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      Researchers have unlocked the secret to pearls’ incredible symmetry

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      For centuries, researchers have puzzled over how oysters grow stunningly symmetrical, perfectly round pearls around irregularly shaped grains of sand or bits of debris. Now a team has shown that oysters, mussels and other mollusks use a complex process to grow the gems that follows mathematical rules seen throughout nature.

      Pearls are formed when an irritant gets trapped inside a mollusk, and the animal protects itself by building smooth layers of mineral and protein — together called nacre — around it. Each new layer of nacre built over this asymmetrical center adapts precisely to the ones preceding it, smoothing out irregularities to result in a round pearl, according to an analysis published October 19 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

      “Nacre is this incredibly beautiful, iridescent, shiny material that we see in the insides of some seashells or on the outside of pearls,” says Laura Otter, a biogeochemist at the Australian National University in Canberra.

      A pearl’s symmetrical growth as it lays down layers of nacre relies on the mollusk balancing two basic capabilities, Otter and her colleagues discovered. It corrects growth aberrations that appear as the pearl forms, preventing those variations from propagating over the pearl’s many layers. Otherwise, the resulting gem would be lopsided.

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      Additionally, the mollusk modulates the thickness of nacre layers, so that if one layer is especially thick, subsequent layers will be thinner in response (SN: 3/24/14). This helps the pearl maintain a similar average thickness over its thousands of layers so that it looks perfectly round and uniform. Without that constant adjustment, a pearl might resemble stratified sedimentary rock, amplifying small imperfections that detract from its spherical shape.

      The researchers studied keshi pearls collected from Akoya pearl oysters (Pinctada imbricata fucata) at an eastern Australia coastal pearl farm. They used a diamond wire saw to cut the pearls into cross sections, then polished and examined the gems using Raman spectroscopy, a nondestructive technique that allowed them to characterize the pearls’ structure. For one of the pearls showcased in the paper, they counted 2,615 layers, which were deposited over 548 days.

      This cross section of a keshi pearl shows that the round gem grows around a misshapen lump of debris.Jiseok Gim

      The analysis revealed that fluctuations in the thicknesses of the pearls’ layers of nacre exhibit a phenomenon called 1/f noise, or pink noise, in which events that appear to be random are actually connected. In this case, the formation of nacre layers of different thicknesses may appear random, but is actually dependent on the thickness of previous layers. The same phenomenon is at work in seismic activity: The rumbling of the ground seems random, but is actually connected to previous recent seismic activity. Pink noise also crops up in classical music and even when monitoring heartbeats and brain activity, says coauthor Robert Hovden, a materials scientist and engineer at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.  These phenomena “belong to a universal class of behavior and physics,” Hovden says.

      This is the first time that researchers have reported “that nacre self-heals and when a defect arises, it heals itself within a few [layers], without using an external scaffolding or template,” says Pupa Gilbert, a physicist studying biomineralization at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who wasn’t involved with the study. “Nacre is an even more remarkable material than we had previously appreciated.”

      Notes Otter: “These humble creatures are making a super light and super tough material so much more easily and better than we do with all our technology.” Made of just calcium, carbonate and protein, nacre is “3,000 times tougher than the materials from which it’s made of.”

      This new understanding of pearls, Hovden adds, could inspire “the next generation of super materials,” such as more energy-efficient solar panels or tough and heat-resistant materials optimized for use in spacecraft. More

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      Lithium-ion batteries made with recycled materials can outlast newer counterparts

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      Lithium-ion batteries with recycled cathodes can outperform batteries with cathodes made from pristine materials, lasting for thousands of additional charging cycles, a study finds. Growing demand for these batteries — which power devices from smartphones to electric vehicles — may outstrip the world’s supply of some crucial ingredients, such as cobalt (SN: 5/7/19). Ramping up recycling could help avert a potential shortage. But some manufacturers worry that impurities in recycled materials may cause battery performance to falter.

      “Based on our study, recycled materials can perform as well as, or even better than, virgin materials,” says materials scientist Yan Wang of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.

      Using shredded spent batteries, Wang and colleagues extracted the electrodes and dissolved the metals from those battery bits in an acidic solution. By tweaking the solution’s pH, the team removed impurities such as iron and copper and recovered over 90 percent of three key metals: nickel, manganese and cobalt. The recovered metals formed the basis for the team’s cathode material.

