ScienceDaily: Matter & Energy News

The state of Georgia could dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, while creating new jobs and a healthier public, if more of its energy-intensive industries and commercial buildings were to utilize combined heat and power (CHP), according to the latest research.

A natural food colorant called phycocyanin provides a fun, vivid blue in soft drinks, but it is unstable on grocery shelves. A synchrotron is helping to steady it.

While the number of qubits and the stability of quantum states are still limiting current quantum computing devices, there are questions where these processors are already able to leverage their enormous computing power. Scientists used a quantum processor to simulate the ground state of a so-called toric code Hamiltonian -- an archetypical model system in modern condensed matter physics, which was originally proposed in the context of quantum error correction.

Biologists are studying how engineered biofilms closely mimic natural ones. Their research may aid in developing drugs to fight the negative effects of these microorganisms that adhere to surfaces.

Light not only plays a key role as an information carrier for optical computer chips, but also in particular for the next generation of quantum computers. Its lossless guidance around sharp corners on tiny chips and the precise control of its interaction with other light are the focus of research worldwide. Scientists have now demonstrated the spatial confinement of a light wave to a point smaller than the wavelength in a 'topological photonic crystal.'

The expansion of renewable energies is placing increasing demands on the power grids. Precise forecasts of the amount of solar power that will be fed into the grid is key to effective energy management. In addition to clouds, aerosol particles also strongly influence the amount of electricity generated by photovoltaic systems. Current air quality models are a good basis for estimating the production of solar electricity, but they could be further improved.

Physicists have developed a theory describing how space reflection and time reversal symmetries can be exploited, allowing for greater control of transport and correlations within quantum materials.

Scientists have published an analysis laying out how the tiny beads of glass inside many meteorites came to be -- and what they can tell us about what happened in the early solar system.