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The list of conditions required for complex life to emerge on Earth is contentious, poorly understood, and one item longer than it used to be. According to an international team of geoscientists, an unusual lull in the Earth’s magnetic field nearly 600 million years ago may have triggered a rise in the planet’s oxygen levels, thereby allowing large, complex animals to evolve and thrive for the first time. Though evidence for the link is circumstantial, the team say that new measurements of magnetization in 591-million-year-old rocks suggest an important connection between processes occurring deep within the Earth and the appearance of life on its surface.

Scientists believe that the Earth’s magnetic field – including the bubble-like magnetosphere that shields us from the solar wind – stems from a dynamo effect created by molten metal moving inside the planet’s outer core. The strength of this field varies, and between 591 and 565 million years ago, it was almost 30 times weaker than it is today. Indeed, researchers think that in these years, which lie within the geological Ediacaran Period, the field dropped to its lowest-ever point.

Early in the Ediacaran, life on Earth was limited to small, soft-bodied organisms. Between 575 and 565 million years ago, however, fossil records show that lifeforms became significantly larger, more complex and mobile. While previous studies linked this change to an increase in atmospheric and oceanic oxygen levels that occurred around the same time, the cause of this increase was not known.

Weak magnetic field allowed more hydrogen gas to escape

In the latest study, which is published in Communications Earth & Environment, researchers led by geophysicist John Tarduno of the University of Rochester, US, present a hypothesis that links these two phenomena. The weak magnetic field, they argue, could have allowed more hydrogen gas to escape from the atmosphere into space, resulting in a net increase in the percentage of oxygen in the atmosphere and oceans. This, in turn, allowed larger, more oxygen-hungry animals to emerge.

To quantify the drop in Earth’s magnetic field, the team used a technique known as single-crystal paleointensity that Tarduno and colleagues invented 25 years ago and later refined. This technique enabled them to measure the magnetization of feldspar plagioclase crystals from a 591-million-year-old rock formation in Passo da Fabiana Gabbros, Brazil. These crystals are common in the Earth’s crust and contain minute magnetic inclusions that record, with high fidelity, the intensity of the Earth’s magnetic field at the time they crystallized. They also preserve accurate values of magnetic field strength for billions of years.

Tarduno says it was challenging to find rock formations that would have cooled slowly enough to yield a representative average for the magnetic field, and that also contained crystals suitable for paleointensity analyses. “We were able to find these in Brazil, aided by our colleagues at Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul,” he says.

The team mounted the samples in quartz holders (which had negligible magnetic moments) and measured their magnetism using a DC SQUID magnetometer at Rochester. This instrument is composed of high-resolution sensing coils housed in a magnetically shielded room with an ambient field of less 200 nT.

Geodynamo remained ultra-weak for at least 26 million years

The team compared its results to those from previous studies of 565-million-year-old anorthosite rocks from the Sept Îles Mafic Intrusive Suite in Quebec, Canada, which also contain feldspar plagioclase crystals. Together, these measurements suggest that the Earth’s geodynamo remained ultra-weak, with a time-averaged field intensity of less than 0.8 x 10²² A m², for least 26 million years. “This timespan allowed the oxygenation of the atmosphere and oceans to cross a threshold that in turn helped the Ediacaran radiation of animal life,” Tarduno says. “If this is true, it would represent a profound connection between the deep Earth and life. This history could also have implications for the search for life elsewhere.”

The researchers say they need additional records of geomagnetic field strength throughout the Ediacaran, plus the Cryogenian (720 to 635 million years ago) and Cambrian (538.8 to 485.4 million years ago) Periods that bookend it, to better constrain the duration of the ultra-low magnetic fields. “This is crucial for understanding how much hydrogen could be lost from the atmosphere to space, ultimately resulting in the increased oxygenation,” Tarduno tells Physics World.

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Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, has a long history as a world cradle of physics. The first experiments in the Soviet Union on nuclear fission were conducted there in the 1930s, and in 1932 the future Nobel-prize-winning physicist Lev Landau founded an influential school of theoretical physics in the city. Over the years, Kharkiv has been visited by influential scientists including Niels Bohr, Paul Dirac and Paul Ehrenfest.