      In tests of how well batteries maintain their capacity to store energy after repeated use and recharging, batteries with recycled cathodes outperformed ones made with brand-new commercial materials of the same composition. It took 11,600 charging cycles for the batteries with recycled cathodes to lose 30 percent of their initial capacity. That’s about 50 percent better than the respectable 7,600 cycles for the batteries with new cathodes, the team reports October 15 in Joule. Those thousands of extra cycles could translate into years of better battery performance, Wang says. More

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      Scientists are one step closer to error-correcting quantum computers

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      Mistakes happen — especially in quantum computers. The fragile quantum bits, or qubits, that make up the machines are notoriously error-prone, but now scientists have shown that they can fix the flubs.

      Computers that harness the rules of quantum mechanics show promise for making calculations far out of reach for standard computers (SN: 6/29/17). But without a mechanism for fixing the computers’ mistakes, the answers that a quantum computer spits out could be gobbledygook (SN: 6/22/20).

      Combining the power of multiple qubits into one can solve the error woes, researchers report October 4 in Nature. Scientists used nine qubits to make a single, improved qubit called a logical qubit, which, unlike the individual qubits from which it was made, can be probed to check for mistakes.

      “This is a key demonstration on the path to build a large-scale quantum computer,” says quantum physicist Winfried Hensinger of the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, who was not involved in the new study.

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      Still, that path remains a long one, Hensinger says. To do complex calculations, scientists will have to dramatically scale up the number of qubits in the machines. But now that scientists have shown that they can keep errors under control, he says, “there’s nothing fundamentally stopping us to build a useful quantum computer.”

      In a logical qubit, information is stored redundantly. That allows researchers to check and fix mistakes in the data. “If a piece of it goes missing, you can reconstruct it from the other pieces, like Voldemort,” says quantum physicist David Schuster of the University of Chicago, who was not involved with the new research. (The Harry Potter villain kept his soul safe by concealing it in multiple objects called Horcruxes.)

      In the new study, four additional, auxiliary qubits interfaced with the logical qubit, in order to identify errors in its data. Future quantum computers could make calculations using logical qubits in place of the original, faulty qubits, repeatedly checking and fixing any errors that crop up.

      To make their logical qubit, the researchers used a technique called a Bacon-Shor code, applying it to qubits made of ytterbium ions hovering above an ion-trapping chip inside a vacuum, which are manipulated with lasers. The researchers also designed sequences of operations so that errors don’t multiply uncontrollably, what’s known as “fault tolerance.”

      Thanks to those efforts, the new logical qubit had a lower error rate than that of the most flawed components that made it up, says quantum physicist Christopher Monroe of the University of Maryland in College Park and Duke University.

      However, the team didn’t quite complete the full process envisioned for error correction. While the computer detected the errors that arose, the researchers didn’t correct the mistakes and continue on with computation. Instead, they fixed errors after the computer was finished. In a full-fledged example, scientists would detect and correct errors multiple times on the fly.

      Demonstrating quantum error correction is a necessity for building useful quantum computers. “It’s like achieving criticality with [nuclear] fission,” Schuster says. Once that nuclear science barrier was passed in 1942, it led to technologies like nuclear power and atomic bombs (SN: 11/29/17).

      As quantum computers gradually draw closer to practical usefulness, companies are investing in the devices. Technology companies such as IBM, Google and Intel host major quantum computing endeavors. On October 1, a quantum computing company cofounded by Monroe, called IonQ, went public; Monroe spoke to Science News while on a road trip to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange.

      The new result suggests that full-fledged quantum error correction is almost here, says coauthor Kenneth Brown, a quantum engineer also at Duke University. “It really shows that we can get all the pieces together and do all the steps.” More

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      These colorful butterflies were created using transparent ink

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      You’ve heard of disappearing ink. Now get ready for suddenly appearing ink. Using a clear liquid, researchers can print a full rainbow of colors on transparent surfaces. The trick is printing the liquid in precise, microscale patterns that create structural color.

      Structural colors arise from the way different wavelengths of light bounce off microscopic imperfections on surfaces (SN: 8/17/21; SN: 6/1/16). “In nature, there are many beautiful structure colors, such as the wings of butterflies, the feathers of peacocks, the skin of chameleons and so on,” says Yanlin Song, a materials chemist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing.

