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All chemical reactions are controlled by species we rarely detect: short-lived carbenes, radicals, and ketenes steer reaction pathways and ultimately determine selectivity and yield. Conventional tools such as GC/MS or NMR usually miss intermediates, even though mechanistic insight is urgently needed for rational process optimization.
I will discuss NASA's Lucy mission, which is the first reconnaissance of the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. Asteroids are the leftovers from the age of planet formation. But, unlike the planets themselves, they have remained relatively unchanged since they formed. As a result, they hold vital clues to how our Solar System formed and evolved, and thus can be considered the fossils of planet formation. Lucy will visit eight of these important objects between 2027 and 2033.
The vicinity of small bodies such as the Moon and asteroids, as well as artificial satellites, forms a “plasma-solid boundary layer” where space plasma and solid surfaces come into direct contact without the mediation of a neutral atmosphere or magnetosphere. The importance of the research subject is being increasingly recognized along with the recent global surge in momentum for manned lunar exploration.
Join CU Wizards Professors Eleanor Hodby and Steven Pollock, along with Gwen Eccles, as they dive into the fascinating world of light, color and color perception - where physics and biology meet!
Mineralogy as a discipline has established the principles of crystal structure, symmetry, and chemistry that dictate all of modern material science underlying everything from computers to photonic technologies operating based on quantum mechanical principles. However, nature itself also acts a laboratory assembling naturally occurring minerals that exhibit even exotic quantum phenomena. I will discuss examples such as natural superconductors, strange metals, or spin liquids which result from the interplay of the quantized nature of electrons, spin, and lattice.
The remarkable precision of optical atomic clocks enables new applications and can provide sensitivity to novel and exotic physics. In this talk I will explain the motivation and operating principles of a “multiplexed" strontium optical lattice clock, which consists of two or more atomic ensembles of trapped, ultra-cold strontium in one vacuum chamber. This miniature clock network enables us to bypass the primary limitations to standard comparisons between atomic clocks and thereby achieve new levels of precision.
The promise of universal quantum computing hinges on scalable single- and inter-qubit control interactions. Photon systems offer strong isolation from environmental disturbances and provide speed and timing advantages while facing challenges in achieving deterministic photon-photon interactions necessary for scalable universal quantum computing.
The evolutionary history, and likely habitability, of exoplanet atmospheres depends on the space weather of their host stars. Understanding the particle environment, including the wind density, magnetic field strength, and velocity field, impinging on exoplanet systems remains a significant open question. This unknown impacts the interpretation of exoplanet atmosphere observations and the ongoing search for biosignatures, with facilities like JWST.
Almost exactly 100 years ago, in the early months of 1926, Erwin Schrödinger published a series of four papers that would transform not only the prevailing theories of physics but also mankind’s very understanding of the nature of reality.
I will discuss the standards of time and frequency and how these standards have evolved over the centuries. I will present the current definitions of time and frequency and how these definitions are likely to evolve in the coming years.