Welcome to our “Science Tank” section. In this area of the website, we deal with relevant discoveries from the world of science (physics, mathematics, computer science, medicine and many more) in an interdisciplinary manner. We publish important achievements from around the world with a special focus on the scientific environment in Göttingen. Have fun and stay curious.
At present, work is being carried out on several tracks to improve the efficiency of many different techniques for generating solar energy. The researchers have succeeded in the novel Perovskite silicon tandem solar cells to achieve an efficiency of almost 30, more precisely 29,15%. This is another record in the category.
Source image: Pixabay
A Spanish working group has found a way to generate a spatially limited magnetic field at some distance from the source. The team around Rosa Mach-Batlle from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona uses cylindrical 
arranged, current-carrying wires that form a magnetic metamaterial. The control of magnetism, which is essential to a wide variety of technologies, is compromised by the impossibility of achieving the maximum magnetic field to generate in free space. Here the researchers propose a strategy based on negative permeability is based to overcome this severe limitation. They demonstrate experimentally that an active magnetic material can emulate the field of a straight electric wire at a distance. Their strategy leads to an unprecedented focusing of magnetic fields in empty space and enables the remote erasure of magnetic sources, which opens a way to manipulate magnetic fields in inaccessible regions. PhysRevLett https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.177204
Image source: Pixabay
A team of Chinese scientists has one quantum computers which, according to its authors, demonstrates the superiority of quanta. The advantage of the Jiuzhang calculator manifests itself in the computing speed. According to the Chinese research team, it took their quantum computer just 200 seconds to perform calculations that would take the fastest conventional computer millions of years to do.
Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03434-7
Last October, Google officials confirmed an earlier media report on achieving quantum supremacy. The Sycamore computer they created seemed a long-awaited breakthrough in the Quantum computing to be. Google engineers reported that their quantum computer solved a problem in just over three minutes that would take even the best conventional machines thousands of years to solve.
Quantum computers can far outperform conventional machines. The goal is the so-called "Quantum SupremacyThe Sycamore computer only achieved this advantage in one very specific case. The experiment by Google engineers consisted in performing random operations on qubits and reading the result. The resulting sentence of digits encoded in a binary system has been checked to ensure that their distribution is really random.These calculations are not particularly useful, but they have a major impact on the computing power of the device.
Image source: Nature https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03434-7; Hansen Zhong
The long-standing and extremely complex scientific problem of the structure and behavior of proteins has been solved by the new AlphaFold artificial intelligence system. DeepMind scientists have shown that the artificial intelligence they create can predict which three-dimensional shape proteins will form from amino acid sequences.
Predicting what three-dimensional shape a protein will take has been a mystery to scientists for half a century. The ability to accurately predict the structure of proteins based on their amino acid sequence would be a great boon to life sciences and medicine. It would greatly accelerate efforts to understand the building blocks of cells and enable new drugs to be developed more quickly.
The team from DeepMind developed artificial intelligence has dealt with the problem. It is a Google affiliate that has had many successes in developing advanced algorithms. A few years ago you did AlphaGo program the master of go played several times. Another of their artificial intelligence, known as AlphaStar, turned out to be better than 99,8% of the players in the real-time strategy game StarCraft II. However, achieving their new artificial intelligence - AlphaFold - surpasses the good results in games.
Today again from the series Star Trek sends greetings or Nanites 2.0. We recently reported on the development of micro-robots (Controlling a microscopic robot inside the body. Promising first test results). The developments in the field seem to have picked up speed very strongly.
Researchers at the Swiss Technical University ETH Zurich have succeeded in building a miniature medical robot out of metal and plastic using 3D lithography. The resulting robot constructions are no more than a quarter of a millimeter long and can be controlled by a magnetic field in medical applications.
Today again from the series Star Trek sends greetings or Nanites 2.0. We recently reported on the development of micro-robots (Controlling a microscopic robot inside the body. Promising first test results). The developments in the field seem to have picked up speed very strongly.
Researchers at the Swiss Technical University ETH Zurich have succeeded in building a miniature medical robot out of metal and plastic using 3D lithography. The resulting robot constructions are no more than a quarter of a millimeter long and can be controlled by a magnetic field in medical applications.
The engineers at the University of Texas at Austin have developed the smallest data storage device yet. The study, the results of which were recently published in Nature Nanotechnology (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-020-00789-w) published 
is based on a discovery made two years ago when a record-breaking thinner device called the "atomizer" was built to store information. In this new work, the scientists have further reduced the size and reduced the cross-sectional area to just one square nanometer.
Image source: Pixabay
A new material can help build quantum computers. Superconductors are materials in which electricity flows without encountering resistance. Usually its path is one-way, but a material has been discovered in which current can flow in two directions at the same time. Science (https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6462/238)
This unusual superconductor is the so-called b-Bi2Pdwhich is made up of crystalline bismuth and palladium. If we form a ring from a thin layer of material, it turns out that the current in it will flow clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time. The discoverers of the phenomenon predict that it will be used in the next generation of quantum computers, thanks to the direct use of the laws of quantum physics will be able to perform calculations much faster than their modern counterparts.
Image source: Superpositioned Qubit / Johns Hopkins University
Researchers from Tel Aviv University and Shamir Medical Center have stopped and reversed some key aspects of human cell aging. In their research, they used what is called the hyperbaric 
Oxygen therapy.
Every time a cell replicates in our body, we lose a piece of our youth. All by shortening the telomeres, the structures that protect our chromosomes from damage when copied. Understanding this process is considered the "holy grail" of aging biology. Researchers from Israel claim that in a small study of 26 patients they succeeded in reversing the shortening process and thereby increasing the length of the telomeres. A description of the study was published in the journal "Aging" released.
Image source: Tel Aviv University (TAU)
How can the aging process be reversed?
The conversion of carbon dioxide into ethyl alcohol and other valuable substances is carried out by Dr. Wojciech Stępniowski made possible the catalysts developed. Catalysts consist of nanoprints and have huge surfaces that offer enough space for the particles involved in the reaction.
To reduce carbon dioxide to other substances, electrochemical methods are used, including - catalysts. These are substances that enable and facilitate the chemical reaction, but do not participate in it. As a result of such a reaction, the hydrocarbons needed to make polymers - the popular plastics - can be produced. Ethyl alcohol can also be obtained from CO2 for various uses, for example as fuel for cars.
Image source: Pixabay
Thanks to the technology presented by the Israeli start-up, the sound can be transmitted directly to the ears without the need for headphones or earplugs. Of the Sound Beamer 1.0As its creators put it, it creates an "acoustic bubble" around the listener's ears and nobody but the recipient hears any noise. That from New Systems The system developed by a start-up uses a sensor system to locate the position of the ears. Finding the target area allows tones to be sent that no one except the user can hear. Interestingly, the device tracks the position of the head while listening to make changes in the position of the ears so you can listen to music while you move. However, you must stay within range of the device's sensors.
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