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and animals, and even the sea’s microbiome of plankton. Life as we know it is simply not possible without phosphates. “We found phosphate concentrations at least 100 times higher in the moon’s plume-forming ocean waters than in Earth’s oceans,” Glein said. “Using a model to predict the presence of phosphate is one thing, but actually finding the evidence for phosphate is incredibly exciting. This is a stunning result for astrobiology and a major step forward in the search for life beyond Earth.”

One of the most profound discoveries in planetary science over the past 25 years is that worlds with oceans beneath a surface layer of ice are common in our solar system. Such worlds include the icy satellites of the giant planets, such as Europa, Titan and Enceladus, as well as more distant bodies like Pluto. Worlds like Earth with surface oceans must reside within a narrow range of distances from their host stars to maintain the temperatures that support surface liquid water. Interior ocean worlds, however, can occur over a much wider range of distances, greatly expanding the number of habitable worlds likely to exist across the galaxy.

“Geochemical experiments and modelling demonstrate that such high phosphate concentrations result from enhanced phosphate mineral solubility, in Enceladus and possibly other icy ocean worlds in the solar system beyond Jupiter,” Glein said. “With this finding, the ocean of Enceladus is now known to satisfy what is generally considered to be the strictest requirement for life. The next step is clear -- we need to go back to Enceladus to see if the habitable ocean is actually inhabited.”

research and innovation Mariya Gabriel resigns

Bulgarian Centre-right party nominates Mariya Gabriel to become the next prime minister.

The European Union’s Commissioner for Research and Innovation Mariya Gabriel has resigned from her EU post as she takes on the challenge of forming a new Bulgarian coalition government. Gabriel was picked last week by the leader of her party Boyko Borissov to become Bulgaria’s next prime minister. Bulgarian President Rumen Radev gave her the institutional mandate on Monday to form a government. The Bulgarian centre-right politician joined the EU executive as commissioner for digital affairs in 2017 and took on the portfolio of research, innovation, education and culture at the start of the current mandate, in 2019.

Her track record in Brussels was mixed — she enjoyed a reputation as a young, dynamic commissioner with a genuine passion for technological progress, but one who lacked the gravitas to advance her agenda and who would push her staff to the breaking point. In a statement, Commission

President Ursula von der Leyen said that she’d accepted the resignation and thanked Gabriel for her “constructive and friendly contribution” to the college. “I wish Mariya Gabriel all the best and I am confident that her European experience, in this and the previous College of Commissioners, will be put to good use for the country,” she said. Gabriel’s portfolio will be handled by Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager and Vice President Margaritis Schinas, with Vestager overseeing innovation and research issues and Schinas taking care of education and cultural issues.

In the meantime, Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager and Vice-President Margaritis Schinas will be in charge of overseeing Commissioner Gabriel’s portfolio, with immediate effect. Executive Vice-President Vestager will be responsible for innovation and research, while Vice-President Schinas will be in charge of education, culture and youth.

Quantum frustration leads to a new state of matter: chiral Bose-liquid state

A team of physicists recently announced that they have discovered a new phase of matter which has been called the ‘chiral bose-liquid state,’

Correlation and frustration play essential roles in physics, giving rise to novel quantum phases. A typical frustrated system is correlated bosons on moat bands, which could host topological orders with long-range quantum entanglement. A team of physicists, including University of Massachusetts assistant professor Tigran Sedrakyan have discovered a new phase of matter called the chiral bose-liquid state. This discovery opens a new path in the age-old effort to understand the nature of the physical world.

Scientists are particularly interested in the prospect of what physicists refer to as “band degeneracy,” “moat bands,” or “kinetic frustration” in highly interacting quantum matter. Scientists have spent years researching these crazy quantum states. In most cases, when particles collide in any system, the results are predictable, much like how billiard balls collide and react predictably. Therefore, there is a correlation between the effects and the particles. The billiard ball might levitate or fly off at an inconceivable angle in a frustrated quantum system. Still, there are unlimited possibilities that result from particle interaction, and some of these infinite possibilities can give rise to new quantum states.

A bilayer semiconducting device has been created by scientists as a frustration machine. The top layer has a lot of electrons that are free to move about. The lowest layer contains “holes,” or locations where roving electrons could reside. The two layers are brought incredibly close—interatomic close—to one another. Scientists created the bottom layer, so there is a local imbalance between the number of electrons and holes in the bottom layer. If the number of electrons in the top layer and the number of holes in the bottom layer were equal, then you would expect to see the particles acting correlatedly. Sedrakyan said, “It’s like a game of musical chairs designed to frustrate the electrons. Instead of each electron having one chair to go to, they must now scramble and have many possibilities in where they ‘sit.’”

The unique chiral edge state, which possesses several unexpected properties, is initiated by this dissatisfaction. The electrons, for instance, freeze into a predictable pattern when the quantum matter in a chiral state is cooled to absolute zero, and the emergent charge-neutral particles in this state will all either spin clockwise or anticlockwise. One of these electrons’ spin cannot be changed by any force, including collisions with other particles and the application of magnetic fields; this makes them astonishingly resilient and even suitable for fault-tolerant digital data encoding.

What transpires when an outside particle does collide with one of the particles in the chiral edge state is even more unexpected. In keeping with the billiard ball analogy, you would anticipate the cue ball striking the eight-ball to send it flying. However, if the 15 pool balls were in a chiral bose-liquid condition, they would all respond identically to the striking of the eight-ball. The long-range entanglement that exists in this quantum system is what causes this phenomenon. Observing the chiral bose-liquid state is challenging, which is why it has remained hidden for so long. To do so, the team of scientists designed a theory and an experiment that used a powerful magnetic field capable of measuring the movements of the electrons as they race for chairs.

Lingjie Du said, “On the edge of the semiconductor bilayer, electrons and holes move with the same velocities. This leads to helical-like transport, which can be further modulated by external magnetic fields as the electron and hole channels are gradually separated under higher fields.” The magneto-transport experiments, therefore, successfully reveal the first piece of evidence of the chiral bose-liquid, which scientists call the ‘excitonic topological order.’