Japan backs oil and gas even after COP26 climate talks

Japan is quietly encouraging new investments in oil-and-gas projects, according to government and industry sources. 

| BLOOMBERG

BY STEPHEN STAPCZYNSKI AND TSUYOSHI INAJIMA
BLOOMBERG
Dec 2, 2021

It’s been less than a month since world leaders pledged to combat climate change at the COP26 summit in Glasgow, Scotland, yet Japan is already showing signs of putting the brakes on divestment from fossil fuels.

Government officials have been quietly urging trading houses, refiners and utilities to slow down their move away from fossil fuels, and even encouraging new investments in oil-and-gas projects, according to people within the government and industry, who requested anonymity as the talks are private.

The officials are concerned about the long-term supply of traditional fuels as the world doubles down on renewable energy, the people said. The import-dependent nation wants to avoid a potential shortage of fuel this winter, as well as during future cold spells, after a deficit last year sparked fears of nationwide blackouts.

Japan joined almost 200 countries last month in a pledge to step up the fight against climate change, including phasing down the use of coal power and tackling emissions. However, the moves by the officials show the struggle to turn those pledges into reality, especially for countries like Japan, which relies on imports for nearly 90% of its energy needs, with prices spiking partly because of the world’s shift away from fossil fuel investments.

The nation has been slow to make any concrete commitments to phase out coal in the near term, and has often been criticized for its funding of overseas power plants that use the dirtiest burning fossil fuel. The government has also avoided joining efforts by developed nations to reduce consumption of natural gas.

The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry declined to comment directly on whether it is encouraging industries to boost investment in upstream energy supply, and instead pointed to a strategic energy plan approved by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Cabinet on Oct. 22. That plan says "no compromise is acceptable to ensure energy security, and it is the obligation of a nation to continue securing necessary resources.”

That latest strategy calls for the share of oil and natural gas produced either domestically or under the control of Japanese enterprises overseas to increase from 34.7% in fiscal year 2019 to more than 60% in 2040. Japanese officials plan to convey to other nations the importance attached to continued investments in upstream supply, the people added.

Japan is still expected to be highly dependent on fossil fuels for the next decade as there is limited available space to significantly expand solar power, and the nation’s wind sector is developing slowly. | BLOOMBERG

While Japan will likely avoid rolling blackouts or gasoline rationing this winter when demand for energy peaks in the region, the global energy crisis is leaving many within the government thinking about how to prepare for the future.

Japan is still expected to be highly dependent on fossil fuels for the next decade as there is limited available space to significantly expand solar power, and the nation’s wind sector is developing slowly. It’s also struggling to restart nuclear reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

To achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, the world needs to stop developing new gas, oil and coal fields, the International Energy Agency said in May. Japanese officials are echoing concerns highlighted by Australia last month, which said Europe’s gas supply squeeze is proof that nations need to continue to add more production.

Japan’s trading houses, including Sumitomo Corp. and Marubeni Corp., are aggressively divesting from fossil fuels amid an uncertain future for the energy sources and pressure from shareholders. These companies, formally known as sōgō shōsha, have traditionally been among the biggest investors in oil and natural gas assets in order to bring fuel to resource-poor Japan.

Oil prices had surged to the highest level since 2014 in October, which many Japanese government officials believe was exacerbated by a lack of investment in new supply, the people said. Meanwhile, liquefied natural gas prices have jumped to a record on the back of a global shortage, helping to push Japan’s wholesale power rate to the highest level for this time of year.

Cars spew more ammonia than suspected, pandemic data suggests

By Robert Preidt, HealthDay News

COVID-19 lockdowns brought surprising news to scientists studying pollution: Cars spew much more ammonia into the air than previously thought.

Ammonia is a common air pollutant that's a major cause of lung and heart disease, especially in cities.

"The tricky question has always been: How do we separate out ammonia concentrations owing to traffic from the ammonia emitted from sources like agriculture?" said study co-author Daven Henze, a professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder.

