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The catalog of gravitational waves "heard" by LIGO, KAGRA and Virgo has doubled with detections of spacetime ripples.

Neutron stars harbor some of the most extreme environments in the universe: their densities soar to several times those of atomic nuclei, and they possess some of the strongest gravitational fields of any known objects, surpassed only by black holes. First observed in the 1960s, much of the internal composition of neutron stars is still unknown. Scientists are beginning to look to gravitational waves emitted by binary neutron‐star inspirals—pairs of mutually orbiting neutron stars—as possible sources of information about their interiors.

Magnetic materials in a quantum spin liquid phase are of great interest in the pursuit of exotic state of matter and quantum computation. But in the quantum realm, things are not always what they seem. A study, published in Science Advances and co-led by Rice University's Pengcheng Dai, found that the material cerium magnesium hexalluminate (CeMgAl11O19) was not actually in a quantum spin liquid phase despite evidence suggesting it was.

Matin Durranireports from the Careers in Quantum event at the University of Bristol, UK The post Pathways to a career in quantum: what skills do you need? appeared first on Physics World.

She laid much of the theoretical groundwork for the atomic bomb, although she did not participate directly in its production.

A new study published in Nature Astronomy indicates that the dense, star- and dark-matter–rich environments around supermassive black hole binaries pack on the order of a million solar masses into each cubic parsec. The team used gravitational-wave data from pulsar timing arrays to probe galactic centers that are otherwise impossible to observe directly.

Rydberg atoms are atoms with one or more outer electrons excited to very high energy levels, which interact very strongly with each other. These atoms are widely used to run quantum simulations and develop quantum technologies, as they can give rise to exotic and rare phases of matter.

Electrochemical approach counterintuitively relies on making water’s bonds stronger

Author(s): Charles DayA coordinate transformation devised for an expanding universe leads to new insights into how a collapsing protogalaxy acquires a large magnetic field. [Physics 19, s26] Published Thu Mar 05, 2026

Researchers at Cornell University have developed a powerful imaging technique that reveals atomic scale defects inside computer chips for the first time. Using an advanced electron microscopy method, the team mapped the exact positions of atoms inside tiny transistor structures and uncovered small imperfections nicknamed “mouse bites.” These defects form during the complex manufacturing process and can disrupt how electrons flow through a chip’s channels, which are only about 15 to 18 atoms wide.

Electrons in solar materials can be launched across molecules almost as fast as nature allows, thanks to tiny atomic vibrations acting like a “molecular catapult.” In experiments lasting just 18 femtoseconds, researchers at the University of Cambridge observed electrons blasting across a boundary in a single burst, far faster than long-standing theories predicted. Instead of slow, random movement, the electron rides the natural vibrations of the molecule itself, challenging decades of design rules for solar materials.

An international team of scientists from IBM, The University of Manchester, Oxford University, ETH Zurich, EPFL and the University of Regensburg have created and characterized a molecule unlike any previously known—one whose electrons travel through its structure in a corkscrew-like pattern that fundamentally alters its chemical behavior. The work appears in Science.

When most people hear "polymer," they think of plastics. In our group, polymerization is a way to line up identical molecules like beads on a string and let quantum mechanics take over. Put magnetic building blocks in a one-dimensional row and the chain can behave as a single quantum object. Even more intriguing, the chain can hide its most useful properties at its ends.

Estimating things that exist is generally easy, but when it comes to estimating things that do not exist, it's more difficult. This is something physicists from Poland and the UK are well aware of. To improve current simulations of high-energy particle collisions, they have developed a more accurate method for estimating the impact of calculations that are not performed.

A team at IBM Research has assembled a strange new ring-shaped molecule that bends around like a more complicated Möbius strip

A new catalog of gravitational waves more than doubles the known number of these spacetime ripples

The tiny bots follow patterns of light and "artificial space-time," navigating like craft following the curved space around a black hole.

When the densest objects in the universe collide and merge, the violence sets off ripples, in the form of gravitational waves, that reverberate across space and time, over hundreds of millions and even billions of years. By the time they pass through Earth, such cosmic ripples are barely discernible.

Quantum key distribution (QKD) allows encrypted information to be distributed without being intercepted. In free-space QKD, however, fluctuations in atmospheric conditions can cause distortions in the propagating spatial modes, reducing the fidelity of the transmission and impairing the retrieval of the encoded information at the receiver end. To alleviate the effects of atmospheric turbulence on spatial mode transmission, a team at the University of Ottawa developed an all-optical self-correction scheme for turbulence resilience using stimulated parametric down-conversion (StimPDC)-based optical phase conjugation. Instead of relying on complex, expensive digital adaptive optics, the researchers used a nonlinear optical process...

