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Smectites are clay minerals that can contain large amounts of structural iron. Unlike iron oxides, they do not dissolve when their iron is reduced, so they can be reduced and reoxidized many times. This makes them a recyclable pool of redox-active iron that supports microbial respiration, transforms contaminants and influences nutrient and trace element cycling.

Creating a quantum device often begins by intentionally damaging a crystal. Scientists fire an ultrafast laser pulse into a material, knocking atoms out of place and leaving behind tiny imperfections called vacancies. Far from being flaws, these vacancies can behave as qubits—the fundamental building blocks of quantum information.

The world would look radically different without rulers and measuring tapes that fit into a pocket. Carpenters, fashion designers and engineers rely on these trusty tools to check the size of everything from a wooden board to a fabric swatch. But physicists who work with light lack that same convenience for one of the basic measurements of their craft. They routinely need to measure and compare the frequencies—colors—of the light waves they are using.

Astronomers have observed the longest-lasting central engine activity ever recorded from a gamma-ray burst. The burst occurred at a redshift of 0.8577, and the activity lasted about 27 days in the burst's own rest frame—around 20 days longer than the previous record. The paper, posted to the arXiv preprint server on Sept. 18, explores different mechanisms that could be powering this puzzling burst.

A research team led by the University of Osaka has directly observed, for the first time, an unusual heavy-fermion state forming at the boundary between a one-atom-thick material and a metal. Such states are closely linked to exotic quantum phenomena, including unconventional superconductivity, and the finding opens new possibilities for designing quantum materials through their interfaces.

Black holes, despite their extreme nature, are described by surprisingly few basic parameters: their mass, charge and spin. Two black holes may have formed for completely different reasons and passed through very different histories, yet still end up in the same final state. John Wheeler summarized this idea with the famous phrase "black holes have no hair."

Trump's chances of winning the Nobel Peace Prize are reportedly low, but experts warn his influence could still shape the 2026 race. Find out who decides the winner.

Physicists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider have captured the clearest evidence yet that quark-gluon plasma, the scorching-hot matter that filled the newborn universe, behaves like a true liquid. By tracking individual quarks as they blasted through the plasma, researchers saw them leave behind ripples, splashes, and swirling wakes much like a duck moving through water. The finding suggests this primordial “soup” is so dense that it can slow speeding quarks and respond collectively as a fluid.

Francis Halzen is a leader in the study of neutrinos, ghostly particles from across the universe that hint at exciting new physics

STOCKHOLM — Francis Halzen won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for his efforts to demystify a rare group of neutrinos, tiny cosmic particles that scientists believe offer clues to how the universe evolved. “It was a great surprise and I obviously didn’t expect it,” Halzen said, speaking to the committee by phone from Italy, in a call broadcast at the news conference to announce the winner. Halzen said it was predicted before that he would win the Nobel Prize but the announcement still made him feel “strange.” “I am working on a proposal, and I hope that this prize will help getting it approved,” he said to chuckles from the audience. Halzen paved the way for a new kind of astronomy The Nobel Committee for Physics also said Halzen’s work was instrumental to the construction of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica. “Francis Halzen realized that the ice at the South Pole could visualize these neutrino messengers from cosmos,” committee member Eva Olsson said during the

Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, and Georg Nagel have been awarded the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their work in developing optogenetics — a technique which makes it possible to show how nerve cells shape memories, feelings, and behaviors in the living brain. Deisseroth, Hegemann, and Nagel were awarded 12 million SEK ($1.2 million) to be shared equally. After Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel discovered channelrhodopsin could make cells light-sensitive, Karl Deisseroth found that it could be applied to nerve cells, eventually creating a method to switch nerve cells on and off in living mice. Courtesy of the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine/Mattias Karlén. In the early 2000s, Hegemann and...

Francis Halzen won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for his contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and his discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin.

The Nobel was awarded “for the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said.