"Then the COVID lockdown suddenly provided us with a natural experiment," Henze said.

RELATED Western boom cities see spike in harmful ozone

Henze and his colleagues analyzed data from Los Angeles County, which saw a 24% drop in traffic during the March 2020 pandemic lockdown.

The investigators used satellite images to assess ammonia concentrations in the air above Los Angeles before and during the lockdown.

They concluded that vehicles account for 60% to 95% of ammonia emissions in the city.

State and national regulators had estimated that cars contribute less than 25% of ammonia air pollution.

"Our estimates for vehicle ammonia emissions are higher than federal and state inventories by a factor of two to five," said lead author Hansen Cao, a postdoctoral researcher at CU Boulder.

The findings were recently published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology Letters.

RELATED Lower income ZIP codes at greater risk for health issues from heat, ozone

The researchers now want to take a similar look at how the pandemic affected ammonia air pollution in other cities.

"Vehicles can be the dominant sources of ammonia emissions over urban areas," Cao said in a university news release.

"If we're underestimating those emissions, then previous estimates of premature deaths owing to ammonia emissions might also be underestimated," Cao said.

It's estimated that ammonia emissions from vehicles cause about 15,000 premature deaths in the United States each year, but recent studies such as this one suggest the actual number may be higher.

More information

The World Health Organization has more on air pollution and health.

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

'MAYBE' TECH
New hydrogen fuel project to bypass shoreside infrastructure


Wärtsilä and partners including ABB, RINA, Helbio, the Liberian Registry, and an unidentified energy major, have embarked on a project to generate hydrogen for fuel aboard ships.

Paul Bartlett | Nov 29, 2021


The concept is based on combining LNG with steam to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The fuel would then be used directly in internal combustion engines or fuel cells while the carbon dioxide would be liquefied using the cryogenic stream of LNG that would normally be used as fuel. It would then be landed ashore for storage.

The project could confirm a number of benefits envisaged by the partners. The ship-specific fuel system would mean that vessels could bunker LNG from existing facilities, thereby saving vast sums on additional shoreside infrastructure required for hydrogen fuel supplies.


Related: ZPMC launches trial of world’s first hydrogen fuel cell mobile crane

Meanwhile, the direct use of hydrogen on board ship would bypass the challenge of storing it. And if the concept were found to be practical, it could generate a 70% saving in carbon intensity and a faster and more affordable pathway to a low-carbon fuel option.

Speaking for Wärtsilä, Lars Anderson, Product Management and Sales Support Director, said: “Our gas engines are already able to use mixtures of hydrogen and LNG, and our future efforts will be to reach 100% hydrogen fuel. We are totally committed to supporting in every way possible the decarbonisation of shipping operations.


Related: Port of Rotterdam and Uniper to produce green hydrogen

"This project is one more example of this commitment, and we are very pleased to be partnering with other stakeholders to make the IMO 2050 target achievable. This project will give owners a real chance to stay ahead of the competition in terms of efficiency and sustainability.”

Robbers hit six ships in Singapore Strait in a month

Map: ReCAAP

ReCAAP Information Sharing Centre has issued another warning on vessel boardings by robbers in the Eastbound lane of the Singapore Strait.

Marcus Hand | Dec 02, 2021

Between 1 November and 1 December six vessels were boarded by robbers in the busy shipping lane, with five of the incidents taking place in the eastbound lane of the Singapore Strait Traffic Separation Scheme.

Of the incidents in the eastbound lane of Singapore Strait two were off Nongsa Point, Batam Island and three off Tanjung Pergram, Bintan Island, both in Indonesia. To-date this year there have been 25 incidents off Tanjung Pergram and nine off Nongsa Point.

Related: Six armed robberies against vessels in Singapore Strait during October

In the latest incidents there were no reports of the perpetrators being armed or injuries to crew on vessels that were boarded. Engine spares were stolen in one incident, and ship stores in another.

