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The shutdown will involve removing and replacing 1.2 km of magnets and components The post CERN says Large Hadron Collider has ‘exceeded every expectation’ as it shuts down ahead of major upgrade appeared first on Physics World.

In a new study published in Nature Physics, researchers have demonstrated the Hong–Ou–Mandel (HOM) effect with up to 12 indistinguishable neutral atoms—an effect that has been predominantly observed in photonic systems.

Peering far into the distant, high-redshift universe, the James Webb telescope has discovered an abundance of small red galaxies known as the Little Red Dots. From their observations, astronomers believe that at least some of these galaxies may be home to growing supermassive black holes at their centers, objects which they believe are embedded in dense gaseous envelopes, an environment suitable for producing high-energy neutrinos.

Author(s): Jamir MarinoThe synchronization of two quantum oscillators reveals a collective rhythm encoded solely in their correlations. [Physics 19, 93] Published Mon Jun 29, 2026

Imagine a city with thousands of drivers on the streets every day. How might you make their commutes

Plutonium is one of the most complex elements in the periodic table. First synthesized and isolated in 1940 by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, plutonium has been studied closely for more than eight decades. It's most often associated with its role in nuclear security, but it's also vital to nuclear power, where it is produced in reactors and can be recycled as fuel. Despite plutonium's importance, some of its most fundamental behaviors remain a mystery.

A new Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) study based on data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft has uncovered insights into why the solar wind gradually slows as it moves toward the edge of the solar system and the boundary with interstellar space. The study "The Gradual Slowing of the Solar Wind in the Outer Heliosphere" is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

A new AI-powered framework could transform how astronomers measure the expansion of the Universe. By analyzing images of Type Ia supernovae and modeling their environments in unprecedented detail, researchers can estimate cosmic distances with near-spectroscopic accuracy. The technique is designed for the flood of data expected from the upcoming Vera C. Rubin Observatory and may greatly improve our understanding of dark energy.

On September 22, 2021, the IceCube Neutrino Detector in Antarctica caught a blast of neutrinos as it passed through the solar system. These neutrinos were remarkably high-energy and came from a galaxy 11 billion light-years away. That's a period of the Universe's history known as "Cosmic Noon". It's when star formation in galaxies was at its most active and that provided an interesting clue to their origin. The source of the neutrinos was nicknamed "Shadow Blaster" because the event that created the neutrinos was hidden by a dense cloud of dust, which made it invisible to optical observations.

There is growing demand for smart materials that can change their physical properties in response to various external stimuli such as light, heat, pressure, magnetic fields and electric fields. One such physical property is the magnetic state of material complexes, which depends on electronic spin states. Metal atoms in these complexes can change their spin state—between magnetic and nonmagnetic configurations—in response to light, heat or mechanical pressure.

Stellar mass black holes may not be black holes at all. Instead, they could be a type of extremely compact star called a gravastar, which mimics a black hole. This is according to theoretical phsyicists who have discovered a solution to Einstein's Theory of General Relativity that doesn't automatically result in a black hole when a star collapses at the end of its life.

The High-Luminosity LHC, planned to switch on in 2030, could help physicists unravel mysteries about the Higgs boson, dark matter and more.

The US government is trying to speed up the development of quantum computers so it can have one sooner

Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have developed a new way to use molecules as tiny data storage devices with a new manganese-based material. Until now, this was possible only with iron-containing molecular materials, which require very low temperatures—ranging from 100 to a maximum of 130 Kelvin (minus 173 to minus 143°C)—making their application significantly more difficult.

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Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have spotted a massive and densely packed galaxy cluster at "cosmic noon" before such structures were thought to be possible.

Hamamatsu Photonics has provided an update into its involvement in a project that aims to detect faint flashes of light produced by neutrino interactions in Antarctic ice. The company's announcement, regarding the IceCube initiative upgrade at the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, is focused on newly installed sensor strings. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory is a large-scale scientific facility embedded in approximately one cubic kilometer of exceptionally clear Antarctic ice. In detecting the faint flashes of light produced by neutrino interactions, it aims to help researchers investigate fundamental questions in astrophysics. A multi-photomultiplier tube digital optical module (mDOM) is...

Reading Time: 6 minutesThe University of Tennessee at Chattanooga signals its quantum ambitions The post UTC Quantum Center: collaboration turns quantum discovery into quantum impact appeared first on Physics World.