Kharkiv is still home to many research institutes, but, located just 30 km from the Russian border, the city has been heavily damaged and suffered hundreds of casualties since the Russian invasion that began in February 2022. In the past week, advances made by the Russian forces have put the region under increased pressure, with thousands of civilians fleeing away from the border towards Kharkiv.

I first travelled to Kharkiv in November 2021 as part of a photography project documenting Soviet-era scientific facilities. The Russian army was massing at the border, but I was nevertheless stunned when, having returned home to France, I heard the news of the invasion.

The day after I arrived, explosions rang out in the city centre

I considered abandoning my project, but I felt compelled to document what was happening and in November 2023, I returned to Kharkiv. Though the Ukrainian counter-offensive had pushed back the Russian forces, the city was nevertheless plunged into darkness, the streets deserted. The day after I arrived, explosions rang out in the city centre.

For two weeks, I photographed Kharkiv’s scientific facilities, many of which had been destroyed or badly damaged since my previous visit. I also interviewed and photographed scientists who were continuing to perform their research despite the ongoing war. As the situation in Kharkiv becomes increasingly critical, the pictures I took stand as a record of the effects of the conflict on the people of Ukraine.

Department of Solid State Physics and Condensed Matter, Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, November 2021 and November 2023

Even when I was there in 2021, visiting the old cryogenics laboratory of the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology (KIPT) was like stepping back in time (photo 1). Founded in 1928 as the Ukrainian Physics and Technology Institute, KIPT is one of the oldest and largest physical science research institutes in Ukraine. New facilities have been built on the outskirts of the city, but the original buildings are still standing and, because of the historical value of the site, a project is underway to convert them into a museum.

When I returned in 2023, the corridors were silent, the heating was shut off and all the doors were closed. However, a few of the offices were still occupied by researchers in KIPT’s Department of Solid State Physics and Condensed Matter (photos 2, 3). During my visit, I also met students from the Kharkiv National University who were visiting with their teacher, Alexander Gapon (photo 4). Their faculty had been damaged in the early days of the fighting, and they had moved lab classes to KIPT so that teaching could continue.

Plasma Physics Institute, Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, November 2023

The Plasma Physics Institute houses two huge stellarators for studying nuclear fusion. These machines confine plasma under high magnetic fields (photo 5), creating the hot, dense conditions necessary for nuclei to fuse.

I met Igor Garkusha, the director of the institute, who showed me where the roof of the facility had been pierced by projectiles during the early days of the Russian invasion. Debris was still scattered everywhere and, in the room housing the stellarators, he held up a piece of shrapnel (photo 6). The roof played its protective role and the stellarators have not suffered any damage, but with research temporarily halted, Garkusha worried that they were at risk of losing skills.

“I never thought the Russians would wage war on us because I have a lot of family and friends on the other side,” Garkusha said. “I attended a nuclear fusion conference in London organized by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) in October. There were Russian scientists whom I’ve known for 20 or 30 years, and not one of them spoke to me.”

The Institute for Scintillation Materials, Kharkiv, November 2023

“I can’t complain: we get a lot of orders,” says Borys Grynyov (photo 8), director of the Institute for Scintillation Materials. Scintillation crystals, which emit light when exposed to radiation, are a vital component of particle detectors, and even though some of its buildings have been destroyed, the institute continues to participate in CERN research programmes.

For several months at the beginning of the war, around 50 people – members of staff, and their families, lived in the basement of the facility. The teams were eventually able to move the equipment to better-protected rooms, which allowed the production of the scintillation crystals to resume (photo 9).

Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute, November 2023

At around 5.30 a.m. on 19 August 2022, a missile struck a university building of the Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute (photo 10). From 8 a.m., Kseniia Minakova, head of the optics and photonics laboratory, searched through the rubble for what could be salvaged. Much of the equipment had been destroyed, but she and her colleagues found some microscopes, welding equipment and computers. After a few days, heavier equipment such as vacuum pumps could be evacuated.

