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When you toss a coin, you put it into a higher-energy state until it falls back down again. It can then end up in one of two possible states: heads or tails. No matter which state the coin was in before, after the toss both outcomes are equally likely. A team at TU Wien has analyzed a quantum system that also has two equivalent ground states. By supplying energy through ion bombardment, this state can be changed.

New research shows that, off the U.S. West Coast, humpback whales face a higher risk of getting entangled in fishing equipment during years with lower availability of cool-water habitat, where the whales feed. Jarrod Santora of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, U.S., and colleagues present these findings in PLOS Climate.

Richard Axel resigned from his post co-leading Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute over his long ties to Jeffrey Epstein

A new study explains why basketball shoes make a high-pitched squeaking noise when they rub against the hardwood. The ridges on the sole hold the key

Device-independent quantum-encrypted keys distributed over 100 km The post Quantum-secure Internet expands to citywide scale appeared first on Physics World.

Quantum computers need special materials called topological superconductors—but they’ve been notoriously difficult to create. Researchers have now shown they can trigger this exotic state by subtly adjusting the mix of tellurium and selenium in ultra-thin films. That tiny chemical tweak changes how electrons interact, effectively turning a quantum phase “dial” until the ideal state appears. The result is a more practical path toward building stable, next-generation quantum devices.

The commonly used RSA encryption algorithm can now be cracked by a quantum computer with only 100,000 qubits, but the technical challenges to building such a machine remain numerous

Quantum technologies, devices and systems that operate leveraging quantum mechanical effects, could tackle some tasks more reliably and efficiently than any classical technology could. In recent years, some researchers have been trying to realize quantum networks to scale up the size of quantum computers, which essentially consist of several connected smaller quantum processors.

A persistent "gravity hole" beneath Antarctica gives scientists a window into Earth's deep interior, showing how processes far below reshape the planet's gravity field over millions of years.

Robert P Crease reports from a conference at CERN on particle physics in the 1980s and 1990s The post The future of particle physics: what can the past teach us? appeared first on Physics World.

By analysing the Liouville gap in imaginary time, scientists reveal universal phase‑transition behaviour in both ground and finite‑temperature states The post A breakthrough in modelling open quantum matter appeared first on Physics World.

Atom-level understanding of how the surface electronic properties of a magnetic semimetal can be tuned could guide its use in advanced technologies like spintronics and catalysis.

A new study has revealed how tiny imperfections and vibrations inside a promising quantum material could be used to control an unusual quantum effect, opening new possibilities for smaller, faster, and more efficient energy-harvesting devices.

Researchers at the University of Tuebingen, working with an international team, have developed an artificial intelligence that designs entirely new, sometimes unusual, experiments in quantum physics and presents them in a way that is easily understandable for researchers. This includes experimental setups that humans might never have considered. The new AI doesn't just create a single design proposal; instead, it writes computer code that generates a whole series of physical experiments, that is, groups of experiments with similar outputs. The study has been published in the journal Nature Machine Intelligence.

An international study has revealed a surprising connection between quantum physics and the theoretical models underlying artificial intelligence. The study results from a collaboration between the Institute of Nanotechnology of the National Research Council (Cnr-Nanotec), the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT), and Sapienza University of Rome, together with international research institutions. The research paper was published recently in the journal Physical Review Letters.

A new study has revealed how tiny imperfections and vibrations inside a promising quantum material could be used to control an unusual quantum effect, opening new possibilities for smaller, faster and more efficient energy-harvesting devices.

NYU scientists are using light to precisely control how tiny particles organize themselves into crystals. Their research, published in Chem, provides a simple and reversible method for forming crystals that can be used to develop a new generation of adaptable materials.

A University of Ottawa team has developed a new way to protect free-space quantum key distribution (QKD) from atmospheric turbulence, one of the main causes of distortion and errors when sending quantum information through air. Their paper, "All-optical turbulence mitigation for free-space quantum key distribution using stimulated parametric down-conversion," appears in the journal Optica.