Astrophysicist wins for his work detecting cosmic neutrinos The post Francis Halzen wins Nobel Prize in Physics appeared first on Physics World.

A team led by University at Buffalo physicists has found a mathematical solution that shows how a frustrated

Dr. Karl Deisseroth spent hours fielding congratulatory calls after learning early Monday that he had won a Nobel Prize for medicine for helping to open a new field of brain science called optogenetics.

Author(s): John M. Mehlhaff, Alexander Y. Chen, Martin Luepker, and Yajie YuanThe first fully kinetic collisionless model of a rotating plasma accreting into a black hole reveals the role of pair creation and the plasma loading of the jet funnel. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 155201] Published Mon Oct 05, 2026

Galactic black holes are cosmic mitochondria, powerhouses of the universe. Most of the energy these supermassive black holes produce comes from the material surrounding them: superheated plasma in their accretion disks interacting with tremendous magnetic fields. But there is a more direct way to extract energy from a black hole. It's known as the Penrose process, and a new study asks whether we could discover a signature of this process.

The universe may be trapped in its own comfort zone, and a researcher in the College of Engineering and Computer Science has helped explain why it cannot seem to leave. A new study suggests the universe could be locked into its current state by the same kinds of quantum effects that scientists study when trying to preserve fragile information inside a quantum computer.

The bulk photovoltaic effect (BPVE), a photoelectric effect that generates photocurrent without a p–n junction, can persist even when a material's average crystal structure remains centrosymmetric, a study from Institute of Science Tokyo has found. Researchers demonstrated this in CuCrP2S6, a van der Waals material that transitions from a noncentrosymmetric to a centrosymmetric average structure. The finding challenges the conventional view of BPVE and suggests a new strategy for enhancing photoelectric conversion.

Even the most chaotic quantum systems keep a permanent mark of their own past—a "quantum birthmark"—that never fades. Researchers from Tampere University, Harvard University and TU Dresden discovered the feature in their recent study. Their findings shed new light on the elusive relationship between classical and quantum mechanics. Looking ahead, these quantum birthmarks, along with related phenomena known as "scars," could eventually be harnessed to power next-generation nanoelectronics.

For more than 70 years, fusion energy researchers have used a particular equation to judge whether a plasma would stay hot and dense enough—for long enough—to reach a point where it could sustain itself without any more external power added. While that equation marks the finish line, also known as ignition, it says nothing about the best way to reach it. New research from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) maps a path to ignition conditions using far less energy than any other path.

Carbon quantum dots (CQDs) are fluorescent carbon nanomaterials with potential applications in sensing, optoelectronics, displays, anticounterfeiting and environmental technologies. Their optical properties can be adjusted by modifying the carbon structure and surface chemistry, particularly through defect states and the incorporation of heteroatoms. However, achieving predictable and continuous tuning of photoluminescence from a single carbon precursor remains difficult.

Primordial black holes (PBHs) don't exist as far as we know. But if they did, these hypothetical objects would have formed in the early universe rather than from dying stars, and they may even make up dark matter. That's not the end of the weirdness. Their formation could have been even stranger if it occurred in a universe with a dark dimension, which is another theoretical construct. It posits that our space includes a hidden extra spatial dimension.

Supermassive black holes generate tremendous amounts of energy through their accretion disks and jets. But they can also generate energy through the magnetic Penrose process. A new study looks at how we might observe this process through multimessenger astronomy.

Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel are joint winners of the 2026 prize The post Inventors of optogenetics win Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine appeared first on Physics World.

Microblazars — a miniature version of blazars — may be responsible for mysterious ultra-high-energy particles.

Indu Satija celebrates the golden anniversary of Hofstadter’s butterfly The post Hofstadter’s butterfly turns 50: a fractal hiding in quantum matter appeared first on Physics World.

Many complex quantum systems rapidly lose the recognizable patterns of their initial states as their components interact. To describe patterns of regular and chaotic motion in specific systems, physicists can construct a mathematical map called an effective phase space.