To operate fusion systems safely and reliably, scientists need to monitor plasma fuel conditions and measure properties like temperature and density that can affect fusion reactions. Making these measurements will require specialized diagnostic sensors. Against this backdrop, a report sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) recommends increased investment in America’s fusion diagnostic capabilities, a critical technology that will provide DOE and Congress with information to speed up the delivery of commercial fusion power plants. The report summarizes findings from 70 researchers who analyzed seven plasma physics topics funded by the DOE’s fusion energy sciences program. The researchers who contributed the...

An academic dives into the physics of multiple dimensions and whether it's possible to tie a knot in 4D.

Electrons can be "kicked across" solar materials at almost the fastest speed nature allows, scientists have discovered, challenging long-held theories about how solar energy systems work. The finding could help researchers design more efficient ways of harvesting sunlight and converting it into electricity. The research is published in Nature Communications.

Quantum computers work by applying quantum operations, such as quantum gates, to delicate quantum states. Ideally, quantum computers can solve complex equations at staggeringly fast speeds that vastly outpace regular computers. In real hardware, the operations of quantum computers often deviate from the ideal behavior because of device imperfections and unwanted noise from the environment. To build reliable quantum machines, researchers need a way to accurately determine what a quantum device is actually doing.

Researchers at the University of Innsbruck, together with partners from Sydney and Waterloo, have presented a new diagnostic method for quantum computers. It makes errors in individual quantum bits visible during logical calculation and evaluates them. The new method was demonstrated on an ion trap quantum processor in Innsbruck. It can be used to identify critical error sources—a key to developing more robust, fault-tolerant quantum processors.

The NA62 Collaboration has dramatically reduced the uncertainty in its measurement of an extremely rare particle decay, in results just presented at the 2026 La Thuile conference.

Every chemical reaction faces a barrier: For substances to react with one another, it is first necessary to supply energy. In many cases, this energy barrier is low—such as when striking a match. For many key reactions in industry, however, it is much larger—and increased energy requirements drive up production costs. To lower this barrier, chemists use "reaction helpers" known as catalysts. The best of these substances contain metals—including, in some cases, rare metals.

Chalmers-developed chemicals achieve higher resolution than 4-photon microscopy, even using 2-photon method.

Strategy wants 3800 PhDs and 2000 postdoctoral researchers trained to support economy

The James Webb Space Telescope captured a stunning spiral galaxy 65 million light-years away, revealing glowing dust clouds and stellar nurseries.

An international team of scientists, led by a Ph.D. researcher from Northumbria University, has made further discoveries about a spectacular feature of Jupiter's northern lights, revealing a never-before-seen temperature structure and dramatic density changes within the top of the giant planet's atmosphere.

Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a new way to determine atomic structures from nanocrystals previously considered unusable, a breakthrough that could transform how researchers study materials too small or imperfect for conventional crystallography.

Author(s): David EhrensteinA new layered material enabled researchers to document a dramatic change in metallic electron behavior as the material goes from 3D to 2D. [Physics 19, s31] Published Tue Mar 03, 2026

Single-photon interferometry achieved over 1.5 km The post Quantum memories could help make long-baseline optical astronomy a reality appeared first on Physics World.

Researchers show how sound waves can hold conserved spin angular momentum, resolving a long‑standing theoretical debate The post Resolving the spin of sound appeared first on Physics World.

New advances in entanglement witnesses allow researchers to verify genuine multipartite entanglement even in noisy, high‑dimensional and computationally relevant quantum states The post Making multipartite entanglement easier to detect appeared first on Physics World.

An international team combining two major neutrino experiments has uncovered stronger evidence that neutrinos and antimatter don’t behave as perfect mirror images. That subtle difference may hold the key to why the universe didn’t vanish in a flash of self-destruction after the Big Bang.

A method for making quantum computers less error-prone could let them run complex programs such as simulations of materials more efficiently, thus making them more useful

Ripples in the fabric of space-time called gravitational waves may be the key to solving the Hubble tension — one of the biggest nagging problems in physics.

A new computational method allows modern atomic models to learn from experimental thermodynamic data, according to a University of Michigan Engineering and Université Paris-Saclay study published in Nature Communications. Leveraging a machine learning technique called score matching, the method expresses the thermodynamic free energy of atomic systems as a function of the underlying atomic interaction model, unlike standard schemes where the interaction model is fixed.

One of the most striking features of quantum physics is that certain properties cannot be measured at the same time. Every measurement may inevitably affect the object's physical state being measured—and therefore also the outcome of any subsequent measurement. How fast something is moving, for example, can depend on whether its position was measured beforehand.

