Science

A special laser (red) can spiralise electrons (blue)Dr. Yiqi Fang, University of Konstanz An electron has been turned into a spiralling wave of mass and charge, with the help of a laser. “Chirality, or handedness, is an interesting and still in part enigmatic feature of our universe,” says Peter Baum at the University of Konstanz in Germany. Chiral objects, like coils or L-shaped blocks, come in either left or right-handed forms; non-chiral ones, like circles or straight lines, do not. Many molecules and materials are naturally chiral, and whether they are right or left-handed changes how they function. But Baum and his colleagues devised a way to add chirality to something very small and elementary – a single electron. Electrons are quantum objects, so they exhib...

The South Bronx is a coastal community without a waterfront. Severed from the shore, two South Bronx neighborhoods—Mott Haven and Port Morris—are saturated with waste facilities, power plants and warehouses, and crisscrossed with highways that carry diesel trucks throughout the community. Local residents experience significantly more asthma hospitalizations that elsewhere in New York City, and children have some of the highest asthma incidence rates in the country. Arif Ullah describing industrialization along the banks of the Harlem River to the Columbia MPA-ESP students. Photo: Conor O’Brien In the South Bronx, aka Asthma Alley, the signs of environmental racism are impossible to ignore. The story, however, doesn’t have to end there. Organizations like South Bronx Unite seek to bu...

Quantum computer exports are being restricted by many countriesSaigh Anees/Shutterstock Secret international discussions have resulted in governments across the world imposing identical export controls on quantum computers, while refusing to disclose the scientific rationale behind the regulations. Although quantum computers theoretically have the potential to threaten national security by breaking encryption techniques, even the most advanced quantum computers currently in public existence are too small and too error-prone to achieve this, rendering the bans seemingly pointless. The UK is one of the countries that has prohibited the export of quantum computers with 34 or more quantum bits, or qubits, and error rates below a certain threshold. The intention seems to be...

Can you find you way out from the red centre of the maze? Scroll down for the solutionUniversity of Bristol An algorithm designed to find the most efficient path from atom to atom in a bizarre kind of crystal turns out to produce incredibly intricate mazes. As well as making mazes, the technique could help speed up certain industrial chemical reactions. The crystals in question are called quasicrystals because, while their atoms are arranged in repeating forms like an ordinary crystal, they display more complex and unpredictable forms of symmetry. Such crystals have been synthesised in the laboratory and were even created by the first detonation of a nuclear weapon in 1945, but only one natural source has ever been found: a meteorite discovered in Russia in 1985. ...

As the subway train rumbles through the tunnels, I anticipate my arrival at a textile waste facility in Brooklyn, where I will spend the day volunteering with Columbia University’s Impact Fashion Club. My job is to sort through fabric scraps and textile waste for Fabscrap, a non-profit organization and one-stop textile reuse and recycling resource. Exiting the station, I am greeted by the industrial hum of the neighborhood. Inside the Fabscrap warehouse within the Brooklyn Army Terminal, the air smells of fabric, and piles and piles of bags and boxes fill the room. Their contents? Nothing but textile waste. Sorted textile scraps at the Fabscrap facility. Photo: Mary Austin Harrelson In 2021, Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) reported that the annual textile waste produced in New York City...