ACA Awards

About 4.5 billion years ago, a dramatic event transformed the young Earth when a large protoplanet known as Theia struck our planet. Scientists still cannot fully reconstruct the sequence of the impact or what followed, but the consequences are clear. The collision altered Earth's size, structure, and orbit, and it ultimately led to the creation of the Moon, which has remained our constant companion in space ever since. This raises several important questions. What kind of object collided with Earth so violently? How massive was Theia, what was it composed of, and from what region of the Solar System did it originate? These questions remain challenging because Theia did not survive the encounter. Even so, chemical clues linked to its existence persist within the modern Earth and Moon. A new study published on November 20, 2025, in Science and conducted by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) and the University of Chicago uses these clues to rec...

  Using the Two-meter Twin Telescope (TTT3), Spanish astronomers have conducted deep optical imaging of an isolated dwarf galaxy known as NGC 6789. Results of the new observations, presented November 10 on the arXiv preprint server, shed more light on the star formation process in this galaxy. Isolated but forming stars Discovered in 1883, NGC 6789 is a blue compact dwarf (BCD) galaxy located some 12 million light years away in the Local Void-a region of space with far fewer galaxies than its surroundings. However, despite its extreme isolation, NGC 6789 shows recent central star formation activity. Previous observations of NGC 6789 have found that approximately 4% of its total stellar mass—about 100 million solar masses-formed within the past 600 million years. It turned out that the central star-forming region of this galaxy is embedded within an apparently undisturbed, redder elliptical outer structure. One question remains unanswered Therefore, what still baffles scientists is ...

  Training Efficiency in Quantum Machine Learning Density Quantum Neural Networks (density QNNs) represent a new approach to quantum machine learning (QML) model design, specifically addressing training efficiency. Unlike traditional parameterized quantum circuits (PQCs), density QNNs utilize mixtures of trainable unitaries – essentially weighted combinations of quantum operations. This framework leverages the Hastings-Campbell Mixing lemma, allowing similar expressivity to deeper circuits with shallower, more manageable constructions. Crucially, by employing “commuting-generator circuits”, researchers can efficiently extract gradients needed for training, a major hurdle in scaling QML. A key limitation of current QML methods is the gradient computation cost. The standard parameter-shift rule, while providing analytic gradients, requires evaluating ({\mathcal{O}}(N)) circuits for N parameters. This severely limits the size of trainable quantum circuits. Density QNNs aim to overcome...

Solar Storms: Tech Disruptions Ahead! explores how powerful solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the Sun can disrupt satellites, GPS, communication networks, and power grids. This phenomenon highlights Earth’s vulnerability to space weather, urging advancements in monitoring systems and protective technologies to safeguard global infrastructure from electromagnetic disturbances. International Academic Awards  Nomination Link: https://academicawards.sciencefather.com/award-nomination/?ecategory=Awards&rcategory=Awardee  Visit Our Website: academicawards.sciencefather.com  Contact us acadaward@sciencefather.com   Get Connected Here:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harita-r-1b9861224/  Blogger: https://academicawards2022.blogspot.com/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harita_2021/  Pinterest: https://in.pinterest.com/academicawards/  Tumbler: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/academicawardsworld  Facebook: https://www.faceb...

Unlocking SIMS: Carbon Depth Profiling Revolution explores how Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (SIMS) enables precise carbon depth analysis at the nanoscale. This breakthrough technique provides unparalleled insights into material composition, thin-film interfaces, and semiconductor structures, revolutionizing surface characterization and advancing research in materials science, nanotechnology, and energy device development.   International Academic Awards   Nomination Link: https://academicawards.sciencefather.com/award-nomination/?ecategory=Awards&rcategory=Awardee  Visit Our Website: academicawards.sciencefather.com  Contact us acadaward@sciencefather.com Get Connected Here:  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/harita-r-1b9861224/  Blogger: https://academicawards2022.blogspot.com/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harita_2021/  Pinterest: https://in.pinterest.com/academicawards/  Tumbler: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/academic...

Astronomers have spotted the biggest flare ever seen erupting around a black hole, which also happens to be the most distant flare of this type ever detected. The supermassive black hole in J2245+3743 is feeding on surrounding gas and dust whirling around it in a flattened cloud shape called an accretion disk, but this flare is actually the result of something else: an unusually massive star venturing too close to the black hole which has a mass 500 million times greater than the sun). The tremendous gravitational influence of the black hole is ripping apart the star, and its stellar remains are being fed to this cosmic titan — an occurrence scientists call a tidal disruption event, or TDE. "This is unlike any AGN we've ever seen," Matthew Graham, team leader at theCalifornia Institute of Technology (Caltech) and a ZTF scientist, said in a statement. "The energetics show this object is very far away and very bright." The flare was first spotted in 2018 by the ZT...