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Gigantic black holes lurk at the center of virtually every galaxy, including ours, but we've lacked a precise picture of what impact they have on their surroundings. However, a University of Chicago-led group of scientists has used data from a recently launched satellite to reveal our clearest look yet into the boiling, seething gas surrounding two supermassive black holes, each located in the center of massive galaxy clusters.

Can a single particle have a temperature? It may seem impossible with our standard understanding of temperature, but columnist Jacklin Kwan finds that it’s not exactly ruled out in the quantum realm

In 2023, a subatomic particle called a neutrino crashed into Earth with such a high amount of energy that it should have been impossible. In fact, there are no known sources anywhere in the universe capable of producing such energy—100,000 times more than the highest-energy particle ever produced by the Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator. However, a team of physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently hypothesized that something like this could happen when a special kind of black hole, called a "quasi-extremal primordial black hole," explodes.

Physicists have long categorized every elementary particle in our three-dimensional universe as being either a boson or a fermion—the former category mostly capturing force carriers like photons, the latter including the building blocks of everyday matter like electrons, protons, or neutrons. But in lower dimensions of space, the neat categorization starts to break down.

John Martinis has already revolutionised quantum computing twice. Now, he is working on another radical rethink of the technology that could deliver machines with unrivalled capabilities

When young stars mix with neutron stars, things get messy.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have discovered a new dwarf galaxy, which received designation CAPERS-39810. Further investigation of CAPERS-39810 revealed that it is an extremely metal-poor galaxy. The discovery was detailed in a paper published January 24 on the arXiv pre-print server.

Quantum technologies, devices and systems that process, store, detect, or transfer information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, have the potential to outperform classical technologies in a variety of tasks. An ongoing quest within quantum engineering is the realization of a so-called quantum internet: a network conceptually analogous to today's internet, in which distant nodes are linked through shared quantum resources, most notably quantum entanglement.

A team of theoretical researchers has found duality can unveil non-invertible symmetry protected topological phases, which can lead to researchers understanding more about the properties of these phases, and uncover new quantum phases. Their study is published in Physical Review Letters.

Mats Larsson and Ramon Wyss reveal why Chien-Shiung Wu never won a Nobel prize The post Twenty-three nominations, yet no Nobel prize: how Chien-Shiung Wu missed out on the top award in physics appeared first on Physics World.

Mats Larsson and Ramon Wyss reveal why Chien-Shiung Wu never won a Nobel prize The post Twenty-three nominations, yet no Nobel prize: how Chien-Shiung Wu missed out on the top award in physics appeared first on Physics World.

Journalist Ross Coulthart claims the US may be hiding anti-gravity or zero point energy technology. Experts and critics remain divided.

Researchers have demonstrated that a nanoparticle of 7,000 sodium atoms can act as a wave, creating a record-setting superposition.

Researchers at the Institute for Molecular Science (NINS, Japan) and SOKENDAI have demonstrated a more than 2000% voltage-induced enhancement of near-field nonlinear optical responses. To achieve this giant modulation, they focused on an angstrom-scale gap formed between a metallic tip and substrate in a scanning tunneling microscope (STM), which can strongly confine and enhance light intensity through plasmon excitation. The paper is published in the journal Nature Communications.

Particle therapy using a mix of carbon-, oxygen- and neon-ion beams helps tune the fine balance between range robustness, uniform dose and high linear energy transfer The post Multi-ion cancer therapy tackles the LET trilemma appeared first on Physics World.

A newly detected gravitational wave, GW250114, is giving scientists their clearest look yet at a black hole collision—and a powerful way to test Einstein’s theory of gravity. Its clarity allowed scientists to measure multiple “tones” from the collision, all matching Einstein’s predictions. That confirmation is exciting—but so is the possibility that future signals won’t behave so neatly. Any deviation could point to new physics beyond our current understanding of gravity.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a novel artificial intelligence (AI)-based method to dramatically tame the flood of data generated by particle detectors at modern accelerators. The new custom-built algorithm uses a neural network to intelligently compress collision data, adapting automatically to the density or "sparsity" of the signals it receives.

Recently, scientists from institutions including the University of Science and Technology of China made a fundamental breakthrough in nuclear-spin quantum precision measurement. They developed the first intercity nuclear-spin-based quantum sensor network, which experimentally constrains the axion topological-defect dark matter and surpasses the astrophysical limits. The study is published in the journal Nature.

Carbon nanotubes can open and close in response to acidity, guiding water and ions one by one and mimicking how natural cell channels work.