      Song and colleagues printed structural colors on transparent silicone sheets using an ordinary ink-jet printer and clear polymer ink. The printer studded the silicone sheets with millions of microscopic ink domes, each of which served as a single pixel in the resulting image. Adjusting the size of a microdome changed the wavelengths of light that the dome reflected and therefore its color (SN: 3/8/19). Increasing the width of a single dome from 6.6 to 11 micrometers shifted its hue along the spectrum from blue to red and back again, the researchers report online September 22 in Science Advances.

      The denser the domes were packed, the brighter the image. And printing a medley of differently colored ink pixels across a single area created blended shades, such as brown and gray. Using the technique, Song’s team printed multicolor, photorealistic portraits of Isaac Newton, Marilyn Monroe and other famous figures.

      By printing tiny dollops of clear ink on transparent surfaces, researchers created structural color portraits of famous figures, such as Isaac Newton, Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe.K. Li et al/Science Advances 2021

      By printing tiny dollops of clear ink on transparent surfaces, researchers created structural color portraits of famous figures, such as Isaac Newton, Audrey Hepburn and Marilyn Monroe.K. Li et al/Science Advances 2021

      “I was excited to see that somebody had used [structural color] for this purpose,” says Lauren Zarzar, a materials chemist at Penn State who has studied similar structural colors cast by water and oil droplets. “They had some nice examples that I think illustrated the versatility of this mechanism.”

      Zarzar imagines using structural colors to create complex optical signatures for anti-counterfeiting features on ID cards or currency. Such shimmery, colorfast hues could also make useful materials for cosmetics, clothing or architecture, she says. More

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      One of nature’s key constants is much larger in a quantum material

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      A crucial number that rules the universe goes big in a strange quantum material.

      The fine-structure constant is about 10 times its normal value in a type of material called quantum spin ice, physicists calculate in the Sept. 10 Physical Review Letters. The new calculation hints that quantum spin ice could give a glimpse at physics within an alternate universe where the constant is much larger.

      With an influence that permeates physics and chemistry, the fine-structure constant sets the strength of interactions between electrically charged particles. Its value, about 1/137, consternates physicists because they can’t explain why it has that value, even though it is necessary for the complex chemistry that is the basis of life (SN: 11/2/16).

      If the fine-structure constant throughout the cosmos were as large as the one in quantum spin ices, “the periodic table would only have 10 elements,” says theoretical physicist Christopher Laumann of Boston University. “And it probably would be hard to make people; there wouldn’t be enough richness to chemistry.”

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      Quantum spin ices are a class of substances in which particles can’t agree. The materials are made up of particles with spin, a quantum version of angular momentum, which makes them magnetic. In a normal material, particles would come to a consensus below a certain temperature, with the magnetic poles lining up in either the same direction or in alternating directions. But in quantum spin ices, the particles are arranged in such a way that the magnetic poles, or equivalently the spins, can’t agree even at a temperature of absolute zero (SN: 2/13/11).

      The impasse occurs because of the materials’ geometry: The particles are located at the corners of an array of pyramids that are connected at the corners. Conflicts between multiple sets of neighbors mean that the closest these particles can get to harmony is arranging themselves so that two spins face out from each pyramid, and two face in.

      In quantum spin ices, particles (black dots) are located at the corners of an array of pyramids (red). Normally, the spins of the particles (green arrows) arrange so that two are pointing into the pyramid and two out. If that rule is broken, as illustrated, quasiparticles called spinons (orange and blue) form.S.D. Pace et al/PRL 2021

      This uneasy truce can give rise to disturbances that behave like particles within the material, or quasiparticles (SN: 10/3/14). Flip particles’ spins around and you can get what are called spinons, quasiparticles that can move through the material and interact with other spinons in a manner akin to electrons and other charged particles found in the world outside the material. The material re-creates the theory of quantum electrodynamics, the piece of particles physics’ standard model that hashes out how electrically charged particles do their thing. But the specifics, including the fine-structure constant, don’t necessarily match those in the wider universe.

      So Laumann and colleagues set out to calculate the fine-structure constant in quantum spin ices for the first time. The team pegged the number at about 1/10, instead of 1/137. What’s more, the researchers found that they could change the value of the fine-structure constant by tweaking the properties of the theoretical material. That could help scientists study the effects of altering the fine-structure constant — a test that’s well out of reach in our own universe, where the fine-structure constant is fixed.