Duplicating the information held in quantum computers was thought to be impossible thanks to the no-cloning theorem, but researchers have now found a workaround

Conventional electronics process information leveraging the electrical charge of electrons. Over the past few decades, some electronics engineers have been exploring the potential of a different type of device that instead processes and stores data exploiting the intrinsic magnetic moment (i.e., spin) of electrons.

Fresh observations from the James Webb Space Telescope show how vivid auroras surge through Uranus’s tilted magnetic field

Researchers once struggled to understand unconventional solutions developed by artificial intelligence. A new approach leads to faster and better understanding.

You can tell a lot about a material based on the type of light you shine at it:

Connor Hellebuyck's 41-save Olympic final performance secured historic gold and cemented his status as America's leading NHL goaltender.

FBI Director Kash Patel faces backlash for celebrating with the U.S. men's hockey team at the Winter Olympics amid domestic security challenges.

Sometimes, transporting electrons from one cell to another is a team effort. In electroactive bacteria, that team is a group of proteins that shepherds electrons forward, passing them along like a relay baton, so they can penetrate the thick cell envelope comprising multiple layers of membranes that otherwise are not electroconductive. But how these proteins collaborate to achieve this has not been clear.

Optica has named 22 recipients of its 2026 awards and medals. The awards celebrate leaders in the field of photonics who are making technical, research, education, business, leadership, and service accomplishments. “The 2026 Optica award and medal recipients are celebrated for their outstanding contributions. We thank and congratulate them for advancing our field, mentoring the next generation, and serving our global community,” said Gisele Bennett, Optica's 2026 President. Optica named 22 recipients of its 2026 awards and medals. Courtesy of Optica. Among those recognized are Juergen Popp of the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology and Friedrich-Schiller University, and Bishnu Pal of Ecole Centrale School of...

Learn how supermassive black holes may be suppressing star formation in nearby galaxies. 

Imagine trying to design a key for a lock that is constantly changing its shape. That is the exact challenge we face in modern drug discovery when dealing with intrinsically disordered proteins.

The collaboration of TU Wien with research groups in China has resulted in a crucial building block for a new kind of quantum computer: The realization of a novel type of quantum logic gate makes it possible to carry out quantum computations on pairs of photons that are each in four different quantum states, or combinations thereof. The advancement is an important milestone for optical quantum computers. The study has now been published in Nature Photonics.

Aliro, a Harvard University spinout and provider of quantum networking technology, has raised $15 million in funding to help commercialize its technology platform. The investment comes as Aliro reaches technical milestones, recently announcing support for over 50 entanglement and classical network devices within its vendor-agnostic software stack. The company's interoperability solution to global security infrastructure allows organizations to deploy fully operational, high-assurance networks immediately using existing fiber infrastructure. The company said the funding will support expanded deployments and ecosystem partnerships. By running on existing optical networks, Aliro's approach transforms existing routers and switches...

Quantum computers—devices that process information using quantum mechanical effects—have long been expected to outperform classical systems on certain tasks. Over the past few decades, researchers have worked to rigorously demonstrate such advantages, ideally in ways that are provable, verifiable and experimentally realizable.

Using commercially available technology and innovative methods, researchers at NBI have pushed the limits of how fast you can detect changes in the sensitive quantum states in the qubit. Their work allows researchers to follow rapid changes in qubit performance that were previously invisible. The study is published in the journal Physical Review X.

Reservoir computing is a promising machine learning-based approach for the analysis of data that changes over time, such as weather patterns, recorded speech or stock market trends. Classical reservoir computing techniques are known to perform best at the "edge of chaos," or in simpler terms, at a "sweet spot" in which the behavior of systems is neither entirely predictable (i.e., order) nor completely unpredictable (i.e., chaos).

An ancient, fast-feeding quasar is breaking the rules of how black holes consume matter and generate galaxy-shaping jets.

The powerful software can reduce the time needed to simulate reactions with large molecules from weeks to just minutes.

