SciExplore Connect

Building electronics that don’t die: Columbia's breakthrough at CERN

Deep beneath the Swiss-French border, the Large Hadron Collider unleashes staggering amounts of energy and radiation—enough to fry most electronics. Enter a team of Columbia engineers, who built ultra-rugged, radiation-resistant chips that now play a pivotal role in capturing data from subatomic particle collisions. These custom-designed ADCs not only survive the hostile environment inside CERN but also help filter and digitize the most critical collision events, enabling physicists to study elusive phenomena like the Higgs boson.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is tough on electronics. Situated inside a 17-mile-long tunnel that runs in a circle under the border between Switzerland and France, this massive scientific instrument accelerates particles close to the speed of light before smashing them together. The collisions yield tiny maelstroms of particles and energy that hint at answers to fundamental questions about the building blocks of matter.

Those…

Scientists just proved a fundamental quantum rule for the first time

Scientists have, for the first time, experimentally proven that angular momentum is conserved even when a single photon splits into two, pushing quantum physics to its most fundamental limits. Using ultra-precise equipment, the team captured this elusive process—comparable to finding a needle in a haystack—confirming a cornerstone law of nature at the photon level.

Researchers at Tampere University and their collaborators from Germany and India have experimentally confirmed that angular momentum is conserved when a single photon is converted into a pair - validating a key principle of physics at the quantum level for the first time. This breakthrough opens new possibilities for creating complex quantum states useful in computing, communication, and sensing.

Conservation laws are the heart of our natural scientific understanding as they govern which processes are allowed or forbidden. A simple example is that of colliding…

Decoding the rhythms of a Black Hole: A discovery with AstroSat

July 25, 2025

Black holes, the universe's most enigmatic powerhouses, cannot be seen directly, but their immense gravity reveals their presence. Born from the collapse of massive stars that exhaust their fuel, these cosmic voids are invisible because not even light can escape their grasp. However, a black hole in a binary system with a companion star, triggers a dramatic process known as accretion, pulling in stellar material that spirals inward and heats up to over 10 million degrees (far hotter than the Sun's surface temperature of 6000 degrees). This ‘super-heated’ matter emits intense X-rays, which are captured by space telescopes, offering scientists a rare window into the otherwise hidden lives of black holes.

In a distant corner of our galaxy (nearly 28000 light-years away) lies one of the most fascinating and mysterious black hole, GRS 1915+105. This intriguing…

Why Mars became a desert while Earth stayed alive

Both Mars and Earth began with similar ingredients—rocky surfaces, carbon, water, and sunlight—but their paths split dramatically.

For decades, scientists have puzzled over why Earth stayed warm and alive while Mars turned cold and dry. Both planets began with similar ingredients—rocky surfaces, carbon, water, and sunlight—but their paths split dramatically.

A new study led by Edwin Kite from the University of Chicago offers a compelling explanation: Mars had brief wet periods sparked by the slowly brightening sun, but its own geology shut them down, pushing it back to desert.

Published in the journal Nature, the study builds on recent discoveries by NASA’s Curiosity rover, which found carbonate-rich rocks in Mars’ surface. These rocks reveal a hidden story of a planet that may have once supported water, but couldn't keep it for long.