Researchers from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands have been able to see the magnetic nucleus of an atom switch back and forth in real time. They read out the nuclear
"spin" via the electrons in the same atom through the needle of a scanning tunneling microscope.
To their surprise, the spin remained stable for several seconds, offering prospects for enhanced control of the magnetic nucleus. The research, published in Nature Communications, is a step forward for quantum sensing at the atomic scale.
A scanning tunneling microscope (STM) consists of an atomically sharp needle that can "feel" single atoms on a surface and make images with atomic resolution.
Although only one species of hominin (a tribe of the subfamily Homininae) exists on the planet today—good ole Homo sapiens—the human family, throughout more geologically-recent Earth history, was comprised of a complex tableaux of members. And over the years, scientists have tried to get a clearer picture of that prehistoric story by excavating ancient human sites around the world.
Now, anthropologists from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Hawai’i are illustrating a previously unknown—or, rather, uncategorized—chapter of that story with the introduction of a new human species, H. juluensis. The researchers published the details of this new species in the journals Nature Communications and PaleoAnthropology.