The perpetrators in the continued incidents in the Singapore Strait have not been arrested and ReCAAP warns of the possibility of further boardings as result. Ships transiting the area were advised to “intensify vigilance”.

“The ReCAAP ISC urges the littoral States to increase patrols in their respective waters, respond promptly to incidents reported by ships, strengthen coordination among the littoral States and promote information sharing on incidents and criminal groups involved in order to arrest the perpetrators,” it said.

Copyright © 2021. All rights reserved. Seatrade, a trading name of Informa Markets (UK) Limited.

NASA filmed a magical, eerie eclipse in Antarctica. You can watch it.
It's a rare, wondrous event.
By Mark Kaufman on December 4, 2021


NASA streamed a total solar eclipse over Antarctica. Credit: Screenshot: NASA TV

One of the most magical, though at times unsettling, experiences on Earth is experiencing a total solar eclipse.

These rare events happen when the moon passes in front of the sun and fully blocks out our star's light. A shadow is cast on Earth in areas where the eclipse is occurring. For those perfectly situated under the shadow where the moon covers 100 percent of the sun (called the path of totality), it's a bizarre, relatively sudden transition from light to darkness.

"The sky becomes very dark, as if it were dawn or dusk," notes NASA. During the 2017 morning eclipse, I witnessed bats flutter out amid the brief dark spell. The sudden darkness can puzzle or trick animals.

On Dec. 4, an eclipse shadow passed over Antarctica, and NASA streamed the early morning event of the moon gradually blotching out the sun. Nearly everyone on Earth couldn't be in the remote, ice-clad continent, but you can still see what the sky looked like as the eclipse occurred. Researchers in the field (Theo Boris and Christian Lockwood of the JM Pasachoff Antarctic Expedition) provided the space agency, and the world, with the footage NASA streamed.

In a recording of the livestream, the moon starts to pass in front of the sun at around 17:30. By around 1:07:00 (one hour and seven minutes) the total eclipse is in full swing. When the sun is completely covered, ghostly light around the moon appears. That's the sun’s corona, or outer atmosphere, which we can't see when the overpowering, radiant sun is shining in the sky.


The moon moving in front of the sun during the total solar eclipse. Credit: Screenshot: NASA TV


Some of those in the Southern Hemisphere who couldn't be perfectly aligned under the total solar eclipse (in Antarctica) could still witness something dazzling: a partial solar eclipse, wherein the moon passes in front of a portion of the sun.

SEE ALSO: NASA's sci-fi mission to move an asteroid is crucial for humanity

The next total solar eclipse on Earth will happen on April 20, 2023. But the following one on April 8, 2024 will pass over a wide swathe of the land from Mexico, into Texas, and across the nation through Maine.

Make your plans.

Japanese reactor restarted following prolonged outage

03 December 2021

Shikoku Electric Power Company restarted unit 3 of its Ikata nuclear power plant in Japan's Ehime Prefecture yesterday. The reactor - one of the few to have been restarted since the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant - had been offline since December 2019 due to a periodic inspection and a subsequent court injunction.

The three-unit Ikata plant (Image: Newsliner/Wikipedia)

In a statement, the company said it began the process of restarting the 890 MWe pressurised water reactor at 7.00pm yesterday. Ikata 3 is expected to begin supplying power again on 6 December and to resume commercial operations on 4 January.

Ikata 3 received approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Authority (NRA) to resume operation in April 2016, having been idle since it was taken offline for a periodic inspection in April 2011. Shikoku declared the unit back in commercial operation on 7 September 2016. The reactor was taken offline in December 2019 for maintenance and inspections.

The Hiroshima High Court in December 2017 overruled a district court's decision to allow Ikata 3 to operate and ordered the suspension of its operation. However, the same court overruled the decision in September 2018 on appeal.