Nature is the foremost international weekly scientific journal in the world and is the flagship journal for Nature Portfolio. It publishes the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature publishes landmark papers, award winning news, leading comment and expert opinion on important, topical scientific news and events that enable readers to share the latest discoveries in science and evolve the discussion amongst the global scientific community.

Nature is the foremost international weekly scientific journal in the world and is the flagship journal for Nature Portfolio. It publishes the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature publishes landmark papers, award winning news, leading comment and expert opinion on important, topical scientific news and events that enable readers to share the latest discoveries in science and evolve the discussion amongst the global scientific community.

When a star strays too close to a supermassive black hole, it is torn apart in a brief, brilliant flare, and astronomers long assumed that was the end of the story. It isn't. Using the Very Large Array to follow dozens of these stellar killings, a team has discovered that many black holes "burp" months or even years later, belching out streams of radio light as they fling part of their meal back into space. These delayed flares let astronomers watch a black hole's appetite change in real time, and reveal that even our Galaxy's quietest looking giants are messier, and far more active, than anyone realised.

Researchers from the Los Alamos National Laboratory have confirmed that two long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) originated from the collapse of neutron stars into black holes.

It feels like every few months we get to report on another academic paper singing the praises of the Solar Gravitational Lens (SGL). Partly, this is due to Dr. Slava Turyshev's astounding productivity in pumping out academic articles, but partly because such a groundbreaking mission has lots of positive aspects—as well as challenges that need to be addressed. A new paper, posted to the arXiv preprint server from Dr. Turyshev, stresses an often overlooked feature of the SGL: how useful it can be for imaging things other than faraway exoplanets.

A new study debunks a recent claim that astronomers may have detected a lunar-mass primordial black hole. In a reanalysis of observations from the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), researchers found that the star nicknamed "Phoebe" was simply doing something ordinary that many stars do: changing its brightness naturally over time. The new findings have been reported in a paper posted to the arXiv preprint server on June 17.

Astronomers have uncovered new details about the black hole that ripped apart a star in a tidal disruption event named AT2024tvd. Findings suggest it is a wandering supermassive black hole—the kind that is not located at the center of a visible galaxy. The paper outlining this research was published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters on June 12.

Some periods in Earth's history are so different from our own that they may as well belong to another planet. Many people are interested in the age of dinosaurs or the Ice Ages, but it is an intermediate world, the Miocene Epoch—a sort of "in-between" world, geologically speaking: less recent than mammoths and stone tools, but not the deep past of dinosaurs—that many scientists find interesting.

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and ESA’s XMM-Newton may have found a supernova remnant near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. If confirmed as a supernova remnant, the ejected material is moving at about two million miles per hour and is about 1,700 years old.

The world's most powerful particle accelerator will shutter operations Monday for four years of renovations to dramatically boost its collision capacity and the potential for unlocking one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: dark matter.

In quantum mechanics, the geometry of quantum states has emerged as a powerful framework for understanding phenomena ranging from electrical conductivity to superconductivity. One research direction aims to extend these geometric concepts to non-Hermitian quantum mechanics—where systems can exchange energy with their environment—including the generalization of the Berry phase, a key geometric quantity, to the non-Hermitian case.

University of Oxford researchers have contributed to a major advance towards building large-scale quantum sensors capable of operating

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL) have developed a technique for interrogating molecules on surfaces with spectroscopic precision, thereby reaching the ultimate quantum limit for the first time. With their findings, published in Science, the researchers open new opportunities for the study of molecule-surface interactions and molecular quantum technologies.

The loudest crash of gravitational waves ever heard provides an intriguing way of studying event horizons, the boundaries at which nothing can escape the grip of these cosmic titans.

Astronomers may have witnessed one of the rarest and most dramatic cosmic events ever seen: a long-sought intermediate-mass black hole ripping apart a dense white dwarf star and devouring it. The Einstein Probe space telescope caught the explosion in its earliest moments, revealing an unusual sequence of intense X-ray flashes unlike anything seen in a typical gamma-ray burst.

More accurate navigation systems and improved wireless communications may not come from traditional electronics, but rather from atoms. Researchers at Penn State and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new way to build tinier, smarter glass sensors filled with highly precise and stable atoms.

