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Reference Terms
from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Air conditioning

An air conditioner (AC or air-con) is an appliance or mechanism designed to extract heat from an area using a refrigeration cycle. In construction, a complete system of heating, ventilation and air conditioning is referred to as HVAC.

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Matter & Energy News

February 2, 2026

A new light-based breakthrough could help quantum computers finally scale up. Stanford researchers created miniature optical cavities that efficiently collect light from individual atoms, allowing many qubits to be read at once. The team has already ...
Researchers have discovered a hidden quantum geometry inside materials that subtly steers electrons, echoing how gravity warps light in space. Once thought to exist only on paper, this effect has now been observed experimentally in a popular quantum ...
A strange, glowing form of matter called dusty plasma turns out to be incredibly sensitive to magnetic fields. Researchers found that even weak fields can change how tiny particles grow, simply by nudging electrons into new motions. In lab ...
Researchers have found a way to make ordinary aluminum tubes float indefinitely, even when submerged for long periods or punched full of holes. By engineering the metal’s surface to repel water, the tubes trap air inside and refuse to sink, even ...
Order doesn’t always form perfectly—and those imperfections can be surprisingly powerful. In materials like liquid crystals, tiny “defects” emerge when symmetry breaks, shaping everything ...
Scientists have created a device that captures carbon dioxide and transforms it into a useful chemical in a single step. The new electrode works with realistic exhaust gases rather than requiring purified CO2. It converts the captured gas into ...
Physicists have discovered that hidden magnetic order plays a key role in the pseudogap, a puzzling state of matter that appears just before certain materials become superconductors. Using an ultra-cold quantum simulator, the team found that even ...
Researchers have demonstrated that quantum entanglement can link atoms across space to improve measurement accuracy. By splitting an entangled group of atoms into separate clouds, they were able to measure electromagnetic fields more precisely than ...
Researchers have developed a technique that allows them to carve complex three dimensional nanodevices directly from single crystals. To demonstrate its power, they sculpted microscopic helices from a magnetic material and found that the structures ...
A new building material developed by engineers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute could change how the world builds. Made using an enzyme that turns carbon dioxide into solid minerals, the material cures in hours and locks away carbon instead of ...
Physicists have unveiled a new way to simulate a mysterious form of dark matter that can collide with itself but not with normal matter. This self-interacting dark matter may trigger a dramatic collapse inside dark matter halos, heating and ...
As global energy demand surges—driven by AI-hungry data centers, advanced manufacturing, and electrified transportation—researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory have unveiled a breakthrough that could help squeeze far more power ...

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