Karl Deisseroth, Georg Nagel and Peter Hegemann developed optogenetics, which uses light and genetics to control individual cells

Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann, Georg Nagel were awarded the prize for their work on light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.

Scientists have developed a new type of architecture for quantum computing chips, and it could pave the way for machines capable of large-scale processing.

Yukawa laid the foundation for an active post-war generation of particle physicists in Japan The post Particle physicist Hideki Yukawa: Japan’s first Nobel laureate appeared first on Physics World.

With nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, materials can be analysed to an atomic degree of precision. ETH Zurich is

An international team of astronomers—including researchers from ASTRON, JIVE, and the University of Amsterdam—has discovered the first so-called

When certain atoms are irradiated with laser light, they can produce laser pulses with extremely high frequencies in

Research into hormones that regulate appetite is on everybody's lips for the Nobel medicine prize, to be announced on Monday when the 2026 Nobel season kicks off.

Researchers at ETH Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute have produced an intense, cold beam of exotic atoms.

Dark matter could be a type of matter in the universe that does not emit, absorb or reflect detectable light and appears to interact very weakly with regular matter. Although physicists have observed gravitational effects attributed to dark matter, they have not yet been able to determine what it is made of.

An international team of astronomers, including researchers from the Department of Physics and the Hong Kong Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (HKIAA) at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), has discovered a previously hidden phase of high-energy activity following the merger of compact stars.

Charles Spencer says 12-year-old Prince Harry appeared to lack care after Princess Diana's funeral, while recalling the emotional journey to the Spencer family estate at Althorp.

Scientists at the University of Chicago have uncovered a surprising quantum state in the layered magnetic material Fe5GeTe2, where huge numbers of electrons move together unusually slowly while remaining quantum coherent. The behavior contradicts existing theoretical predictions about how the material’s magnetism should work and suggests scientists may need to rethink its underlying physics.

Microgravity poses severe health risks for astronauts. But could there be a solution?

Superconductors are materials that conduct electricity with no resistance and expel magnetic fields when cooled to ultralow temperatures. And depending on their quantum structure, they can also showcase strange properties like magnetic levitation. But now things are getting a little weirder.

Astronomers analyzed 2,435 galaxies hosting actively feeding black holes using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Among them, they identified 546 "bulgeless" galaxies—systems with little or no central stellar bulge. Their paper, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggests that galaxies without a central bulge grow black holes just as effectively as galaxies that have one—a surprising sign that black holes don't need galaxy mergers to grow normally.

Aerosols are small particles suspended in our atmosphere. They come in many flavors: Wildfire smoke, pollen, desert dust, sea salt lofted by powerful storms, volcanic sulfates and emissions from engines and industrial processes are all examples.

Once called a "pipe dream," quantum computers are now approaching practical use. Companies and research institutes around the world are in fierce competition to develop this technology, which has the potential to rapidly perform some calculations that are extremely difficult even for conventional supercomputers.

While scientists are known for their dedication to their research, crawling on the floor to avoid electrocution for the sake of a measurement seems a little excessive. But this is what British physicist John Cockcroft and Irish physicist Ernest T.S. Walton had to do in the early 1930s while studying the structure of atomic nuclei. Luckily, their efforts led to their receiving the Nobel Prize in 1951.

An unexplained high-energy neutrino detected three years ago could be linked to a primordial black hole, perhaps one more even unusual than previously thought

Matin Durrani looks at the work of Abdus Salam, who was born a century ago this year. The post Abdus Salam: Pakistan’s first (and so far only) Nobel prize-winner appeared first on Physics World.

Researchers combined millisecond-resolution small-angle X-ray scattering microscopy with polarized light imaging to track nanoscale particle orientation and macroscopic Taylor–Couette flow across seven orders of magnitude in length scale. The experiments showed that platelet-like graphene oxide largely tracked the macroscopic vortex motion, while rod-like cellulose nanocrystals displayed much faster orientational behavior linked to vortex turnover.