Quantum software is essential to make quantum technology work. Research centres QuSoft and aQa work together at the

A new study looked at how a massive star in the Andromeda Galaxy disappeared due to the formation of a black hole

Isomorphic Lab’s proprietary drug-discovery model is a major advance, but scientists developing open-source tools are left guessing how to achieve similar results

As space agencies prepare for human missions to the moon and Mars, scientists need to understand how the absence of gravity affects living cells. Now, a team of researchers has built a rugged, affordable microscope that can image cells in real time during the chaotic conditions of zero-gravity flight—and they're making the design available to the broader scientific community.

Scientists may have spotted a long-sought triplet superconductor — a material that can transmit both electricity and electron spin with zero resistance. That ability could dramatically stabilize quantum computers while slashing their energy use. Early experiments suggest the alloy NbRe behaves unlike any conventional superconductor. If verified, it could become a cornerstone of next-generation quantum and spintronic technology.

For the first time, scientists have mapped Uranus’s upper atmosphere in three dimensions, tracking temperatures and charged particles up to 5,000 kilometers above the clouds. Webb’s sharp vision revealed glowing auroral bands and unexpected dark regions shaped by the planet’s wildly tilted magnetic field.

American skier Alex Ferreira wins his first Olympic gold in the men's freeski halfpipe at the 2026 Winter Olympics, marking a career-defining moment.

Author(s): Pavel Aleynikov, Per Helander, and Håkan M. SmithThe concept for future fusion reactors has a key advantage over the tokamak, being practically immune to large-scale disruptions. The authors show, however, that a rapid shutdown of stellarator coil currents (with fast dissipation of poloidal magnetic flux) can nonetheless drive an avalanche of runaway electrons, even without any interruption of the net toroidal plasma current. The problem is far less serious than in a tokamak, but some runaways are inevitably present in an activated fusion device, so an accidental rapid coil ramp-down could produce a dangerous runaway current. Some form of dedicated intervention is likely necessary. [Phys. Rev. Applied 25, 024065] Published Fri Feb 20, 2026

Since the third Gaia data release in 2022, wide binary stars with separation greater than several thousand astronomical units have been intensely investigated across the world, to probe the nature of gravity in the low acceleration regime, weaker than about 1 nanometer per second squared.

Green hydrogen production technology, which utilizes renewable energy to produce eco-friendly hydrogen without carbon emissions, is gaining attention as a core technology for addressing global warming. Green hydrogen is produced through electrolysis, a process that separates hydrogen and oxygen by applying electrical energy to water, requiring low-cost, high-efficiency, high-performance catalysts.

Physicists combined human acumen and AI-assisted math to show that a doubted particle interaction is possible after all

Like many scientists, theoretical physicist Andrew Strominger was unimpressed with early attempts at probing ChatGPT, receiving clever-sounding answers that didn't stand up to scrutiny. So he was skeptical when a talented former graduate student paused a promising academic career to take a job with OpenAI. Strominger told him physics needed him more than Silicon Valley.

Traditional chemistry textbooks present a tidy picture: Atoms in molecules occupy fixed positions, connected by rigid rods. A molecule such as formic acid (methanoic acid, HCOOH) is imagined as two-dimensional—flat as a sheet of paper. But quantum physics tells a different story. In reality, nature resists rigidity and forces even the simplest structures into the third dimension.

Qubits, the heart of quantum computers, can change performance in fractions of a second — but until now, scientists couldn’t see it happening. Researchers at NBI have built a real-time monitoring system that tracks these rapid fluctuations about 100 times faster than previous methods. Using fast FPGA-based control hardware, they can instantly identify when a qubit shifts from “good” to “bad.” The discovery opens a new path toward stabilizing and scaling future quantum processors.

Atom-thick layers of molybdenum disulfide are ideally suited for radiation-resistant spacecraft electronics, researchers in China have confirmed. In a study published in Nature, Peng Zhou and colleagues at Fudan University put a communications system composed of the material through a gauntlet of rigorous tests—including the transmission of their university's Anthem—confirming that its performance is barely affected in the harsh environment of outer space.

Team Great Britain achieves a historic gold medal record at the 2026 Winter Olympics, sparking pride and pressure within the camp.