I met Minakova at the institute, where she showed me her small temporary laboratory (photo 11). Her research is dedicated to solar energy and improving heat dissipation in photovoltaic systems. To enable Minakova’s team to continue working, Tulane University in the US, where they have collaborators, donated photovoltaic cells as well as a new 3D printer, screens, oscilloscopes and other equipment.

But what she was most grateful for was at the back of the room, where her team was huddled around a solar simulator donated by a Canadian company (photo 12). “I explained to them what I needed and they came up with a technical solution for our laboratory and completely assembled a new installation for us from scratch. This equipment is worth $60,000!”, exclaimed Minakova.

In 2023, she was appointed ambassador of the Optica foundation and a finalist for the L’Oréal-UNESCO “For Women in Science” prize. She has received several offers to work abroad. “I turned them down. My place is here, in Ukraine. If everyone leaves, who will take care of rebuilding our country?”

The post Physics in Ukraine: scientific endeavour lives on despite the Russian invasion appeared first on Physics World.

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In this short video, filmed at the 2024 March Meeting of the American Physical Society earlier this year, Vikrant Mahajan, president of Zurich Instruments USA, outlines the company’s new products to support scientists in quantum computing.

Mahajan explains how Zurich Instruments, which has more than 10 locations around the globe, wants to move quantum computing forward with its products, such as its newly released SHF+ series platform. “Our mission is to help build a practical quantum computer,” he says.

Moritz Kirste, head of business development quantum technologies, then describes the main features of the SHF+ product line, which are the building blocks for its quantum computing control systems. “It provides qubit control and read-out functionality of any chip size from one to hundreds of qubits,” he says.

Next up is Linsey Rodenbach, application scientist quantum technologies, who explains that the SHF+ offers better qubit performance metrics – and therefore higher algorithm fidelities. The new platform has lower noise, which means less measurement-induced dephasing, thereby boosting phase coherence between control pulses, especially for long-lived qubits.

As Rodenbach adds, the SHF+ provides a route for developing high quality qubits or when operating large quantum processing units, with Zurich Instruments partnering with some of the world’s leading labs to ensure that the technical specifcations of the SHF+ provide the desired performance benefits.

Get in touch with their team to discuss your specific requirements and collaborate on advancing quantum technology.

The post Zurich Instruments launch their SHF+ series platform for quantum computing technologies appeared first on Physics World.

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The Institute of Physics (IOP) has launched a new award to help universities attract, support and retain a diverse physics community. The Physics Inclusion Award will encompass several aspects of diversity such as race and ethnicity, neurodiversity and sexual orientation.

It replaces the long-established Project Juno, which rewarded university physics departments and organizations that showed they had taken action to address gender equality.

Project Juno was originally set up after the IOP examined the challenges facing UK university departments in the mid-2000s. Over the last 15 years, the number of women physics professors at UK universities has doubled, with women now making up a quarter of academic staff. But there remain many parts of the population that are under-represented in physics. Less than 1% of university physics staff, for example, are Black.

A steering group, chaired by University of Birmingham theoretical physicist Nicola Wilkin, began work on the new award in 2021. A pilot scheme ran from September 2023 to January 2024 involving staff from 11 physics departments in the UK and Ireland. They worked through a Physics Inclusion Award self-assessment tool, reviewed the effectiveness of the award criteria and took part in feedback sessions with the IOP.

“Building upon the success of Project Juno, [the new award] widens our offer to anyone who faces barriers because of who they are or where they come from – so that everyone is welcomed and included in physics”, says the IOP president, atomic physicist Keith Burnett. “To realize the incredible potential physics offers society, we need a growing, diverse, sustainable physics community which drives the physics of today and attracts the generation of tomorrow.”

Applications for the new award will open in late 2024.

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Venus could be shedding water to space at a much faster rate than previously thought. That is the conclusion of researchers in the US, who have identified a mechanism in the Venusian ionosphere that could be involved in water loss.

How much water Venus had in the past is uncertain, with some planetary scientists suggesting that the planet may have once had oceans that eventually evaporated as the Venusian greenhouse effect began to run away with itself. Today, only 0.002% of the planet’s atmosphere is composed of water vapour. If condensed on Venus’ surface, this water would form a global equivalent layer (GEL) just 3 cm deep – compared to Earth’s GEL of 3 km.

