wire - news in brief

ETH Professor Yiwen Chu is investigating how to apply quantum states to ever larger objects. This should help to gain new insights into physics and develop more efficient technologies.

Hochschule für Life Sciences Iron detection is important in many areas, from the food industry to health research and machine maintenance.

Giulia Tagliabue, a tenure-track assistant professor in mechanical engineering, has won the EPFL Award for Best Teaching.

Quantum entanglement is a fascinating feature of quantum physics - the theory of the very small. If two particles are quantum-entangled, the state of one particle is tied to that of the other, no matter how far apart the particles are. This mind-bending phenomenon, which has no analogue in classical physics, has been observed in a wide variety of systems and has found several important applications, such as quantum cryptography and quantum computing.

Starting today, the Earth will be passing through a meteor shower. But in astronomy, the human eye is very much a limited tool. But increasingly powerful instruments are allowing us to peer ever deeper into the cosmos and ever further back in time, shedding new light on the origins of the universe. Today, scientists are able to observe an exoplanet orbiting its star, an individual galaxy and even the entire universe.

EPFL was selected by the EUROfusion consortium to develop an advanced visualization system for a preliminary process in nuclear fusion.

Copenhagen Atomics, a Danish molten salt reactor developer, and the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, Switzerland's largest research institute for natural and engineering sciences, have signed a large-scale experimental collaboration agreement.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) has started the design and construction of the ArmazoNes high Dispersion Echelle Spectrograph (ANDES) with an international consortium involving the University

EPFL engineers have developed new software called Pyxu that makes it easier and faster to reconstruct images taken at any scale. Their system employs reusable, and universally applicable, bricks of algorithms. Scientists use an array of imaging instruments to look inside living organisms, sometimes as they move, and to observe inert objects without altering their state.

PSI researchers are developing a technique that uses the special synchrotron X-ray light from the Swiss Light Source SLS to non-destructively digitise recordings from high-value historic audio tapes

In a pilot project, apprentices from four different professions in the Department of Physics had to work together to build an interactive exhibition object.

The European Space Agency's most expensive and complex mission, the LISA space antenna, has reached a major milestone: it has passed the stage of intensive testing by experts in the Mission Adoption Review process - a significant step for the LISA consortium.

For Anthony Patt, Europe's ambitious plans for a hydrogen economy may be too ambitious, tipping the scales towards the interests of the fossil fuel industry, rather than energy consumers and the climate.

At a time when climate change is causing intense droughts to alternate with torrential rains, the RADMOGG project aims to assess the dynamics of the underground reservoirs to which the blue gold that falls from the sky flows, based on the measurement of minute variations in the Earth's gravity. The project's initiator, Landon Halloran, assistant professor at the University of Neuchâtel's Centre for Hydrogeology and Geothermal Energy (CHYN), presented its objectives at the Swiss Geoscience Meeting on November 17 and 18 in Mendrisio (TI ).

Today, the Dynamic Imaging Center at sitem-insel, the Swiss Institute for Translational Medicine and Entrepreneurship, opened its doors. Here, for the first time, X-ray images of a moving person can be taken simultaneously from two different directions. This enables clinical research that is unique in Europe and that represents a milestone in the investigation of musculoskeletal disorders.

The ARRAKHIS consortium, for which EPFL has the science lead, has just successfully passed the mission definition review of the project, a very important first milestone towards full completion of the mission preparation.

SNSF Ambizione grants are aimed at early-career postdoctoral researchers who wish to conduct their first independent project in Switzerland.

The Swiss Light Source SLS at PSI will shut down temporarily as part of a major upgrade project. It will come back online in 2025, ready to supply even more powerful synchrotron light than ever for innovative scientific experiments. At 8 a.m. on the morning of Saturday 30 September, the Swiss Light Source SLS, one of PSI's five large research facilities, will be shut down.

3D printing can produce highly complex shapes. But printing ceramic objects with the help of a laser is a more difficult challenge. Now researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have for the first time taken tomograms revealing what happens at microscopic level during this fabrication process. The findings will help improve this very promising technology.

Physicist Lesya Shchutska, EPFL professor and winner of the Swiss Science Prize Latsis 2023, is paving the way for the discovery of new particles.

Quantum mechanics describes the forces that hold the world together on the smallest scale. The theory of relativity explains the world at the cosmic level. The two seem incompatible - and a unifying theory is nowhere in sight. Without quantum mechanics, many of the technologies that we take for granted would be inconceivable.

For his semester's project, Constant Panisset is developing a cheap, robust and portable device that can turn water into a disinfectant via the principle of plasma activated water.

Bruno Schuler and his young team are embarking on an ambitious research project: He will selectively generate defects in atomically-thin semiconductor layers and attempt to measure and control their quantum properties with simultaneous picosecond temporal resolu­tion and atomic precision. The resulting insights are expected to establish fundamental knowledge for future quantum computers.

John von Neumann was one of the most important mathematicians and computer pioneers of the 20th century - and an ETH alumnus.

The JUICE mission of the European Space Agency ESA, which aims to explore the planet Jupiter and its three largest moons, is all set to go. The space probe will carry on board the high-tech detector RADEM developed at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI. Among other things, this will provide information about the complex radiation conditions and the highly dynamic magnetic environment of the Jupiter system.

The European Space Agency ESA-s Juice space mission is scheduled to start its journey to Jupiter on April 13, 2023.

Empa researcher Amy Knorpp wants to bring systematics into the young research field of high-entropy oxides.

The Astrophysical Spectropolarimetry research project, led by Renzo Ramelli of the USI-affiliated Istituto ricerche solari Aldo e Cele Daccò (IRSOL), has been approved by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). The project aims to study the evolution and structure of the solar magnetic field, focusing on the formation of solar flares using modern equipment and innovative observation techniques.