Carbon quantum dots (CQDs) are tiny carbon-based nanomaterials that have attracted increasing attention as environmentally friendly alternatives to conventional heavy-metal quantum dots. They are lightweight, photostable and potentially biocompatible, and their light absorption and emission properties can be tuned.

In May 2024, auroras were observed at unusually low latitudes across the globe, lighting up skies that rarely see such displays. Inside Earth's magnetosphere, the region of space surrounding our planet and dominated by its intrinsic magnetic field, something significant was finally observed.

Physicists at Paderborn University have, for the first time, experimentally demonstrated the so-called "return" of Rabi oscillations in semiconductor quantum dots. The phenomenon, which was first predicted theoretically in 2007, describes the decrease in the emission intensity of the quantum dots, which are initially damped by interactions with the lattice vibrations of a solid (phonons).

The discovery of a completely new type of gravitational wave could reveal what happens near a black hole’s event horizon

Researchers have directly visualized a rare type of chemical bond between some of the heaviest elements in the periodic table, providing experimental evidence of how these atoms share electrons in systems where this has been difficult to prove.

Author(s): Susan CurtisPhysicists have demonstrated a laser-based method that enables a cryogenic electron microscope to image small protein structures with greater detail than previously possible. [Physics 19, 90] Published Thu Jun 25, 2026

The world of quantum video games is vast – there are hundreds that are either inspired by quantum mechanics or use quantum computers in their development. Columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan explores how these could change our understanding of quantum physics, or even help us make better devices

A quadrupole mass analyser designed for fusion research combines radiation hardness with the ability to distinguish between the light atomic species involved in the nuclear reaction The post Mass spectrometry delivers fusion insights appeared first on Physics World.

A new quantum computing chip turns destructive noise into a programmable feature, helping scientists study signal loss and error correction to build more effective systems in the future.

A new expanded catalogue of gravitational wave events will offer astronomers unprecedented insights into the most energetic phenomena

Thanks to the X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission, or XRISM, University of Michigan researchers are helping chip away

A research team has developed a new strategy to simultaneously control the electronic and magnetic properties of oxide thin films through a process known as exsolution. The team was led by Professor Hyeon Han and Professor Donghwa Lee from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), together with Professor Sang Ho Oh's group at Korea Institute of Energy Technology (KENTECH). The findings are published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Chiral 2D metal halide perovskites (MHPs) are among the most promising materials for future technologies that exploit the spin of electrons in spin-based optoelectronics, or spintronics, but getting them to perform consistently has proven difficult. Now scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a data-driven approach that identifies and models key synthesis parameters to optimize their performance.

Nearly every massive galaxy observed hosts a supermassive black hole at its center. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered that some of these supermassive black holes may even be too big for the galaxy they're found in, challenging astronomers' understanding of these objects and prompting questions about their growth in the early universe. Astronomers are still investigating many key questions about these mysterious and powerful objects, and studying them can help researchers understand how galaxies form and grow.

It's one thing to design a pharmaceutical drug. It's another to know if and why it actually works; not on paper or in a computer model, but inside the chaotic world of living systems, where proteins twist into shape, atoms constantly pull and push each other apart, and molecular interactions are the difference between health and disease.

Black holes are some of the most mysterious objects in the universe, but they aren't always silent. When two black holes are close enough to each other, they spiral toward one another, eventually crashing in an enormous explosion and forming a single, larger black hole.

Strongly interacting quantum particles are key to some of the most fascinating phenomena in modern physics—from magnetism and superconductivity to topological states. Yet the complexity of such systems makes many of their properties difficult to understand even today. A research team from Innsbruck and Turin has now proposed a new theoretical framework for generating and studying these exotic states of matter in ultracold magnetic atoms in a one-dimensional lattice.

A supermassive black hole is also coming together at the heart of this galaxy maelstrom.

Author(s): David EhrensteinA tiny bump in a magnetic film exposed to microwaves can engender spin waves with precisely spaced frequencies. [Physics 19, s86] Published Thu Jun 25, 2026

Trions form when three particles, like quarks or electrons, come together. This formation occurs in quantum particles in nuclear physics, semiconductors and magnets, and understanding its behavior can be challenging. Rice University's Kaden Hazzard and his team recently developed a theory on how these formations occur and behave, which was published in Physical Review Letters.