Elle Leontiev's image of Philip, a self-taught volcanologist who has lived on Mount Yasur his whole life, has won the Portraiture category of the Open competition of the Sony World Photography Awards 2026.

With reliable access to a smartphone, individuals can resolve foundational questions — such as where they are and what time it is — with ease and an unmatched level of precision and accuracy. This can largely be attributed to global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), which are typically referred to as GPS (global positioning system[s]). Many readers will be familiar with GPS and perhaps even GNSS. Although GPS is a U.S. system, it is analogous to other global satellite systems, including Russia’s GLONASS, China’s BeiDou, and Europe’s Galileo. GNSS has become ubiquitous and is essentially free to the user, enabled by specialized and low-cost microchips smaller than a fingernail. GNSS provides both...

Quantum networks, which will enable the future quantum internet, aim to interconnect quantum nodes, which serve as quantum processors, quantum memories, or quantum sensors, enabling capabilities beyond today’s classical internet. By distributing quantum states between remote nodes, quantum networks support functions such as provably secure communication, distributed quantum computing, and distributed quantum sensing. Facilitating these sophisticated functions builds on the concepts outlined in early vision papers, which describe the quantum internet as a new layer of global information infrastructure that complements, rather than replaces, the classical internet1. The effects of quantum networks extend beyond secure...

Physicists in China have unveiled new clues to the origins of high-temperature superconductivity in an iron-based material just a single unit-cell thick. Led by Qi-Kun Xue and Lili Wang at Tsinghua University, the team's experiments show that the effect emerges through a striking dichotomy between two atomic "sublattices" in the material—offering deeper insight into how superconductivity arises. Their results are published in Physical Review Letters.

Fusion energy may be one of the most promising clean power sources of the future—but only if scientists can precisely measure the extreme, fast-moving plasmas that make it possible. A new U.S. Department of Energy–sponsored report urges major investment in advanced diagnostic tools—the high-tech “sensors” that track plasma temperature, density, and behavior inside fusion systems. Bringing together 70 experts from universities, national labs, and private industry, the workshop identified seven priority areas ranging from burning plasma to full-scale pilot plants.

The strange case for prime numbers at the heart of physics

Intense radiation emitted by active supermassive black holes – thought to reside at the center of most, if

Plasma physicist Debbie Callahan, chief strategy officer at Focused Energy, talks to Hamish Johnston about her work in laser fusion research The post Focusing on fusion: Debbie Callahan talks commercial laser fusion appeared first on Physics World.

Yale junior Donglin Wu leads a new study showing that some of the biggest stars in the universe

To operate fusion systems safely and reliably, scientists need to monitor plasma fuel conditions and measure properties like temperature and density that can affect fusion reactions. Making these measurements requires specialized sensors known as diagnostics.

Strange things happen to materials when you peel them down, layer by layer, from thick chunks all the way to sheets just an atom thick. Reporting in the journal Nature Materials, a team led by physicists at The University of Texas at Austin has experimentally demonstrated a sequence of exotic magnetic phases in an ultrathin material that fully realizes, for the first time, a theoretical model of two-dimensional magnetism first proposed in the 1970s. The researchers say the advance might inspire new ultracompact technologies.

An international group of researchers have investigated the role of memory in quantum systems and dynamics. Their findings show that a quantum process can appear memoryless from one perspective while retaining memory from another. The discovery opens new research avenues into quantum systems and technologies.

Explore the love story of Harrison Ford and Calista Flockhart, from their first meeting to their shared passions and family life.

How do you keep a copper catalyst from losing its oomph? Just add a dusting of platinum, says a new study published in Nature Materials. A team of researchers, including scientists at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, investigated a class of metal nanoparticles used as catalysts in major industrial processes. They found that adding a trace amount of platinum to copper nanoparticles greatly reduced an effect known as "sintering," which causes these catalysts to degrade over time.

Jim Carrey's appearance at the César Awards ignited online speculation after drag artist Alexis Stone claimed she impersonated him, though no evidence confirms it. The frenzy highlights how quickly celebrity sightings can morph into conspiracy.

Air pollution causes millions of premature deaths worldwide each year, with fine particulate matter (PM2.5) identified as a major culprit. In response, countries from Ireland to China have promoted low-smoke or smokeless fuels as a clean alternative to traditional bituminous coal, peat, and wood. However, the health risks of ultrafine particles (UFPs, PM0.1,

Multiphoton microscopy is used in biomedical research to study cells and tissues. Today, so-called two-photon microscopy is used to study processes within cells, but the technique has limitations in terms of image resolution. Four-photon microscopy provides images with higher resolution. However, such instruments are very expensive and, when studying biological material, the powerful laser light required can damage samples.

