news 2016

TUGSAT-1/BRITE-Austria and UniBRITE, Austria's first satellites in space, celebrate their third birthday. "Astronomy & Astrophysics" publishes three papers with the ESA-missions latest results. Photographic material available for download at the end of the text. . "BRITE stands for BRIght Target Explorer.

Physicists around Anton Zeilinger have, for the first time, evaluated the almost 100-year long history of quantum delayed-choice experiments - from the theoretical beginnings with Albert Einstein to the latest research works in the present. The extensive study now appeared in the renowned journal "Reviews of Modern Physics".

Our immune system constantly fights off bacteria and viruses and while doing so needs to find a critical balance between overand under-reaction, similar to Daedalus and Icarus in Greek mythology who must neither fly too high nor too low to escape their captivity. How this balancing act is regulated at the molecular levels was so far poorly understood.

From powder to solid metal pieces - with a bit of technical trickery, processes that are already used successfully for other materials can now also be used for aluminium.

Researchers at the Institute of Quantum Optics and Quantum Information (IQOQI), the University of Vienna, and the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona have achieved a new milestone in quantum physics: they were able to entangle three particles of light in a high-dimensional quantum property related to the "twist" of their wavefront structure.

Quantum physics is counterintuitive. Many of the phenomena in the quantum world do not have a classical analog: In the quantum world, a coin is not either heads or tails - but can have both properties at the same time. For a better understanding of such phenomena, laboratory experiments are indispensable.

Stars do not accumulate their final mass steadily, but in a series of violent events manifesting themselves as sharp stellar brightening. According to this theory of Eduard Vorobyov from the University of Vienna, stellar brightening can be caused by fragmentation due to gravitational instabilities in massive gaseous disks surrounding young stars, followed by migration of dense gaseous clumps onto the star.

Ravens anticipate what other ravens can see, cognitive biologists Thomas Bugnyar and Stephan Reber of the University Vienna found out in collaboration with the philosopher Cameron Buckner (University of Houston, Texas). Bugnyar and his team show for the first time unequivocally that animals do not rely on behavioural cues to pass an attribution task.

Quantum objects cannot just be understood as the sum of their parts. This is what makes quantum calculations so complicated. Scientists at TU Wien (Vienna) have now calculated Bose-Einstein-condensates, revealing the secrets of the particles? collective behaviour. Quantum systems are extremely hard to analyse if they consist of more than just a few parts.

Using a new synthesis procedure developed at TU Wien, it is now possible to produce the extremely resistant material polyimide in the form of angular particles for the first time. Polyimides withstand extreme heat and chemically aggressive solvents, while being considerably less dense than metals. That is why they are very popular in industry, for example as an insulation layer on PCBs or in aerospace applications.

Traditional concrete is usually grey and is used in the construction of walls, bridges and roads. Right? Almost. Concrete is much more. Concrete is the most commonly used building material in the world and has to conform to demands in terms of workability, strength and durability, depending on area of application.