In a different case, three residents of nearby Yamaguchi Prefecture brought an action to the Iwakuni branch of the Yamaguchi District Court calling for operation of the unit to be suspended. They claimed the NRA's regulations were inadequate and raised safety concerns in the event that the Mount Aso volcano, some 130km away, should erupt. However, that court ruled on 15 March 2019 that Ikata 3 could continue operating after concluding the NRA's regulations were appropriate and that there was a low probability of the volcano erupting.

Two weeks later, the residents launched an appeal to the District Court's decision in the Hiroshima High Court. In January 2020, the High Court ruled in favour of the residents. Shikoku filed an appeal the following month.

The Hiroshima High Court in March this year overturned the second injunction, allowing the utility to restart the unit once an ongoing periodic inspection was completed.

Shikoku initially planned to restart the reactor in mid-October but was forced to postpone the move due to violation of security regulations. The Kyodo news agency in July reported that a member of staff on night duty at the Ikata plant had left the site without permission on five occasions between 2017 and 2019, breaching safety regulations. The company gained approval from Ehime Governor Tokihiro Nakamura in mid-November to restart the reactor after providing all its staff on night duty with smartphones featuring global positioning system functions in order to prevent the recurrence of such an incident.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

UK selects HTGR for advanced reactor demonstration

03 December 2021

The UK will build a high-temperature gas reactor (HTGR) as the centrepiece of its Advanced Modular Reactor Research, Development & Demonstration Programme, energy minister Greg Hands has confirmed. "I'm pleased to announce that we will focus on HTGRs as the technology choice for the programme moving forward," he told the Nuclear2021 conference organised in London by the Nuclear Industry Association yesterday. His statement served as a confirmation of the technology, which had emerged as the UK government's preference after a round of consultations earlier this year.

The graphite core of an AGR reactor (Image: EDF Energy)

The goal of the research programme is to "prove the potential" of advanced reactors and have a demonstration unit in operation "by the early 2030s, at the latest", the UK government has previously said. The key focus would be to produce high temperature heat which could be used for hydrogen production, to supply industrial processes and potentially district heating as well as electricity generation.

Several other reactor concepts could have been selected. The emerging category of 'advanced' reactors includes the lead-cooled fast reactor, molten salt reactor, supercritical water-cooled reactor, sodium-cooled fast reactor and very-high-temperature gas reactor in addition to high-temperature gas reactors. However, the HTGR is a natural fit for the UK, which founded its nuclear power sector with two generations of domestically designed gas-cooled reactors: the 26 Magnox reactors deployed in the 1960s and 1970s and the 14 Advanced Gas-cooled Reactors (AGRs) deployed in the 1970s and 1980s.

Tom Greatrex, chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association said, "This is a welcome signal to industry and investors that the UK is serious about leading the next generation of nuclear development. The UK has unparalleled expertise in gas-cooled reactor technology and can preserve and extend this vital skills base."

Paul Howarth, CEO of the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), called it "a further signal of the resurgence of nuclear." He added, "With the opportunity HTGRs bring to deliver high temperature heat, hydrogen and synthetic fuels, the potential of this technology to help decarbonise our industries and energy grid is significant." He noted that NNL is "actively working on the fuel, graphite and high temperature materials required for HTGRs."

The Advanced Modular Reactor Research, Development & Demonstration Programme counts on GBP170 million (USD224 million) of government funding from a GBP385 million package intended to accelerate development of highly flexible nuclear technologies.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

France may need to postpone reactor closures, says IEA

01 December 2021

The French government will need to take important decisions to ensure the country gets on track to meet its 2050 net-zero emissions goal, particularly in terms of plans to modernise its nuclear power fleet, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). It said the country may need to delay the planned closure of its 12 oldest reactors by 2035 in order to ensure sufficient supply due to the slow pace of growth in renewable energy.

