The existing infrastructure for managing the flow of information along the photonic pathways and in our computers is in most segments based on electrically encoded information and the transport of electric charges using the electric force. This process is limiting the speed of signal propagation and is costly in terms of energy dissipation. The predicted worldwide energy consumption of data centers for 2050 is approaching the electric energy generated in the European Union in 2010! It is...

As lithium-ion battery technologies mature, the size and energy of these systems continues to increase for emerging applications in transportation, grid storage, military use and aerospace. In fact, broadening the application space for lithium-ion batteries from the consumer electronics industries to these emerging markets increases their size from 1-50 Wh batteries for smart phones and laptops to >50 kWh for electric vehicles (EVs) and MWh scale for utility storage systems. As these...

When Newlands made an analogy between his Law of Octaves and the musical scale he was laughed at by the members of the English Chemical Society, and his paper describing this law was rejected. But Newlands was not so disparate. Seeking musical patterns in natural phenomena has been a frequent endeavour throughout history. The Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras of Samos argued that celestial bodies in rotation gave off pitched sounds that blended into a cosmic harmony, which he...

According to the Big Bang theory, after inflation stopped, the universe consisted of a quark–gluon plasma, as well as all other elementary particles. A few seconds later, quarks and gluons combined to form baryons such as protons and neutrons. The first nuclei were formed about three minutes after the Big Bang; neutrons combined with protons to form the hydrogen and helium content of the first stars. This process is called Big Bang nucleosynthesis. In the Big Bang nucleosynthesis...

When Newlands made an analogy between his Law of Octaves and the musical scale he was ridiculed by the members of the English Chemical Society, and his paper describing this law was rejected. But Newlands was not so incongruent. Seeking musical patterns in natural phenomena has been a frequent endeavor throughout history. The Greek philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras of Samos argued that celestial bodies in rotation gave off pitched sounds that blended into a cosmic harmony, which he...

In a flight of imagination to the beginning of the universe submerge your mind in the vastness of the newly formed space. Imagine you can see the constituents of the first atoms: electrons, protons, and neutrons. Now imagine the first atom as an electron surrounding a proton: hydrogen has been created…Add a second proton and two neutrons to the hydrogen nucleus, then add another electron around it, and helium is formed…And as the daydream continues the next element can be created by the...