Neutron stars, the extremely dense remains of massive stars that exploded at the end of their lives, are widely studied astrophysical objects. Some of these stars, known as pulsars, spin and send out beams of radio waves, making them appear to pulse as the beams sweep past Earth.

Preetish Kakoty describes why India's only Nobel-prize-winning physicist went to Sweden on a whim The post C V Raman: the physicist with a ‘Himalayan ego’ who went to Stockholm convinced he’d win a Nobel prize appeared first on Physics World.

A Stanford team has documented the first direct observation of quantum jumps of sound in a mechanical resonator,

Physicists at The City College of New York have demonstrated a new way to transfer microwave signals onto

An instrument built to study cosmic rays has turned out to be a powerful tool for investigating thunderstorms. Earlier observations with the GRAPES-3 muon telescope revealed that thunderclouds can develop electrical potential differences far greater than those ever measured directly. But they also uncovered a puzzle: the instrument detected many more thunderstorm events in the eastern part of its field of view than in the western part. A new study by the same team, published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, has now explained why.

Author(s): Michael SchirberResearchers observe atoms trapped in an optical lattice mimicking particles created in a strong electric field. [Physics 19, s131] Published Thu Oct 01, 2026

Author(s): V. I. LyashukThere is much interest and activity in identifying transuranium isotopes and determining their cosmological origins, such as neutron star mergers. This paper studies how one could determine the production of transuranium isotopes in pulse nucleosynthesis based on isotopic yield ratios, a process that is very dependent on neutron fluence. The relationship between the neutron flux and abundances is determined in a rather unique way: by looking at yields from nuclear tests conducted during the Plowshares program. Making use of these nuclear tests (indicated in the figure) may help determine whether the periodic table has been extended in natural events in space. [Phys. Rev. C 114, 044603] Published Thu Oct 01, 2026

Next-generation computing technologies could be one step closer to emulating how neurons respond and communicate with each other, thanks to research examining how electrons and ions move through materials.

Working in close collaboration, researchers from Paderborn University, the University of Basel and Ruhr University Bochum have made a breakthrough in quantum communication. In their recently published paper in the journal Physical Review Letters, they demonstrate how special semiconductor nanostructures can be used to generate individual photons and pairs of photons that are almost perfectly identical. These "indistinguishable" particles form the basis for quantum entanglement and quantum interference.

Although timekeeping has undergone many iterations, the central idea has remained unchanged: to define time by the regularity of periodic events. Long before the advent of modern physics, civilizations relied on the regular motion of Earth and other celestial bodies to organize agriculture, trade, navigation, and daily life. A clock works by measuring time through the number of cycles of its oscillator, meaning that the frequency of the oscillator defines a fundamental limit on the resolution of a time span — the higher the oscillation frequency, the finer the resolution of a second. The history of timekeeping can therefore be understood, in part, as the search for oscillators of ever higher frequency and greater stability. As...

Researchers from The Australian National University (ANU) have engineered new optical coatings for LIGO, the global collaboration hunting gravitational waves from colliding black holes and neutron stars.

Physicists have used radioactive lutetium to create what they say is the most accurate atomic clock ever, keeping time perfectly up to 19 decimal places.

The most comprehensive catalogue of exploding white dwarf stars ever assembled has revealed new clues about dark energy,

The Quantum Fringe filled the summer with inspiring events for students, scientists and the general public, and also celebrated the third anniversary of Edinburgh's Quantum Software Lab The post Festival season finds Quantum Software Lab in high spirits appeared first on Physics World.

In the conventional diagram of an atom, the center depicts a nucleus—a spherical cluster of protons and neutrons. But that sphere is a simplification: nuclei can deform into exotic shapes that appear more like a pear, football or Frisbee. Understanding why and when nuclei distort is crucial for predicting and modeling how they will behave.