Of the more than 624,000 highway bridges in the U.S., an estimated 220,000 need repairs. Quantum sensors could help engineers better safeguard these vital pieces of infrastructure

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Gravity, the force that attracts objects toward each other, is currently framed by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. This framework describes gravity as the curvature of spacetime, the invisible four-dimensional fabric of the universe.

Microsoft’s Quantum Proof in Doubt A peer-reviewed critique in the journal Nature has reopened a hard question about

A research team led by professor Hao-Wu Lin from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) has developed what its claims to be the world's brightest room-temperature single-photon source, which uniquely combines ultrafast and non-blinking emission. The device emits more than 2.3 billion photons per second, reportedly setting a new global benchmark and marking a significant milestone toward practical quantum communication and integrated quantum photonic chips. Professor Hao-Wu Lin (center) and his research team, including doctoral student Tzu-Hao Liao (right) and Yung-Tang Chuang, developed the world's brightest room-temperature single-photon source, capable of emitting more than...

Sound waves, light waves and other types of waves, generally spread freely through space and over time. In 1958, physicist Philip W. Anderson first described a phenomenon via which irregularities or other sources of disorder in materials would prevent waves from propagating freely, which is now known as Anderson localization.

Author(s): Abhay Ashtekar, Daniel E. Paraizo, and Jonathan ShuThe first law of black hole mechanics has been extended to dynamical horizons so that the law applies to black holes arbitrarily far from equilibrium, a fundamental result that formally shows the thermodynamic description of black holes extends beyond the typical stationary solutions. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 251405] Published Wed Jun 24, 2026

Author(s): Ayush Roy, Lorenzo Küchler, Adam Pound, and Rodrigo Panosso MacedoA modular framework within the self-force formalism that applies to a large class of effective field theories of gravity in order to perform tests of general relativity with binary black hole mergers is critical for tests of general relativity that make use of the upcoming space-based gravitational wave detectors such as LISA. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 251404] Published Wed Jun 24, 2026

Scientists have detected the "fingerprints" of a black hole's event horizon—the boundary from which nothing can escape—for the first time, according to research published Wednesday.

Life on Earth took a long evolutionary journey that eventually created us, the purportedly intelligent species that dominates the planet. But there was no grand plan or design, only happenstance, nature and luck. Life on Earth suffered multiple extinctions, but got up, dusted itself off and continued on its long march to complexity.

A Florida State University computational scientist is paving the way for future medical breakthroughs by developing mathematical models and simulations to predict the behavior of a unique drug-delivery method, which aims to deploy treatments directly to targeted sites in the body.

Researchers at Tohoku University have uncovered the long-standing mystery behind the synthesis of Janus two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors, paving the way for more precise manufacturing of materials used in future electronics and clean energy technologies.

New experimental evidence demonstrates that discrete space-time crystals can be realized in classical soft-matter systems, thereby moving beyond the traditional complexities of quantum mechanics.

In a laboratory in Broomfield, Colorado, 98 atoms are suspended in midair, held in place by electric fields and cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero.

The JWST looked back in time and saw 6 galaxies merging into one. At the heart of the assembly, a supermassive black hole is lurking. It all happened when the Universe was only about 1.5 billion years old, and the red-shifted light is just reaching us now.

If, in space, no one can hear you scream, it seems that you can actually hear the sound of a crash when two black holes collide. Using the loudest gravitational wave ever heard, two Australian scientists and colleagues have been the first to witness the previously elusive "event horizon" at the actual moment of collision, right before all light and sound are swallowed by the newly formed black hole for eternity.

The explosion, consisting of two mysterious double flares, matches no known space eruption.

Soccer balls are tricky to design for proper spin. NASA highlighted how it is helping with FIFA ball design — and providing entertainment for ISS astronauts.

The hunt for these ghostly particles has required some of the most audacious experiment setups ever built. The post How Physicists Track and Trap the Elusive Neutrino first appeared on Quanta Magazine

The company has been touting its quantum technology for years, but some experts say these claims just don’t pass muster

Nature is the foremost international weekly scientific journal in the world and is the flagship journal for Nature Portfolio. It publishes the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature publishes landmark papers, award winning news, leading comment and expert opinion on important, topical scientific news and events that enable readers to share the latest discoveries in science and evolve the discussion amongst the global scientific community.