      Unfortunately, scientists haven’t yet found a material that definitively qualifies as quantum spin ice. But one much-studied prospect is a group of minerals called pyrochlores, which have magnetic ions, or electrically charged atoms, arranged in the appropriate pyramid configuration. Scientists might also be able to study the materials using a quantum computer or another quantum device designed to simulate quantum spin ices (SN: 6/29/17).

      If scientists succeed in creating quantum spin ice, the materials could reveal how quantum electrodynamics and the standard model would work in a universe with a much larger fine-structure constant. “That would be the hope,” says condensed matter theorist Shivaji Sondhi of the University of Oxford, who was not involved with the research. “It’s interesting to be able to make a fake standard model … and ask what would happen.” More

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      New ‘vortex beams’ of atoms and molecules are the first of their kind

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      Like soft serve ice cream, beams of atoms and molecules now come with a swirl.

      Scientists already knew how to dish up spiraling beams of light or electrons, known as vortex beams (SN: 1/14/11). Now, the first vortex beams of atoms and molecules are on the menu, researchers report in the Sept. 3 Science.

      Vortex beams made of light or electrons have shown promise for making special types of microscope images and for transmitting information using quantum physics (SN: 8/5/15). But vortex beams of larger particles such as atoms or molecules are so new that the possible applications aren’t yet clear, says physicist Sonja Franke-Arnold of the University of Glasgow in Scotland, who was not involved with the research. “It’s maybe too early to really know what we can do with it.”

      In quantum physics, particles are described by a wave function, a wavelike pattern that allows scientists to calculate the probability of finding a particle in a particular place (SN: 6/8/11). But vortex beams’ waves don’t slosh up and down like ripples on water. Instead, the beams’ particles have wave functions that move in a corkscrewing motion as a beam travels through space. That means the beam carries a rotational oomph known as orbital angular momentum. “This is something really very strange, very nonintuitive,” says physicist Edvardas Narevicius of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel.

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      Narevicius and colleagues created the new beams by passing helium atoms through a grid of specially shaped slit patterns, each just 600 nanometers wide. The team detected a hallmark of vortex beams: a row of doughnut-shaped rings imprinted on a detector by the atoms, in which each doughnut corresponds to a beam with a different orbital angular momentum.

      Another set of doughnuts revealed the presence of vortex beams of helium excimers, molecules created when a helium atom in an excited, or energized, state pairs up with another helium atom.

      A pattern of rings reveals the presence of vortex beams of atoms and molecules. Each doughnut shape corresponds to a beam of helium atoms with a different angular momentum. Two hard-to-see circles from helium molecules sit in between the center dot and the first two doughnuts left and right of the center.A. Luski et al/Science 2021

      A pattern of rings reveals the presence of vortex beams of atoms and molecules. Each doughnut shape corresponds to a beam of helium atoms with a different angular momentum. Two hard-to-see circles from helium molecules sit in between the center dot and the first two doughnuts left and right of the center.A. Luski et al/Science 2021

      Next, scientists might investigate what happens when vortex beams of molecules or atoms collide with light, electrons or other atoms or molecules. Such collisions are well-understood for normal particle beams, but not for those with orbital angular momentum. Similar vortex beams made with protons might also serve as a method for probing the subatomic particle’s mysterious innards (SN: 4/18/17).

      In physics, “most important things are achieved when we are revisiting known phenomena with a fresh perspective,” says physicist Ivan Madan of EPFL, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, who was not involved with the research. “And, for sure, this experiment allows us to do that.” More

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      These weird, thin ice crystals are springy and bendy

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      Try to bend an icicle and it’ll snap in two. With its tendency to crack into shards, ice’s reputation for being stiff and brittle seems well-established. But thin, pristine threads of ice are bendy and elastic, scientists report in the July 9 Science.

      To create the flexible ice, Peizhen Xu of Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, China and colleagues used a needle with an electric voltage applied to it, which attracted water vapor within a chilled chamber. The resulting ice whiskers were a few micrometers in diameter or less, a fraction of the width of a typical human hair.

