denser

January 1, 20242min readA newly spotted world is just perplexingly denseBy Allison Gasparini Credit: Pablo Carlos Budassi (composite); ESO/Serge Brunier (background)A bizarrely dense exoplanet located more than 500 light-years from Earth is challenging scientists' understanding of how planets form. This astronomical body, recently described in Nature, is the size of the ice giant Neptune but nearly 10 times heavier—meaning it is denser than steel.“It's impossible for a planet like this to have formed by classical…

Cambridge scientists have developed a new prototype for computer memory that could make for faster chips that could hold up to 100 times more data. The system is made up of barium bridges between films of a disordered material.As powerful as current computer technology can be, there are a few hard limits to it. Data is encoded into just two states – one or zero. And this data is stored and processed in different parts of a computer system, so it needs to be shuttled back and forth, which consumes energy and time.But an…