If Venus began life with a large amount of water, then it has lost almost all of it. Current thinking is that non-thermal hydrogen escape is responsible. This process involves solar radiation splitting water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. Being lightweight, some of this hydrogen will then escape into space and be swept away by the solar wind.

Lost forever

“Once a hydrogen atom has gone, Venus has lost, in some sense, a water molecule forever,” says Mike Chaffin of the University of Boulder, Colorado.

In recent years, Chaffin’s team have explored water loss from planetary atmospheres via a different mechanism involving the formyl cation (HCO⁺). This ion is a product of molecular recombination in a planetary ionosphere after molecules such as water and carbon dioxide are broken apart by solar radiation. In their model, Chaffin and his colleagues describe the dissociative recombination of HCO⁺, whereby an electron that has been liberated when an atom or molecule is ionized then collides with the ion, splitting HCO⁺ apart into carbon monoxide(CO) and an energetic hydrogen atom. This “hot hydrogen” has enough energy to escape the planet’s gravity.

In 2023, Chaffin and colleague Bethan Gregory found that HCO⁺ dissociative recombination is responsible for 5–50% of the water loss from Mars’ ionosphere.

However, when Chaffin, Gregory and Eryn Cangi led their team to apply the same mechanism to Venus’ atmosphere, the models showed that HCO⁺ dissociative recombination must be the dominant form of water loss on the planet, doubling the previously calculated rate of water loss.

Lack of data

The problem is, HCO⁺ has yet to be detected on Venus.

“I worried about this a lot when we were preparing our paper [describing our results],” Chaffin told Physics World. “Based on our modelling work, there should be a lot more HCO⁺ on Venus than we thought previously, but how much can we trust our model?”

Chaffin says that the uncertainty is related to NASA’s Pioneer Venus Orbiter, which has been the only space mission so far with an instrument capable of probing Venus’ ionosphere. Launched in 1978, Pioneer was not specifically designed to detect HCO⁺.

“This has been a gap in measurements of Venus,” says Chaffin, although he does say that by extrapolating from the Pioneer results, one can infer a water-loss rate that is “in the same ballpark” as that predicted by the HCO⁺ mechanism. Chaffin takes this as indirect confirmation of the model.

Chaffin’s confidence is backed up by Janet Luhmann  at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. “So long as [Chaffin and colleagues’] assumptions are accurate, there is no reason I can see to dismiss this concept,” she says.

Water sources

If true, then the HCO⁺ dissociative recombination model changes the history of water on Venus, somewhat. If Venus did have oceans, then some of its surviving water vapour will originate from those oceans, some will come from outgassing via volcanoes, and the remainder arriving through comet and asteroid impacts.

The increase in the escape rate means that if Venus did once have oceans, compressing the time it takes to lose that water to space thanks to the efficiency of the HCO⁺ mechanism means those oceans could have survived on the surface for longer. If Venus never had oceans, then either the rate of outgassing or the rate of impacts, or both, must be higher to at least keep pace with the speed of water loss.

Unfortunately, forthcoming missions to Venus may not be able to confirm the presence of HCO⁺. Neither Europe’s Envision mission, planned to launch in 2031, nor NASA’s DAVINCI spacecraft that will blast off in the late 2020s, will study the ionosphere.

However, Sanjay Limaye of the University of Wisconsin, Madison points out that Russia has proposed an instrument for India’s planned Venus orbiter that may be able to detect HCO⁺ around 2031.

However, Luhmann, who specializes in studying the interaction between the solar wind and planetary atmospheres, thinks there might be another way. The escaping hot hydrogen from the HCO⁺ dissociative recombination process is moving fast. Whereas Chaffin believes it will be too fast to detect, Luhmann is not so ready to dismiss it.

“In-situ measurements of hydrogen pickup ions may be useful if they are sensitive enough and can distinguish the characteristic initial energies of the escaping neutrals before they are ionized,” she says, pointing to previous work on Mars that has accomplished the same thing.

The research is described in Nature.

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