Quantum chaos describes chaotic classical dynamical systems in terms of quantum theory, but simulations of these systems are limited by computational resources. However, one team seems to have found a way by leveraging error mitigation and specialized circuits on a 91-qubit superconducting quantum processor. Their results are published in Nature Physics.

MACE is a next-generation experiment designed to catch muonium transforming into its antimatter twin, a process that would rewrite the rules of particle physics. The last search for this effect ended more than two decades ago, and MACE plans to leap far beyond it using cutting-edge beams, targets, and detectors. A discovery would point to entirely new forces or particles operating at extreme energy scales.

The Nation nominates Minneapolis for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, recognising its peaceful resistance against federal immigration policies and commitment to human rights.

The mystery of dark matter—unseen, pervasive, and essential in standard cosmology—has loomed over physics for decades. In new research, I explore a different possibility: Rather than postulating new particles, I propose that perhaps gravity itself behaves differently on the largest scales.

"JADES-ID1 is giving us new evidence that the universe was in a huge hurry to grow up."

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 demonstrated working arrays with dozens and even hundreds of cavities. The approach could eventually support massive quantum networks with millions of qubits.

Ariana Grande skips the 2026 Grammys despite winning Best Pop Duo for 'Defying Gravity'. Fans question her absence amid snub allegations and her busy filming schedule.

In some solid materials under specific conditions, mutual Coulomb interactions shape electrons into many-body correlated states, such as Wigner crystals, which are essentially solids made of electrons. So far, the Wigner crystal state remains sensitive to various experimental perturbations. Uncovering their internal structure and arrangement at the atomic scale has proven more challenging.

A new study has connected the famous m87 black hole, the first ever imaged, to its powerful cosmic jet, revealing how it launches particles at near light speed.

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 material. The finding reveals a new way to understand and control how materials conduct electricity and interact with light. It could help power future ultra-fast electronics and quantum technologies.

Researchers at the University of Maine and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) are collaborating on a new way to dry non-aggregated cellulose nanofiber—a material that could replace plastics in a wide range of products.

Deep in the frozen heart of Antarctica, the South Pole Telescope has been watching one of the most extreme neighborhoods in our galaxy, and it's just caught something extraordinary happening there. Astronomers have detected powerful stellar flares erupting from stars near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way. These aren't your average stellar flares, we're talking about energy releases so intense they make our sun's most dramatic outbursts look like flickering candles.

Time is almost up on the way we track each second of the day, with optical atomic clocks set to redefine the way the world measures one second in the near future. Researchers from Adelaide University worked with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in the United States and the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in the United Kingdom to review the future of the next generation of timekeeping.

Researchers developed a vortex method to dry non-aggregated cellulose nanofibers from slurry, offering a more efficient, scalable alternative to freeze and spray drying.

Where is physics headed? No one knows for sure, but Beyond the Quantum by Antony Valentini is a striking new book that reminds us what a big idea really looks like, finds Jon Cartwright

Astronomers have traced the origin point of a jet of material that is thousands of light-years long emanating from the supermassive black hole M87*

Using the world's most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider, scientists have found that the quark-gluon plasma that filled the universe just after the Big Bang really was a primordial "soup."

A team of researchers from the University of Stuttgart and the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg led by Prof. Stefanie Barz (University of Stuttgart) has demonstrated a source of single photons that combines on-demand operation with record-high photon quality in the telecommunications C-band—a key step toward scalable photonic quantum computation and quantum communication. "The lack of a high-quality on-demand C-band photon source has been a major problem in quantum optics laboratories for over a decade—our new technology now removes this obstacle," says Prof. Stefanie Barz.

Researchers from Regensburg and Birmingham have overcome a fundamental limitation of optical microscopy. With the help of quantum mechanical effects, they succeeded for the first time in performing optical measurements with atomic resolution. Their work is published in the journal Nano Letters.

The precise control of tiny droplets on surfaces is essential for advanced manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and next‐generation lab‐on‐a‐chip diagnostics. However, once droplet volume reaches pico- and nanoliter scales, the droplets become extremely sensitive to microscopic surface irregularities, and friction at the solid‐liquid interface becomes a major obstacle to smooth transport.

A novel apparatus at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory has made extremely precise measurements of unstable ruthenium nuclei. The measurements are a significant milestone in nuclear physics because they closely match predictions made by sophisticated nuclear models.

Astronomers have found thousands of exoplanets around single stars, but few around binary stars—even though both types of stars are equally common. Physicists can now explain the dearth.

A novel study demonstrates that droplets at a miniscule level can be precisely controlled, opening new avenues in micro-scale systems.

