Purushotham Endla

 In a revelation that has rocked the scientific world, astronomers are reporting that the universe appears to produce more of its most powerful and luminous explosions than they had thought — events so vast they can challenge the Big Bang in their explosive power. These blasts — which scientists think come from deep within the hearts of faraway galaxies — are not just shaking up what we know of intergalactic, scale-busting explosions, they are now, for some astronomers, threatening a favorite cosmic creation story. A Discovery From the Edge of the Observable Universe Astronomers have recently spotted bursts of energy unlike anything astronomers have seen in all the expanse of space. These enormous events, called Fast Blue Optical Transients (FBOTs) and superluminous gamma-ray bursts, last only a few seconds, but they radiate more power in seconds than the sun will shed in 10 billion years. What’s still more amazing is the where and the how these explosions are taking place. A...

The world of electronics is at the precipice of a new era. Silicon has served as the bedrock of modern technology for decades, fueling everything from the personal computer to smartphones to satellites and supercomputers. But researchers have now announced a discovery in the quantum materials realm that could make silicon seem outdated and boost electronics performance by 1,000 times. Its ambitions include taking a party popper to the very fabric of our digital world — and should it prove successful, this leap could rewire the future of the internet as we know it. The Silicon Age: The Culture, The Miracles, and The Innovation Silicon-based semiconductors have been driving the digital revolution since the mid-20th century. Because they do conduct electricity under specific circumstances, they are the ideal material for transistors, the diminutive switches that compose integrated circuits. But this trend is running into a wall. With transistors being scaled down on the order of nan...

 In the realm of advanced materials, one man’s catalyst is another’s anode, and few have been heralded as much as the single layer of carbon atoms known as graphene, which form a six-sided grid. The material is even more interesting because it comes from a pretty unassuming place: the same element that pencil “lead” is made from — graphite. Incredibly, stripping away just a single atomic layer of graphite produces a substance that is changing the boundaries of what’s possible in electronics, energy, medicine and more. The Miracle Material and the Birth of a New Technology What separates Graphene from other materials isn’t simply its one-atom thickness but also its unique blend of mechanical strength (comparable to that of diamond), electrical and thermal conductivity, optical transparency and flexibility. It is more than 200 times stronger than steel, conducts electricity faster than copper and is almost invisible. Why Graphene Matters The possible uses of graphene could be...

  In the intriguing crossroads between science and art lies metamaterials -- some of the most impressive contributions to modern engineering. These rationally designed, nanoscale, artificially structured materials are capable of performing as nature never does, controlling the behavior of electromagnetic waves in unnatural ways. Be it pushing light backwards, disguising objects from view or breaking the limits of imaging resolution, metamaterials are beginning to open up a whole new frontier of what can be done with optics, electromagnetism and wave science in general. But the work is full of complexity that still challenges the smarts and persistence of the scientists. The Monstrous Beauty of Engineered Waves At the heart of the concept of metamaterials are meta-atoms: minute repetitions of a pattern made of some naturally occurring substance that is smaller than the wavelength of the wave with which it interacts. Such structures can steer the trajectory, speed and polariz...

Degenerate Systems, Degenerate Matter, and the Gravitational Collapse of Massive Objects in Universe When stars a lot bigger than our sun are done with their nuclear lives, they don’t just fade out, quietly whimpering like small stars, they explode under the influence of their own gravity. Both are spawned by the same cataclysmic supernova explosions, but what happens next couldn’t be more different. The other leads to a spinning, city-size core of exotic material; the other, an invisible gravitation abyss that nothing, not even light, can escape. But which is really the stranger of the two? Neutron Stars: The Stronghold of Quantum Forces Neutron stars are the remnants of medium-heavy weight stars for which the core collapses to form a degenerately neutron-rich ball. They are only 10–15 km wide, but can be twice as massive as the Sun. Gravitational pressure becomes so great that the electrons and protons are smashed together so hard that they combine to form neutrons, creating ...

Principle: Quantum Entanglement and Superposition in Computation In a world increasingly driven by data and computation, traditional computers—based on binary logic—are nearing the limits of their performance. Enter quantum computing , a field that promises exponential leaps in speed and efficiency for certain classes of problems. The buzzword at the heart of this movement? Quantum Supremacy . Core Principles: Superposition & Entanglement The image of the two triangles visualizes the TWO concepts on which the entire field of quantum computer is founded on. Superposition: In contrast, a bit in a classical computer can be either 0 or 1. A qubit, on the other hand, can be a superposition of 0 and 1 at the same time. It’s as if you flip a coin and the coin is both heads and tails until you look at it, which of course is not the case. This effect is the reason that quantum computers can consider so many possible solutions simultaneously, rather than just one at a time. E...