New approaches to the mystery of why ice is slippery

Compatible hypotheses which pave the way for energy savings

14-Dec-2022 - The surface of the ice melts in contact with a solid, forming a lubricant layer which is self-perpetuating, as greater weight and slippage are applied to it. This cooperative phenomenon makes the ice more slippery and more likely to cause skating or car accidents, according to international ...

Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable

11-Dec-2015 - A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable, according to scientists at UCL, Universidad Complutense de Madrid - ICMAT and Technical University of Munich. It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental ...

Shedding light on the origin of chirality on Earth

07-Dec-2010 - An enantioenrichment of the amino acid valine, which could shed light on the origin of chirality on Earth, has been achieved by scientists in Spain. Reporting in Chemical Communications, Cristóbal Viedma and colleagues showed that they have been able to amplify the enantiomeric excess of valine, ...

Bridging the gap

25-Aug-2009 - Scientists from Spain and Germany have shown electron transfer through extended tetrathiafulvalene bridges in electron donor-acceptor conjugates. Nazario Martín and colleagues from Universidad Complutense, Madrid and Dirk Guldi and his team from the University of Erlangen have worked together to ...

ORNL researchers analyze material with 'colossal ionic conductivity'

04-Aug-2008 - A new material characterized at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory could open a pathway toward more efficient fuel cells. The material, a super-lattice developed by researchers in Spain, improves ionic conductivity near room temperature by a factor of almost 100 million, ...