      Usually, ice contains defects: tiny cracks, pores or misaligned sections of crystal. But the specially grown ice threads consisted of near-perfect ice crystals with atypical properties. When manipulated at temperatures of –70° Celsius and –150° C, the ice could be curved into a partial circle with a radius of tens of micrometers. When the bending force was released, the fibers sprang back to their original shape.

      [embedded content]
      Researchers bent a tiny fiber of ice (thin white line) into a loop, showing that the usually brittle material can be flexible under certain conditions.

      Bending the fibers compresses the ice on its inside edge. The new measurements indicate that the compression induces the ice to take on a different structure. That’s to be expected for ice, which is known to morph into a variety of phases depending on pressure and temperature (SN: 1/11/09). The discovery could give researchers a new way to study ice’s properties when squeezed.

      Thin ice strands form naturally in snowflakes. Unlike the ice in the experiment, snowflakes don’t consist of single, flawless ice crystals. But small sections of the flakes could be single crystals, the researchers say, suggesting that tiny bits of snowflakes could also bend. More

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      A proposed ‘quantum compass’ for songbirds just got more plausible

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      Scientists could be a step closer to understanding how some birds might exploit quantum physics to navigate.

      Researchers suspect that some songbirds use a “quantum compass” that senses the Earth’s magnetic field, helping them tell north from south during their annual migrations (SN: 4/3/18). New measurements support the idea that a protein in birds’ eyes called cryptochrome 4, or CRY4, could serve as a magnetic sensor. That protein’s magnetic sensitivity is thought to rely on quantum mechanics, the math that describes physical processes on the scale of atoms and electrons (SN: 6/27/16). If the idea is shown to be correct, it would be a step forward for biophysicists who want to understand how and when quantum principles can become important in various biological processes.

      In laboratory experiments, the type of CRY4 in retinas of European robins (Erithacus rubecula) responded to magnetic fields, researchers report in the June 24 Nature. That’s a crucial property for it to serve as a compass. “This is the first paper that actually shows that birds’ cryptochrome 4 is magnetically sensitive,” says sensory biologist Rachel Muheim of Lund University in Sweden, who was not involved with the research.

      Scientists think that the magnetic sensing abilities of CRY4 are initiated when blue light hits the protein. That light sets off a series of reactions that shuttle around an electron, resulting in two unpaired electrons in different parts of the protein. Those lone electrons behave like tiny magnets, thanks to a quantum property of the electrons called spin.

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      The two electrons’ magnets can point either parallel to one another or in opposite directions. But quantum physics dictates that the electrons do not settle on either arrangement. Rather they exist in a limbo called a quantum superposition, which describes only the probability of finding the electrons in either configuration.

      Magnetic fields change those probabilities. That, in turn, affects how likely the protein is to form an altered version instead of returning to its original state. Birds may be able to determine their orientation in a magnetic field based on how much of the altered protein is produced, although that process is not yet understood. “How does the bird perceive this? We don’t know,” says chemist Peter Hore of the University of Oxford, a coauthor of the new study.

      The idea that cryptochromes play a role in birds’ internal compasses has been around for decades, but “no one could confirm this experimentally,” says Jingjing Xu of the University of Oldenburg in Germany. So in the new study, Xu, Hore and colleagues observed what happened when the isolated proteins were hit with blue laser light. After the laser pulse, the researchers measured how much light the sample absorbed. For robin CRY4, the addition of a magnetic field changed the amount of absorbance, a sign that the magnetic field was affecting how much of the altered form of the protein was produced.

      When the researchers performed the same test on CRY4 found in nonmigratory chickens and pigeons, the magnetic field had little effect. The stronger response to the magnetic field in CRY4 from a migratory bird “could suggest that maybe there is really something special about the cryptochromes of migratory birds that use this for a compass,” says biophysicist Thorsten Ritz of the University of California, Irvine.

      But laboratory tests with chickens and pigeons have shown that those birds can sense magnetic fields, Ritz and Muheim both note. It’s not clear whether the higher sensitivity of robin CRY4 in laboratory tests is a result of evolutionary pressure for migratory birds to have a better magnetic sensor.

      One factor making interpretation of the results more difficult is that experiments on isolated proteins don’t match the conditions in birds’ eyes. For example, Xu says, scientists think the proteins may be aligned in one direction within the retina. To further illuminate the process, the researchers hope to perform future studies on actual retinas, to get a literal bird’s-eye view. More