Time-dependent driving has become a powerful tool for creating novel nonequilibrium phases such as discrete time crystals and Floquet topological phases, which do not exist in static systems. Breaking continuous time-translation symmetry typically leads to the outcome that driven quantum systems absorb energy and eventually heat up toward a featureless infinite-temperature state, where coherent structure is lost.

Synchrotron radiation has revealed a star map made by the ancient astronomer Hipparchus that was thought to be lost to time

Scientists achieve optical measurements at atomic scales using quantum electron tunneling, surpassing conventional microscopy limits by nearly 100,000 times with standard lasers.

Nu Quantum will open a Spanish subsidiary following its $60 million series A funding round, announced last month, in which the Spanish government contributed €9.75 million to the company's raised total. The launch of Nu Quantum's subsidiary will be in partnership with the Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT). Nu Quantum CEO Carmen Palacios-Berraquero (right) and Oscar López Agueda (middle), Spain’s Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Administration, announced the public-private partnership live in Madrid at the Science for Industry (S4i) forum. Courtesy of Nu Quantum. Nu Quantum’s subsidiary will focus on industrialization of the quantum networking unit (QNU) and the development...

Focuslight Technologies, a photonics solutions provider, and BrightView Technologies, an optical technologies company, established a long-term strategic partnership. The partnership merges BrightView’s optical micro-lens array film technologies and optical design expertise with Focuslight’s global manufacturing, module integration, and supply-chain capabilities. Through the collaboration, the companies aim to accelerate the development and commercialization of optical components, modules, and integrated solutions. Focuslight will serve as BrightView’s strategic manufacturing partner and will provide back-end processing and related supply-chain services for various high-volume applications. The two companies also plan to...

Silicon carbide is for photonic circuits and quantum devices. Atomic layer processing boosts SiC waveguides and resonators, improving performance.

Researchers at KAIST have developed a breakthrough technology that could dramatically improve our ability to image black holes and other distant objects. The team created an ultra precise reference signal system using optical frequency comb lasers to synchronise multiple radio telescopes with unprecedented accuracy. This laser based approach solves long standing problems with phase calibration that have plagued traditional electronic methods, particularly at higher observation frequencies.

Author(s): Ryan WilkinsonAn analysis of a record-breaking gravitational-wave detection tests whether general relativity holds under extreme conditions. [Physics 19, s2] Published Thu Jan 29, 2026

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The 20th century was marked by the discovery of exotic states of matter. First, liquid helium was observed to flow without friction at extremely low temperatures, a phase now known as superfluid. Soon after, it was also discovered that under appropriate external conditions, some materials can conduct electricity without resistance; these materials were therefore named superconductors.

Sens. Diagn.DOI: 10.1039/D5SD00193E, Paper Open Access   This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence.Ewa Jaworska, Agata Michalska, Krzysztof MaksymiukThe applicability of self-powered bipolar electrodes for vertical farming, with monitoring the electrolyte concentration, self-adjusting concentration changes and the release of zinc ions controlled by a chemical stimulus was tested.To cite this article before page numbers are assigned, use the DOI form of citation above.The content of this RSS Feed (c) The Royal Society of Chemistry

Researchers have succeeded in unequivocally demonstrating supersolidity in ultracold potassium atoms coupled to light.

Author(s): A. G. Abac et al. (The LIGO Scientific Collaboration, The Virgo Collaboration, and The KAGRA Collaboration)An analysis of a record-breaking gravitational-wave detection tests whether general relativity holds under extreme conditions. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 041403] Published Thu Jan 29, 2026

Rolling MXene sheets into scrolls at gram scale yields 33-fold conductivity gains and superconductivity at 5.2 K absent in flat films, enabling energy and sensing advances.

For quantum computers to function, they must be kept at extremely low temperatures. However, today's cooling systems also generate noise that interferes with the fragile quantum information they are meant to protect. Now, researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed an entirely new type of quantum refrigerator, which is partly driven by the noise itself. This refrigerator enables very precise control over heat and energy flows and could play an important role in scaling up quantum technology.

For those who watch gravitational waves roll in from the universe, GW250114 is a big one. It's the clearest gravitational wave signal from a binary black hole merger to date, and it gives researchers an opportunity to test Albert Einstein's theory of gravity, known as general relativity.

Physical systems become inherently more complicated and difficult to produce in a lab as the number of dimensions they exist in increases—even more so in quantum systems. While discrete time crystals (DTCs) had been previously demonstrated in one dimension, two-dimensional DTCs were known to exist only theoretically. But now, a new study, published in Nature Communications, has demonstrated the existence of a DTC in a two-dimensional system using a 144-qubit quantum processor.

