Unique Chemical Bond Only Seen In Dwarf Stars Could Make Better Computers
White Dwarf Stars This image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a close-up of ancient white dwarf stars in the Milky Way. NASA and H. Richer (University of British Columbia) Stars are responsible for forging every heavy element in the universe when they fuse hydrogen and when they explode at the ends of their lives. But they also create a strange third type of chemical bond between atoms, caused by their incredible magnetic fields. This previously unknown type of bond could lead to new research in quantum science, perhaps even quantum computing. Kai Lange, Trygve Helgaker and colleagues at the University of Oslo discovered this third bond by accident, when they were studying the magnetic fields in compact stars like white dwarfs, magnetars and neutron stars. Some white dwarfs have magnetic fields 10,000 times the strongest field anyone can produce on Earth, for instance, and neutron stars are five orders of...