Nature is the foremost international weekly scientific journal in the world and is the flagship journal for Nature Portfolio. It publishes the finest peer-reviewed research in all fields of science and technology on the basis of its originality, importance, interdisciplinary interest, timeliness, accessibility, elegance and surprising conclusions. Nature publishes landmark papers, award winning news, leading comment and expert opinion on important, topical scientific news and events that enable readers to share the latest discoveries in science and evolve the discussion amongst the global scientific community.

Researchers were unsure whether alpha particles would aid or hinder fusion. Simulations suggest they help, by dampening turbulence.

Diamonds have long been coveted for their beauty. Their dazzling color and clarity make them perfect candidates for luxury jewelry. However, it's their other unique characteristics, including their hardness, thermal conductivity and chemical resistance, that make diamonds suitable for various applications in industry and advanced technologies.

From detecting the ripples of colliding black holes to imaging individual chemical bonds, mechanical transducers have repeatedly transformed our understanding of the universe. So far, however, the sensitivity of these devices has been intrinsically limited by the laws of quantum mechanics itself.

A research team from Hiroshima University, the University of Colorado, and other collaborators have demonstrated that space-time crystals—exotic structures that, under external drive, loop endlessly through both space and time—can be created using everyday liquid-crystal materials.

The area surrounding our galaxy’s central supermassive black hole contains three strangely different populations of stars – but one hidden black hole could explain all of them

Multiferroics are materials that exhibit more than one prominent "ferroic" property, such as ferromagnetism and ferroelectricity. One of their most advantageous features is that they allow engineers to control their magnetic states with electric fields or vice versa, due to an effect known as magnetoelectric coupling.

Quantum Computing Inc. (QCi), a quantum optics and integrated photonics technology company, has acquired NHanced Semiconductors, Inc. in a cash and stock transaction valued at $73.1 million. NHanced will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of QCi and continue to support its current customers and partners, including those within the quantum ecosystem. According to the QCi, the acquisition marks an important step in its transition from research-driven innovation and prototyping to scalable commercial production. Illinois-based NHanced is an advanced packaging foundry specializing in integration, hybrid bonding, chiplet architectures, silicon interposers and photonics device integration. Its expertise in advanced semiconductor...

We may not know what dark matter is, but we keep getting whiffs of it. “We are reaching

America’s Quantum Sprint President Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Monday that push the United States to

Plasma treatment weakens sulfur bonds, enabling precise room-temperature fabrication of Janus 2D semiconductors for advanced electronics.

Magnetic quantum oscillations have been unexpectedly observed in insulators, where freely moving charge carriers are not expected to exist. A joint study by researchers from Tokyo University of Science, The University of Tokyo and Kobe University investigated this puzzling behavior in the Kondo insulator YbB12 using ultrasound.

Researchers introduced TFM-IR, an ambient-condition infrared microscopy method that uses torsional cantilever dynamics and nonlinear frequency mixing to map in-plane and out-of-plane photothermal responses at the nanoscale. The technique resolved anisotropic strain in mica nanobubbles and achieved near-nanometer optical imaging in twisted bilayer graphene, enabling site-resolved spectroscopy within individual moiré cells.

Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) can help scientists determine the three-dimensional structure of proteins in unprecedented detail. Jacques Dubochet, former group leader at EMBL, shared the 2017 Nobel Prize in chemistry with Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson for the development of this technique, which led to the "resolution revolution" in structural biology.

Researchers have discovered how certain photosynthetic bacteria use a sophisticated quantum mechanism to increase their efficiency when capturing sunlight. The study, published today in the journal Nature Chemistry and led by Professor Jenny Clark, reveals that nature has been using a process called "singlet fission," effectively a "two-for-one" energy deal, to optimize solar harvesting. The findings provide a new blueprint for green technology, particularly as engineers attempt to copy this mechanism to build next-generation solar panels and quantum technologies.

Many of Earth's mass extinctions await clear explanations. We know an impact wiped out the dinosaurs, but what about the planet's other extinction events? New research says flybys of planetary mass objects could've been responsible.

For decades, astronomers and policymakers have been working on plans to protect our planet from killer asteroids. But now there's a new realm to protect: the thousands of satellites we're putting in orbit.

Researchers from the University of Sydney, working with IBM, have identified and quantified important factors limiting the performance of quantum computers and demonstrated ways to overcome their impact.