News 2019

The development of technologies which can process information based on the laws of quantum physics are predicted to have profound impacts on modern society. For example, quantum computers may hold the key to solving problems that are too complex for today's most powerful supercomputers, and a quantum internet could ultimately protect the worlds information from malicious attacks.

Combining powerful lasers and bright x-rays, Imperial and STFC researchers have demonstrated a technique that will allow new extreme experiments. The new technique would be able to use a single x-ray flash to capture information about extremely dense and hot matter, such as can be found inside gas giant planets or on the crusts of dead stars.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe is going closer to the sun than any spacecraft has been before - Dr Daniel Verscharen (UCL Space & Climate Physics) writes about the findings so far. If you ask a child to paint a picture of the sun, you will most likely get a bright yellow circle on a piece of paper. This is actually quite accurate, given that the sun is a ball of hot gas and that its surface (called the photosphere) mostly shines in bright yellow light.

The Parker Solar Probe spacecraft, which has flown closer to the Sun than any mission before, has found new evidence of the origins of the solar wind. NASA's Parker Solar Probe was launched in August 2018. Its first results are published today in a series of four papers in Nature , with Imperial College London scientists among those interpreting some of the key data to reveal how the solar wind is accelerated away from the surface of the Sun.

A new technique in chemistry could pave the way for producing uniform nanoparticles for use in drug delivery systems. Scientists have been investigating how to make better use of nanoparticles in medicine for several decades. Significantly smaller than an average cell, nanoparticles are more similar in size to proteins.

White blood cells, which release a toxic potion of proteins to kill cancerous and virus-infected cells, are protected from any harm by the physical properties of their cell envelopes, find scientists from UCL and the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. Until now, it has been a mystery to scientists how these white blood cells - called cytotoxic lymphocytes - avoid being killed by their own actions and the discovery could help explain why some tumours are more resistant than others to recently developed cancer immunotherapies.

Researchers at Imperial are starting work on a huge new neutrino experiment, aiming to understand the origin and structure of the universe. The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), to be assembled in the US, will have components designed and built by institutions across the UK, including Imperial.

UCL scientists working to understand neutrinos and antimatter through DUNE (the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment) will benefit from the UK's latest multi-million pound investment in the project. The DUNE project brings together more than 1,000 physicists from the UK and 31 countries from Asia, Europe and the Americas to build the world's most advanced neutrino observatory, which could lead to profound changes in our understanding of the universe.

The most energetic form of light has been detected from a distant but powerful cosmic explosion known as a 'gamma-ray burst' for the first time, by an international team including UCL physicists using a UCL-built space telescope onboard NASA's Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory. The discovery and in particular, the unknown mechanisms that cause extremely high-energy light to be emitted in the afterglow of a gamma-ray burst (GRB).

The return of a space probe bearing samples from a distant asteroid is being eagerly anticipated by researchers from the University of Glasgow and Curtin University in Australia. Scientists from the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences will receive three miniscule precious pieces of the asteroid Ryugu when the uncrewed Hayabusa2 mission returns to Earth late next year after six years in space.

Scientists from Cardiff University have, for the first time, spotted previously unseen "instabilities" on the surface of a common compound semiconductor material. The findings could potentially have profound consequences for the development of future materials in the electronic devices that power our daily lives.

The central component of LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) - the largest direct-detection dark matter experiment in the US - has been slowly lowered 4,850 feet down a shaft formerly used in gold-mining operations by a team involving UCL physicists. Although dark matter accounts for about 27 percent of the universe, we do not know what it is made of and experiments have yet to make direct contact with a particle - it has only been detected through its gravitational effects on normal matter.

A three-dimensional map of the Universe that reaches deeper in space and time than ever before is one step closer as final testing begins on the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), designed and built in part by UCL physicists. From early 2020, DESI will observe the light from 35 million distant galaxies and 2.4 million quasars over five years to precisely map their distance from Earth and gauge how quickly they are moving away from us.

Using a range of theoretical and simulation approaches, physicists from the University of Bristol have shown that liquids in contact with substrates can exhibit a finite number of classes of behaviour and identify the important new ones. Their findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , challenge the accepted wisdom on wetting and drying phase behaviour.

Here's a batch of fresh news and announcements from across Imperial. From a white blood cell playing a 'security guard' role, to the President's call for collaboration and community, here is some quick-read news from across the College. Patrolling eye Researchers from Imperial have discovered a new 'security guard' role for a type of white blood cell called a neutrophil.

A team of scientists, including a researcher from the University of Birmingham, has discovered that the fading of infrared light following Type Ia supernovae explosions can be interrupted, with brightness staying the same for up to a year. This is a surprising finding as astronomers had expected that the light curve would not only continue decreasing but even experience a sharp drop, rather than flattening into a plateau.

New research conducted at the University of Sussex has simulated dark matter in a new way for the first time, disrupting conventional thinking about the make-up of the universe. The research, published in Physical Review Letters , was done alongside Princeton, Harvard, Cambridge and MIT universities and others.

Scientists searching for evidence of new physics in particle processes that could explain dark matter and other mysteries of the universe have moved one step closer, with the new result of the NA62 experiment reported today at CERN. An international team of scientists have succeeded in harnessing a new technique which captures and measures the ultra rare decay of a sub atomic particle called a kaon.

An Imperial-built instrument will study the Sun's magnetic field aboard the Solar Orbiter spacecraft following its launch in early 2020. Solar Orbiter, a European Space Agency (ESA) mission, will study the Sun in unprecedented detail from only 50 million kilometres away, inside the orbit of Mercury.

The LIGO Scientific Collaboration and the Virgo Collaboration identify a further gravitational wave event in the data from the Advanced LIGO detectors. On 26 December 2015 at 03:38:53 GMT, the twin LIGO instruments observed a binary black hole coalescence, named GW151226.