LIGHTBULB
Fascinated by Science - Eva
ARTICLES FOR YOU
PHYSICS
Short flashes of light with sustaining impact.
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Superconductivity—the ability of a material to transmit an electric current without loss—is a quantum effect that, despite years of research, is still limited to very low temperatures. Now a team of scientists at the MPSD has succeeded in creating a metastable state with vanishing electrical resistance in a molecular solid by exposing it to finely tuned pulses of intense laser light. This effect had already been demonstrated in 2016 for only a very short time, but in a new study the authors of the paper have shown a far longer lifetime, nearly 10.000 times longer than before. The long lifetimes for light-induced superconductivity hold promise for applications in integrated electronics. The research by Budden et al. has been published in Nature Physics.
CHEMISTRY
Sodium nitride was predicted to be an insulator as it has similar structural features to some other clathrates, for example sodium oxide chloride (Na3OCl). But unlike this white non-conducting material, Na3N is a blueish–black solid with electronic properties that resemble a metal.
BIOLOGY
Fossil pigments shed new light on vertebrate evolution
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​This new paper shows that melanin is more than just something that gives colour to the body. It played an important role in the evolution of warm-blooded animals and helped defined what birds and mammals look like today. By studying where melanin occurs in the body in fossils and modern animals researchers have produced the first model for how melanin has evolved over the last 500 million years.
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