Latest news with #NewJerseyInstituteOfTechnology
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
AI discovers new material that could transform batteries
Artificial intelligence has helped discover new materials that could transform batteries, scientists claim. Battery technology could be key to moving towards a more sustainable world. Researchers hope that batteries could provide a key way of allowing for better electric vehicles as well as transforming smaller technology such as phones. At the same time, however, our existing battery technology is flawed. The lithium-ion batteries that power much of our devices are relatively low density, lose energy over time and are vulnerable to heat and other changes. One way that researchers hope to address those problems is through what they call multivalent batteries. Those use more easily available elements in comparison with lithium-ion batteries, and so could be cheaper, easier and cleaner to make. What's more, the technology that powers them means that they could be more efficient and able to store more energy than existing batteries. However, the larger size and greater electrical charge of the multivalent ions that are used in the battery mean they can be difficult to incorporate into a battery. Now researchers have used generative artificial intelligence – a similar technology used in systems such as ChatGPT – to find new materials that could help resolve that problem. 'One of the biggest hurdles wasn't a lack of promising battery chemistries — it was the sheer impossibility of testing millions of material combinations,' said Dibakar Datta from the New Jersey Institute of Technology. 'We turned to generative AI as a fast, systematic way to sift through that vast landscape and spot the few structures that could truly make multivalent batteries practical. 'This approach allows us to quickly explore thousands of potential candidates, dramatically speeding up the search for more efficient and sustainable alternatives to lithium-ion technology.' Researchers were able to use an AI system to pick through different possible materials and examine whether they would be helpful in such batteries. 'Our AI tools dramatically accelerated the discovery process, which uncovered five entirely new porous transition metal oxide structures that show remarkable promise,' said Professor Datta. 'These materials have large, open channels ideal for moving these bulky multivalent ions quickly and safely, a critical breakthrough for next-generation batteries.' After finding the materials using AI, researchers checked them using more traditional simulations to ensure they could be used in real-world applications. The work is reported in a new paper, 'Generative AI for discovering porous oxide materials for next-generation energy storage', published in the journal Cell Reports.
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Space photo of the week: Pink 'raindrops' on the sun captured in greatest detail ever
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Quick facts What it is: The sun's corona Where it is: The outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere. When it was shared: May 27, 2025 Solar "raindrops" — plasma streams and vast arches extending outward from the sun's surface and into the corona, the outermost part of the solar atmosphere — have been captured in spectacular new detail by a ground-based telescope in California. Among the images taken from time-lapse movies, which utilize new technology to eliminate blurring caused by Earth's atmosphere, is coronal rain, a phenomenon that occurs when cooling plasma condenses and falls back toward the sun's surface along magnetic field lines. Other features imaged include prominences — the term solar physicists use to describe the arches and loops — and finely structured plasma streams. The images are artificially colorized from the hydrogen-alpha light captured by the telescope, making them appear pink. The remarkable images, taken by researchers from the U.S. National Science Foundation's National Solar Observatory and New Jersey Institute of Technology, were published this week in a paper in the journal Nature. "These are by far the most detailed observations of this kind, showing features not previously observed, and it's not quite clear what they are," Vasyl Yurchyshyn, co-author of the study and a research professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said in a statement. The researchers captured the new images using the 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope at the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) in California, equipped with a new technology called Cona, which employs a laser to correct for turbulence in Earth's upper atmosphere. Related: NASA spacecraft snaps eerie image of eclipsed sun with an extra moon overhead. What's going on? Cona is "like a pumped-up autofocus" for the sky, Nicolas Gorceix, chief observer at BBSO, said in the statement. It's a form of adaptive optics that works by measuring, and then adapting in real-time to, atmospheric distortions, reshaping a special mirror 2,200 times per second. Turbulence in Earth's upper atmosphere has always been a limiting factor when studying the sun, but Cona increases the resolution of what can be observed, from features over 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) wide to just 63 km (39 miles). SEE MORE SPACE PHOTOS —Violent galaxies seen 'jousting' near the dawn of time —Cotton candy clouds shine in one of Hubble's most beautiful images ever —Bizarre 1-armed spiral galaxy stuns Hubble scientists The sun's corona, which means crown, is one of the most mysterious places in the solar system. This outer layer of the sun's atmosphere is blocked from view by the brighter photosphere — the sun's surface — and is only visible briefly to the naked eye during a total solar eclipse. That also applies to prominences, which can be seen during totality as reddish-pink arches and loops. Despite its tenuous nature, the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the photosphere. It's of critical interest to solar scientists because it's in the corona that the solar wind originates. This constant stream of charged particles then radiates throughout the solar system, interacting with planetary atmospheres (including Earth's) to cause geomagnetic storms and auroras. Following the successful test of Cona, plans are underway to install it on the 4-meter Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Maui, Hawaii, the world's largest solar telescope.
Gizmodo
27-05-2025
- Science
- Gizmodo
Telescope Upgrade Reveals Sun's ‘Coronal Rain' in Unprecedented Detail
A powerful new optics system has captured the clearest view yet of the Sun's corona, revealing stunning plasma structures. The Sun's outer atmosphere—the corona—is the piping hot outer limit of our star, and is usually hidden from view except during rare total eclipses. Now, scientists have gotten their clearest look ever at this mysterious region, thanks to a new adaptive optics system that scrubs away atmospheric blur, revealing fine views of the wispy plasma on the star's surface. Researchers from the National Solar Observatory and New Jersey Institute of Technology unveiled the system today, along with dazzling new images and videos of the Sun's corona. The findings, published in Nature Astronomy, show fine-scale structures in solar prominences, short-lived plasma jets called spicules, and even coronal rain: cooling plasma that falls back to the solar surface along the star's magnetic field lines. The team's imaging breakthrough hinges on a technology called coronal adaptive optics. Installed on the 5.25-foot (1.6-meter) Goode Solar Telescope in California, the new system—nicknamed 'Cona'—adjusts a mirror 2,200 times per second to correct for distortions caused by the churn of Earth's atmosphere. The remarkable technology counterbalances any would-be wobble in the telescope, thereby producing particularly sharp images of the corona. 'This technological advancement is a game-changer,' said Dirk Schmidt, an adaptive optics scientist at NSO and the study's lead author, in an observatory release. 'There is a lot to discover when you boost your resolution by a factor of 10.' Until now, solar telescopes have used adaptive optics mainly to study the Sun's surface, the release stated. Observing the fainter corona has remained a challenge, with coronal features blurred to scales of 621 miles (1,000 kilometers)—a limit that's existed for 80 years. But Cona now resolves features down to just 39 miles (63 km), the theoretical limit of the Goode telescope. Among the new footage captured by the team are shots of a twisting solar prominence reshaping in real time, spicules flickering on the surface, and fine, hair-like strands of coronal rain narrower than 12.5 miles (20 km). When you consider how far the Sun is from Earth, how faint the corona is relative to the rest of the star, and how much of Earth's turbulent atmosphere the team had to cut through and correct for, the sharpness of the images is a triumph. 'This transformative technology, which is likely to be adopted at observatories world-wide, is poised to reshape ground-based solar astronomy,' said study co-author Philip Goode, a physicist at NJIT-CSTR, in the same release. 'With coronal adaptive optics now in operation, this marks the beginning of a new era in solar physics, promising many more discoveries in the years and decades to come.' The observations offer crucial data for unraveling enduring solar mysteries—like why the corona is millions of degrees hotter than the solar surface. The team plans to bring the coronal adaptive optics technology to the 13-foot (4-meter) Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaiʻi—potentially revealing even smaller details of the Sun's atmosphere.