On-demand control of stable toroidal vortices lays groundwork for robust wireless data encoding.

Researchers have created an optical device that can generate both electric and magnetic vortex-ring-like light patterns. These structured light vortices, known as skyrmions, are highly stable and resistant to disturbances, making them promising for reliably encoding information in wireless applications.

There is no measurement that can directly observe the wave function of a quantum mechanical system, but the wave function is still enormously useful as its (complex) square represents the probability density of the system or elements of the system. But for a confined system, the wave function can be inferred.

Quantum computers need extreme cold to work, but the very systems that keep them cold also create noise that can destroy fragile quantum information. Scientists in Sweden have now flipped that problem on its head by building a tiny quantum refrigerator that actually uses noise to drive cooling instead of fighting it. By carefully steering heat at unimaginably small scales, the device can act as a refrigerator, heat engine, or energy amplifier inside quantum circuits.

The Einstein–de Haas effect, which links the spin of electrons to macroscopic rotation, has now been demonstrated in a quantum fluid by researchers at Science Tokyo. The team observed this effect in a Bose–Einstein condensate of europium atoms, showing that a change in magnetization causes the coherent transfer of angular momentum from atomic spins to fluid motion, thereby experimentally demonstrating that angular momentum is conserved at the quantum level.

Researchers developed a simple quantum refrigerator that uses environmental noise to control heat and energy flows, aiding precise cooling for quantum computing.

Even given a set of possible quantum states for our cosmos, it's impossible for us to determine which one of them is correct

Recent James Webb Space Telescope data confirms a decade-old theory that the universe's earliest supermassive black holes formed without stars.

The Einstein-de Haas effect has been observed in a quantum fluid, showing that changes in magnetization transfer angular momentum from atomic spins to collective motion.

A new computational framework maps 3D atomic positions in amorphous materials, achieving full accuracy for silica using simulated electron microscopy data.

Author(s): Xiang Zhan and Peng XueEntanglement and so-called magic states have long been viewed as the key resources for quantum error correction. Now contextuality, a hallmark of quantum theory, joins them as a complementary resource. [Physics 19, 9] Published Wed Jan 28, 2026

The Dark Energy Survey Collaboration collected information on hundreds of millions of galaxies across the Universe using the U.S. Department of Energy-fabricated Dark Energy Camera, mounted on the U.S. National Science Foundation Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at CTIO, a Program of NSF NOIRLab. Their completed analysis combines all six years of data for the first time and yields constraints on the Universe's expansion history that are twice as tight as past analyses.

Last year, astronomers were fascinated by a runaway asteroid passing through our solar system from somewhere far beyond. It was moving at around 68 kilometers per second, just over double Earth's speed around the sun.

The interstellar visitor may still have a few things to tell us before it leaves our solar system.

In Finland, the average age of passenger cars is among the highest in Europe, and the majority of traffic-related particle emissions are produced by ICE vehicles that are more than 15 years old. The worst polluters are old diesel cars without a diesel particulate filter.

A century ago, Erwin Schrödinger came up with an equation that says how the quantum world behaves. Now scientists are asking what happens when the observer is part of that world

The galaxy MoM-z14 could offer clues to what the universe looked like in its early infancy

Researchers at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA published a step-by-step framework for determining the three-dimensional positions and elemental identities of atoms in amorphous materials. These solids, such as glass, lack the repeating atomic patterns seen in a crystal. The team analyzed realistically simulated electron-microscope data and tested how each step affected accuracy.

Researchers from the Institute of Metal Research (IMR) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have stretched a chain of gold atoms by a record-breaking 46%, providing direct evidence of how fundamental metal bonds behave under extreme deformation. This study also reveals how structural changes at the atomic scale influence electrical transport.

Scientists have unveiled a new approach to powering quantum computers using quantum batteries—a breakthrough that could make future computers faster, more reliable, and more energy efficient.

For many decades, the method to obtain atomic-level descriptions of chemical compounds and materials—be it a drug, a catalyst, or a commodity chemical—has been X-ray crystallography. This method has a known weakness: it requires one single, high-quality and large enough crystal to study. Scientists often couldn't determine a new substance's structure if it only existed as microscopic dust or was too fragile for X-ray beams.

A light has emerged at the end of the tunnel in the long pursuit of developing quantum computers, which are expected to radically reduce the time needed to perform some complex calculations from thousands of years down to a matter of hours.