(Image: IEA)

In 2019, France put its target to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 into law and updated its energy transition framework the following year with a new National Low-Carbon Strategy and ten-year energy plan. However, France’s energy transition has experienced significant delays, and implementation remains challenging despite the many reforms underway.

In its 2021 Energy Policy Review of France, the IEA notes that the country benefits from decarbonised electricity and the lowest per capita emissions of advanced economies thanks to the role of nuclear energy, which accounted for 67% of its power mix in 2020, down from 76% in 2010. Over the past decade, wind and solar electricity generation have increased, driving the share of renewables in electricity generation from 14% in 2010 up to 23.4% in 2020. "In the short run, low-carbon nuclear energy provides the all-important backbone of the French electricity supply," the IEA said. 

In 2020, the IEA expects a 12% reduction in CO2 emissions from 2019 levels for France, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it said these trends do not reflect actual emissions reductions and a fast rebound is expected with the recovery of the economy.

"The current rate of deployment of low-carbon energy technologies and energy efficiency solutions in France is not fast enough for the government to meet its energy and climate targets, calling for stronger policy efforts and increased investments," the IEA said. "In particular, the future development of the country's electricity supply requires a clear policy strategy to be put in place."

"France is behind schedule on its energy transition targets, despite important reforms being underway," said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. "While its power sector emits relatively low quantities of carbon, its overall energy consumption is dominated by fossil fuels, resulting in rising emissions, notably from transport."

Nuclear generating capacity

France's 2015 Energy Transition for Green Growth Act stipulated that the share of nuclear energy in the electricity supply will be limited to 50% by 2025. A 50% share of nuclear in electricity generation in 2035 would translate into a nuclear power capacity of around 52 GW reached by shutting down 14 reactors of 900 MW and commissioning the EPR in Flamanville. Two 900 MW reactors were closed in 2020 at the Fessenheim site.

However, the Energy and Climate Law of 2019 extended the target year to 2035, as the 2025 objective was unachievable given the pace of renewable energy development. "Recommended by a 2015 IEA review, this is a welcome step at the time of climate urgency, which maintains the benefits of low-carbon electricity for France's energy transition," the IEA said.

The report says: "Electricity security will be at the heart of the clean energy transition. It cannot be excluded that ensuring adequacy and reliability may require adjustments in the pacing of the anticipated policy measures, including the schedule of closing nuclear reactors." It adds, "If the deployment of renewables and related flexibility needs is not ramped up quickly enough through prioritising execution and implementation, the objective of closing 14 nuclear reactors may be difficult to achieve while preserving capacity margins."

The report says there is "limited visibility" as to the future role of nuclear in France beyond 2035. "If France decides to maintain the share of 50% after 2035, long-term operation of existing plants and new builds are likely to be required." The IEA says the country's electricity sector will need to be decarbonised by 2050, in line with France's net-zero by 2050 target. "In most scenarios, nuclear energy will continue to play an important role."

The IEA said the country's aging nuclear fleet - with an average age of 35 years - will need to be modernised for long-term operation, "provided safety is guaranteed", to support a secure and affordable energy transition. It said long-term operation of nuclear plants under stringent safety requirements is a cost-effective manner of producing low-carbon electricity.

Recommendations

The French government should "clarify and review conditions of the legislative requirement to limit the contribution of nuclear energy to 50% of electricity generation up to 2035, in light of the objectives of climate urgency, climate neutrality, affordability and renewable energy deployment," the report says. It should also decide on the role of nuclear beyond 2035.

The IEA recommends the government ensures the sustainable long-term funding of nuclear energy generation, while preserving a competitive electricity market, including the refurbishment and safety upgrades of existing reactors and the financing of new builds from 2023 onwards. In addition, it should strengthen the nuclear energy research most relevant to the energy transition.

"France is approaching a crossroads, as key decisions on its future energy system need to be taken soon to ensure it can reach net zero emissions by 2050," said Birol. "By investing much more in energy efficiency, renewable energy and nuclear power, France can accelerate progress on its key energy and climate goals."