Cosmic detectives are being called on for an interstellar mission to hunt down thousands of invisible black holes lurking in our own backyard. Space scientists from the University of Southampton need amateur astronomers to search for signs that might locate them.

Researchers have experimentally observed energy patterns that physicists have predicted for about 40 years. By arranging laser-trapped atoms into a quantum simulator, they recreated two different quantum tipping points and watched the atoms fall into the exact energy ratios predicted by theory. The technique could now be used to explore mysterious quantum systems where scientists do not already know the answer.

A proposed qubit made with superfluid helium could cut quantum computing error rates by around 100 times by shielding quantum information from common forms of electromagnetic noise. If experiments confirm the predictions, the technology could eventually work alongside today’s superconducting qubits or serve as a new kind of quantum memory.

Maggie Miller explains why our intuition about three dimensions breaks down in four, and how she visualizes 4D spaces as a reel of three-dimensional snapshots. The post What Does the Fourth Dimension Actually Look Like? first appeared on Quanta Magazine

Quantum technologies rely on qubits, units of information that can exist in combinations of the states 0 and 1 instead of being limited to one or the other like conventional bits. Qubits can become entangled, which means their states become linked in ways that cannot be explained by considering each qubit separately.

Author(s): Ryan WilkinsonPairs of photons provide a gentle way to measure the impact of a molecule’s environment on its ultrafast dynamics. [Physics 19, s117] Published Wed Sep 30, 2026

By superimposing two ultrashort laser pulses that converge from different directions, a team of physicists at the University of Oldenburg has succeeded in generating three-dimensional light fields.

Researchers at Tohoku University, in collaboration with the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS) and the University of Tokyo, have taken an important step toward semiconductor quantum computing using zinc oxide (ZnO).

We make our prize predictions for 2026 The post Is this the year for a Nobel prize in condensed matter, or maybe particle physics? appeared first on Physics World.

Most magnets have two poles: north and south, or positive and negative, in a familiar arrangement called a "dipole." But researchers are increasingly uncovering more complex forms of magnetism.

Powerful jets from supermassive black holes can disturb star-forming gas far beyond a galaxy’s visible edge, leaving a glowing trail hundreds of thousands of light-years long. By keeping this gas hot and preventing it from falling inward, the jets may help determine whether a galaxy keeps forming stars or becomes quiet.

Scientists have developed and experimentally demonstrated a long-sought method for identifying W states, an important form of multi-photon quantum entanglement. The technique could make complex entangled systems much easier to measure, opening new possibilities for quantum teleportation, communication, and computing.

Boats passing over smooth water form a pair of diffusion wakes behind them veering off at a certain angle. Turbulence occurs along the line directly behind the boat, but the two diffusion waves are at a theoretical angle of 19.5° from the same line, for deep, ideally smooth water.

Researchers show that a hallmark excitation of Fractional Quantum Hall states persists in Fractional Chern Insulators The post Graviton modes survive on the lattice appeared first on Physics World.

The largest combined study of Higgs boson production and decay to date using data from the CMS experiment finds no significant deviations from theory The post Most comprehensive study yet of the Higgs boson at CMS appeared first on Physics World.

A mysterious signal from a powerful gamma-ray burst may reveal how exotic particles and altered physics could let extreme radiation cross the universe The post Scientists explain how a 300 TeV photon could reach Earth appeared first on Physics World.

In materials chemistry, identifying common parameters that can organize magnetic ground states across complex intermetallic compounds remains a central challenge. Researchers have long used chemically tunable parameters to control magnetic properties. One is valence-electron concentration, commonly discussed as the electron-per-atom (e/a) ratio. The e/a ratio has been widely used to classify magnetic ground states in metallic systems such as Heusler alloys and approximant crystals.

Author(s): Charles DayA pattern of surface waves bestowed with fivefold symmetry hosts topological structures. [Physics 19, s119] Published Tue Sep 29, 2026

A new way to accurately measure the distance between quasar pairs is showing promise through University of Alberta research.