Spanish astronomers have conducted a near-infrared study of an ultra-high energy gamma-ray source designated LHAASO J2108+5157. The new study, published February 11 on the arXiv preprint server, tries to unravel the mysterious nature of this source.

Neutron stars are ultra-dense remnants of massive stars that collapsed after supernova explosions and are made up mostly of subatomic particles with no electric charge (i.e., neutrons). When two neutron stars collide, they are predicted to produce gravitational waves, ripples in the fabric of spacetime that travel at the speed of light.

To capture higher-definition and sharper images of cosmological objects, astronomers sometimes combine the data collected by several telescopes. This approach, known as long-baseline interferometry, entails comparing the light signals originating from distant objects and picked up by different telescopes that are at different locations, then reconstructing images using computational techniques.

Researchers at the University of Maine and the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)

A new electrically controlled MXene membrane tunes ion separation on demand, opening doors to more efficient water treatment, drug delivery and rare earth mining.

Scientists developed a single-atom iridium catalyst that drives both water-splitting reactions on one electrode, using 98.5% less precious metal for cheaper green hydrogen.

Theory says that, under the right conditions, massive stars can collapse directly into black holes without exploding as supernovae. But observational evidence of the phenomenon has been hard to get. Now astronomers have found some sequestered in archival data.

"This is a crucial step towards characterizing giant planets beyond our solar system."

When things vibrate, they make sounds. Molecules do too, but at frequencies far beyond human hearing. Chemical bonds stretch, bend, and twist at characteristic rates that fall in the infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum. Infrared spectroscopy, which measures how light excites these vibrations, is often likened to listening to a molecule's voice.

A research team led by Professor Su-Il In of the Department of Energy Science and Engineering at DGIST has uncovered the principle that the products and reaction pathways of carbon dioxide (CO2) conversion to fuel via solar energy depend on the design of atomic-level interactions in the catalyst.

Author(s): Wladimir Zholobenko, Frank Jenko, Kaiyu Zhang, Philipp Ulbl, Konrad Eder, Andreas Stegmeir, Clemente Angioni, and Peter ManzA global, confinement-time-long, flux-driven turbulence simulation of the tokamak plasma edge region subject to a power ramp reproduces an abrupt turbulence transition. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 136, 075101] Published Thu Feb 19, 2026

In nature, tiny crystals known as nanocrystals are formed slowly over many years. Rocks and minerals react with air, water, and carbon dioxide in a process called chemical weathering. These reactions happen gently, at room temperature and normal pressure, gradually producing crystals so small they are invisible to the naked eye. Although slow, these natural processes create materials that are increasingly important in modern technologies, from electronics to medical devices.

Astronomers have found a candidate Jellyfish Galaxy only about 5 billion years after the Big Bang. This is earlier than expected, since the ram pressure stripping responsible for it wasn't thought to be possible so early in the Universe's history. The galaxy could explain the puzzling "Red Nugget" galaxies, but first it has to be confirmed.

The early Universe was a busy place. As the infant cosmos exanded, that epoch saw the massive first stars forming, along with protogalaxies. It turns out those extremely massive early stars were stirring up chemical changes in the first globular clusters, as well. Not only that, many of those monster stars ultimately collapsed as black holes.

A new artificial intelligence framework developed at Cornell can accurately predict the performance of battery electrolytes while revealing the chemical principles that govern them, providing engineers with a new tool for designing better batteries.

By applying voltage to electrically control a new "transistor" membrane, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) achieved real-time tuning of ion separations—a capability previously thought impossible. The recent work, which could make precision separation processes like water treatment, drug delivery and rare earth element extraction more efficient, was published in Science Advances.

Astronomers have long debated why so many icy objects in the outer solar system look like snowmen. Michigan State University researchers now have evidence of the surprisingly simple process that could be responsible for their creation.

Many physicists are searching for a triplet superconductor. Indeed, we could all do with one, although we may not know it yet—or understand why. Triplet superconductors could be the key to achieving the most energy-efficient technology in the future.