"The IEA peer review is very precious as it consists of an independent analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of our energy policy, especially in the context of the carbon neutrality by 2050 commitment," said Barbara Pompili, France's Minister for the Ecological Transition. "This review comes in a crucial time frame, in particular to anticipate the French multi-annual plan review preparation and the energy and climate programming act discussion in 2023. The IEA review confirms the orientations France has adopted, based on three pillars: strengthening energy efficiency, developing renewable energies and maintaining a nuclear electricity base."

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

No, Evolution is Not Random
And natural selection is not a chance process.

Posted December 3, 2021 | Reviewed by Kaja Perina

KEY POINTS

Evolution is not random, and natural selection is not a chance process.

The core mistake involves mixing up natural selection and mutation.

Resolving the confusion is key to understanding evolution and natural selection.

Have you ever come across a statement like this:

“I can’t believe that something as beautiful and complex as the human eye could be the result of a random process like evolution”?

Or this:

“It seems implausible that the intricate molecular machinery of the cell – a finely-tuned nanofactory of exquisite complexity – could have arisen by chance”?


The basic argument being made is as follows:

Premise 1. These complex, organized, functional parts of the body and brain could not possibly have arisen by chance.

Premise 2. Evolution is a chance process.

Conclusion: Therefore, these complex parts of the body and brain cannot be a product of evolution.

The fatal flaw in this argument is that premise 2 is incorrect. Evolution is not a chance-driven process; that is a widespread misconception.

To see why, we can break evolution down into two steps:

Step 1: Mutation. This step introduces new genetic variants into the population.

Step 2: Natural selection. In this step, some of these new genetic variants make it into the next generation, and some do not.

(This is a bit of a simplification, but it is good enough for our current purposes).

Step 1, mutation, is random. Mutations don’t arise in order to fill a current “need” of the organism. They are blind and they lack foresight, so they also can’t anticipate future needs. In this sense, they can reasonably be described as random. They can also be thought of as “random” in the sense that they are not automatically helpful; a new mutation may turn out to be beneficial or harmful or neutral.

However:

Step 2, natural selection, is not random at all. In fact, it is the diametric opposite of randomness. In this step, mutations that turn out to be beneficial to the organism are more likely to make it into the next generation precisely because they aid the organism’s survival or reproduction. Mutations that are harmful are less likely to make it into the next generation precisely because they lower the organism’s likelihood of survival or reproduction. If you give it a moment’s thought, you will see that this is the opposite of a random relationship. If something is random, it is inherently unpredictable and not orderly. Natural selection is the opposite. It is logical and predictable: the likelihood that a mutation will make it into the next generation depends, in a predictable way, on its effects on survival and reproduction. Beneficial mutations tend to get passed on, whereas detrimental ones are weeded out. This is a constrained and orderly relationship – the opposite of “randomness”.
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The core mistake is that people sometimes confuse mutations (which are random) with natural selection (which is not random). Evolution is a process in which randomly mutated genes pass through the highly non-random sieve of natural selection.

And because natural selection is quintessentially non-random, the functional products it shapes – such as the porcupine’s quill, the bombardier beetle’s defensive abilities, and the jewel wasp’s science-fictionesque hijacking of the cockroach’s mind – are also highly non-random.


So, yes: biological triumphs like the eye, the placenta, and the octopus’s three hearts could not have evolved by chance. And indeed, they didn’t. Mutation is random, but natural selection and evolution are not.


About the Author

Laith Al-Shawaf, Ph.D., is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Colorado. He studies emotions, cognition, and personality & individual differences.

Physicists just gifted us ‘quantum spin liquid,’ a weird new state of matter

For decades, quantum spin liquid had existed only as a theory.

BY RAHUL RAO | PUBLISHED DEC 2, 2021 4:00 PM
SCIENCE

Droplets of silicon, used to illustrate movements similar to those of quantum particles. 

