication platforms – key technologies for advanced quantum circuits – benefit from SQMS materials characterization tools and fundamental physics insights that would simply not be available in isolation. These technologies are still at a stage where we need fundamental science to help define the ideal materials specifications and standards.
We are also working with companies developing quantum control boards and software, collaborating on custom solutions to unique hardware architectures such as the cavity-based qudit platforms in development at Fermilab.
We’ve pursued a twin-track approach to the scaling of SQMS infrastructure. On the one hand, we have augmented – very successfully – a network of pre-existing facilities at Fermilab and at SQMS partners, spanning accelerator technologies, materials science and cryogenic engineering. In aggregate, this covers hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure that we have re-employed or upgraded for studying quantum devices, including access to a host of leading-edge facilities via our R&D partners – for example, microkelvin-regime quantum platforms at Royal Holloway, University of London, and underground quantum testbeds at INFN’s Gran Sasso Laboratory.
In parallel, we have invested in new and dedicated infrastructure to accelerate our quantum R&D programme. The Quantum Garage here at Fermilab is the centrepiece of this effort: a 560 square-metre laboratory with a fleet of six additional dilution refrigerators for cryogenic cooling of SQMS experiments as well as test, measurement and characterization of superconducting qubits, quantum processors, high-coherence quantum sensors and quantum interconnects.
SQMS is putting together an exciting proposal in response to a DOE call for the next five years of research. Our efforts on coherence will remain paramount. We have come a long way, but the field still needs to make substantial advances in terms of noise reduction of superconducting quantum devices. There’s great momentum and we will continue to build on the discoveries made so far.
We have also demonstrated significant progress regarding our 3D SRF cavity-based quantum computing platform. So much so that we now have a clear vision of how to implement a mid-scale prototype quantum computer with over 50 qudits in the coming years. To get us there, we will be laying out an exciting SQMS quantum computing roadmap by the end of 2025.
It’s equally imperative to address the scalability of quantum systems. Together with industry, we will work to demonstrate practical and economically feasible approaches to be able to scale up to large quantum computing data centres with millions of qubits.
Finally, SQMS scientists will work on exploring early-stage applications of quantum computers, sensors and networks. Technology will drive the science, science will push the technology – a continuous virtuous cycle that I’m certain will lead to plenty more ground-breaking discoveries.
As with its efforts in infrastructure and capacity-building, SQMS is addressing quantum workforce development on multiple fronts.
Across the centre, Grassellino and her management team have recruited upwards of 150 technical staff and early-career researchers over the past five years to accelerate the SQMS R&D effort. “These ‘boots on the ground’ are a mix of PhD students, postdoctoral researchers plus senior research and engineering managers,” she explains.
Another significant initiative was launched in summer 2023, when SQMS hosted nearly 150 delegates at Fermilab for the inaugural US Quantum Information Science (USQIS) School – now an annual event organized in conjunction with other National Laboratories, academia and industry. The long-term goal is to develop the next generation of quantum scientists, engineers and technicians by sharing SQMS know-how and experimental skills in a systematic way.
“The prioritization of quantum education and training is key to sustainable workforce development,” notes Grassellino. With this in mind, she is currently in talks with academic and industry partners about an SQMS-developed master’s degree in quantum engineering. Such a programme would reinforce the centre’s already diverse internship initiatives, with graduate students benefiting from dedicated placements at SQMS and its network partners.
“Wherever possible, we aim to assign our interns with co-supervisors – one from a National Laboratory, say, another from industry,” adds Grassellino. “This ensures the learning experience shapes informed decision-making about future career pathways in quantum science and technology.”
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The first spacecraft built by satellite manufacturing startup Apex continues to work well after a year in orbit as the company leverages that experience for future spacecraft.
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NASA selected Firefly Aerospace to launch a trio of Earth science smallsats that will study the formation of storms.
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Raven Space Systems has secured a NASA Space Act Agreement and an Air Force Research Laboratory Commercial Research and Development Agreement.
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Industry leaders from Blue Origin, SpaceX and ULA call for modernization of launch facilities to increase capacity
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Japanese microgravity services startup ElevationSpace has become the first customer in Asia for Germany’s Isar Aerospace, which now only needs a launch license to debut its two-stage Spectrum rocket after clearing tests.
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