Physics

This doesn’t happen often: For his final project, an electronics apprentice at ETH Zurich produced a test device that will save physicists a lot of time in developing a novel microscope. His work has been published in a scientific journal.

Researchers at EPFL and Vrije Universiteit Brussel have developed a novel and highly efficient method for rapid antibiotic susceptibility testing using optical microscopy. The technique, called Optical Nanomotion Detection, is extremely rapid, single-cell sensitive, label-free, and requires only a basic traditional optical microscope, equipped with a camera or a mobile phone.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have created the heaviest Schrödinger cat to date by putting a crystal in a superposition of two oscillation states. Their results could lead to more robust quantum bits and help to explain why quantum superpositions are not observed in everyday life.

With a constellation of five satellites, the international LIFE initiative led by ETH Zurich hopes to one day detect traces of life on exoplanets. A laboratory experiment in the Department of Physics is now set to demonstrate the planned measurement method.

The JUICE mission of the European Space Agency ESA, which aims to explore the planet Jupiter and its three largest moons, is all set to go. The space probe will carry on board the high-tech detector RADEM developed at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI. Among other things, this will provide information about the complex radiation conditions and the highly dynamic magnetic environment of the Jupiter system.

When it comes to measuring how fast the Universe is expanding, the result depends on which side of the Universe you start from. A recent EPFL study has calibrated the best cosmic yardsticks to unprecedented accuracy, shedding new light on what’s known as the Hubble tension.