Aleks Labuda

A solid is made of atoms that are, more or less, locked in an ordered structure. A liquid, on the other hand, is made of atoms that can flow freely around and past each other. But imagine atoms that stay unfrozen, like those in a liquid–but which are in a constantly changing magnetic mess.

What you have then is a never-before-seen state of matter, a state of quantum weirdness called a quantum spin liquid. Now, by carefully manipulating atoms, researchers have managed to create this state in the laboratory. The researchers published their work in the journal Science on December 2.

Scientists had discussed theories about spin liquids for years. “But we really got very interested in this when these theorists, here at Harvard, finally found a way to actually generate the quantum spin liquids,” says Giulia Semeghini, a physicist and postdoc at Harvard University, who coordinated the research project and was one of the paper authors.

Under extreme conditions not typically found on Earth, the rules of quantum mechanics can twist atoms into all sorts of exotica. Take, for instance, degenerate matter, found in the hearts of dead stars like white dwarfs or neutron stars, where extreme pressures cook atoms into slurries of subatomic particles. Or, for another, the Bose-Einstein condensate, in which multiple atoms at very low temperatures sort of merge together to act as one (its creation won the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics).

The quantum spin liquid is the latest entry in that bestiary of cryptid states. Its atoms don’t freeze into any sort of ordered state, and they’re constantly in flux.

[Related: IBM’s latest quantum chip breaks the elusive 100-qubit barrier]

The “spin” in the name refers to a property inherent to each particle–either up or down–which gives rise to magnetic fields. In a normal magnet, all the spins point up or down in a careful order. In a quantum spin liquid, on the other hand, there’s a third spin in the picture. This prevents coherent magnetic fields from forming.

This, combined with the esoteric rules of quantum mechanics, means that the spins are constantly in different positions at once. If you look at just a few particles, it’s hard to tell whether you have a quantum liquid or, if you do, what properties it has.

Quantum spin liquids were first theorized in 1973 by a physicist named Philip W. Anderson, and physicists have been trying to get their hands on this matter ever since. “Many different experiments…tried to create and observe this type of state. But this has actually turned out to be very challenging,” says Mikhail Lukin, a physicist at Harvard University and one of the paper authors.

The researchers at Harvard had a new tool in their arsenal: what they call a “programmable quantum simulator.” Essentially, it’s a machine that allows them to play with individual atoms. Using specifically focused laser beams, researchers can shuffle atoms around a two-dimensional grid like magnets on a whiteboard.

“We can control the position of each atom individually,” says Semeghini. “We can position them individually in any shape or form that we want.”

Moreover, to actually determine if they had successfully created a quantum spin liquid, the researchers took advantage of something called quantum entanglement. They energized the atoms, which began to interact: changes in the property of one atom would reflect in another. By looking at those connections, the scientists found the confirmation they needed.

All this might seem like creating abstract matter for abstract matter’s sake–but that’s part of the appeal. “We can kind of touch it, poke, play with it, even in some ways talk to this state, manipulate it, and make it do what we want,” says Lukin. “That’s what’s really exciting.”

But scientists do think quantum spin liquids have valuable applications, too. Just venture into the realms of quantum computers.

Quantum computers have the potential to far outstrip their traditional counterparts. Compared with computers today, quantum computers could create better simulations of systems such as molecules and far more quickly complete certain calculations.

But what scientists use as the building blocks of quantum computers can leave something to be desired. Those blocks, called qubits, are often things like individual particles or atomic nuclei–which are sensitive to the slightest bit of noise or temperature fluctuations. Quantum spin liquids, with information stored in how they’re arranged, could be less finicky qubits.

If researchers were able to demonstrate that a quantum spin liquid could be used as a qubit, says Semeghini, it could lead to an entirely new sort of quantum computer.

Rahul Rao is a freelance science journalist, graduate of NYU's SHERP, and Doctor Who fan. Contact the author here.