We rate the Potensic Atom SE as the best cheap drone for beginners thanks to its build quality and value for money. Now this bundle is at its lowest-ever price.

Scientists have taken a major step toward mimicking nature’s tiniest gateways by creating ultra-small pores that rival the dimensions of biological ion channels—just a few atoms wide. The breakthrough opens new possibilities for single-molecule sensing, neuromorphic computing, and studying how matter behaves in spaces barely larger than atoms.

Bert de Jong of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab is our podcast guest The post Quantum Systems Accelerator focuses on technologies for computing appeared first on Physics World.

It is commonly assumed that tiny particles just go with the flow as they make their way through soil, biological tissue, and other complex materials. But a team of Yale researchers led by Professor Amir Pahlavan shows that even gentle chemical gradients, such as a small change in salt concentration, can dramatically reshape how particles move through porous materials. Their results are published in Science Advances.

By replacing single atoms with an entangled pair of ions, physicists in Germany have demonstrated unprecedented stability in an optical clock. Publishing their results in Physical Review Letters, a team led by Kai Dietze at the German National Metrology Institute, hope their approach could help usher in a new generation of optical clocks—opening up new possibilities in precision experiments and metrology.

By bringing gravity into the equation, we can focus on effective strategies for managing IBS in space and on Earth.

The KM3NeT collaboration is a large research group involved in the operation of a neutrino telescope network in the deep Mediterranean Sea, with the aim of detecting high-energy neutrino events. These are rare and fleeting high-energy interactions between neutrinos, particles with an extremely low mass that are sometimes referred to as "ghost particles."

An exotic type of dark matter could explain some of the characteristics of our galaxy’s central supermassive black hole, but many cosmologists are leery of the idea

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.

Scientists used entangled X-ray photon pairs to produce ghost images of tiny samples, a proof of concept that could enable longer, lower-dose studies of delicate biological materials.

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In the everyday world, governed by classical physics, the concept of equilibrium reigns. If you put a drop of ink into water, it will eventually evenly mix. If you put a glass of ice water on the kitchen table, it will eventually melt and become room temperature. That concept rooted in energy transport is known as thermalization, and it is easy to comprehend because we see it happen every day. But this is not always how things behave at the smallest scales of the universe.

"This data provides us with rare insight into how galaxies were transformed in the early universe."

By applying new methods of machine learning to quantum chemistry research, Heidelberg University scientists have made significant strides in computational chemistry. They have achieved a major breakthrough toward solving a decades-old dilemma in quantum chemistry: the precise and stable calculation of molecular energies and electron densities with a so-called orbital-free approach, which uses considerably less computational power and therefore permits calculations for very large molecules.

In a paper published in the journal Small, a team of physicists from IISER Pune have developed tiny electronic devices from a special semiconductor material called bismuth oxyselenide (Bi2O2Se). This development has potential applications in future flexible smartphones, wearable health monitors, smart fabrics, and bendable electronic gadgets.

A novel method to manipulate the inner structure of cells connects several scientific fields and could represent a significant step in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. Dr. Travis Craddock, a professor of biology at the University of Waterloo and Canada Research Chair in Quantum Neurobiology, led the research team that is the first to use weak magnetic fields and isotopes to change the structure of cells.

Quantum computer research is advancing at a rapid pace. Today's devices, however, still have significant limitations: For example, the length of a quantum computation is severely limited—that is, the number of possible interactions between quantum bits before a serious error occurs in the highly sensitive system. For this reason, it is important to keep computing operations as efficient and lean as possible.

We know that supermassive black holes can inhibit star formation in their galaxies. But new research and JWST observations show that the most luminous quasars can actually suppress star formation in neighbouring galaxies. SMBH may have played a more pronounced role in shaping the early Universe than previously thought.

The CMS Collaboration has shown, for the first time, that machine learning can be used to fully reconstruct particle collisions at the LHC. This new approach can reconstruct collisions more quickly and precisely than traditional methods, helping physicists better understand LHC data. The paper has been submitted to the European Physical Journal C and is currently available on the arXiv preprint server.