Physicists are scrambling to understand why dark energy is weakening. In a surprising twist, we must now reconsider the possibility that our reality contains extra dimensions

Black holes that turn matter into energy could explain dark energy and answer two other cosmic questions. Now, the challenge is to find them

This is a New Scientist special package about shock results that have upended cosmology. What do they mean for our models of the universe, and what are the alternative explanations?

The Midnight Ballet by Will Budgett is a treat for the eyes The post Shadow sculptures evoke quantum physics appeared first on Physics World.

Atomic size measurements like van der Waals and covalent radii are central to chemistry, but are they grounded in reality?

Cables underneath New York City are teeming with entangled quantum particles of light thanks to Qunnect, a company that has spent a decade working on building an unhackable quantum internet

Quantum technology company Welinq is strengthening its partnership with Pasqal, a developer of neutral atom quantum computing, to accelerate the development of networked quantum computing based on interconnected neutral atom quantum processors. Building on an established collaboration and a shared neutral-atom technology stack, the two companies said they are now moving into a new phase of rapid implementation, tightly aligning quantum computing and quantum networking to deliver scalable, network-ready quantum architectures designed for deployment in data centers. This collaboration reaches a new milestone with InterQo, a €4 million ($4.7 million) project supported by the Île-de-France Region and BPI France through...

Twisting atomically thin magnetic layers does more than reshape their electronics—it can create giant, topological magnetic textures. In chromium triiodide, researchers observed skyrmion-like patterns stretching far beyond the expected moiré scale, reaching hundreds of nanometers. Even more surprising, their size doesn’t simply follow the twist pattern but peaks at a specific angle. This twist-controlled magnetism could pave the way for low-power spintronic devices built from geometry alone.

Aurélie Hourlier‑Fargette, winner of the 2025 JPhys Materials Early Career Award, discusses the inspirations behind her interdisciplinary work on bubble assemblies and foam-based materials The post Bubbles, foams and self-assembly: a conversation with Early Career Award winner Aurélie Hourlier-Fargette appeared first on Physics World.

Jim Carrey's recent appearance at the César Awards has sparked conspiracy theories, with fans questioning if he has been replaced by a body double.

The types of glass that we encounter in everyday life, such as window glass or smartphone screens, are disordered solids. This means that they consist of particles locked in place, like those in solids, but arranged randomly, similarly to how they would be in a liquid.

Scientists have pulled off a feat long considered out of reach: getting light to mimic the famous quantum Hall effect. In their experiment, photons drift sideways in perfectly defined, quantized steps—just like electrons do in powerful magnetic fields. Because these steps depend only on nature’s fundamental constants, they could become a new gold standard for ultra-precise measurements. The discovery also hints at tougher, more reliable quantum photonic technologies.

In 1974, physicist Stephen Hawking described the potential for tiny, primordial black holes that existed at the dawn of time to explode — and reshaped what we knew about these cosmic behemoths.

Quantum technologies, computers or other devices that operate leveraging quantum mechanical effects, rely on the precise control of light and matter. Over the past decades, quantum physicists and material scientists have been trying to identify systems that can reliably generate photons (i.e., light particles) and could thus be used to create quantum technologies.

Preserving quantum information is key to developing useful quantum computing systems. But interacting quantum systems are chaotic and follow laws of thermodynamics, eventually leading to information loss. Physicists have long known of a strange exception, called dynamical freezing, when quantum systems shaken at precisely tuned frequencies evade these laws. But how long can this phenomenon postpone thermodynamics?

Nebula PMR 1 looks uncannily similar to an electrified brain inside a semi-transparent skull

Uranus is a planet that seems to roll around on its side as it orbits the Sun. That's because it's tipped over, with an axial tilt of 97.8 degrees. That weird tilt gave the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) a chance to probe the ionosphere using the Near Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) instrument. An international team of astronomers used the data to map the vertical structure of that region and detect faint auroral displays.

Yale junior Donglin Wu leads a new study showing that some of the biggest stars in the universe shed some of the smallest dust particles. It's fitting that Wu's first major scientific journal article as lead author focuses on stardust—tiny solid grains that form from stellar winds, drift into interstellar space, and may eventually become parts of new planets.

Getting an up-close view of life at the cellular level can be as simple as placing onion skin under a microscope and adjusting the knobs. Peering deeper, into the heart of the atoms within, isn't as easy. It requires peeling through layers of particle accelerator data to shed light on protons, neutrons and the subatomic processes at play.

Researchers demonstrate that femtosecond laser-induced transient Pauli blocking can achieve ultrafast, broadband optical switching from visible to near-infrared.

Lockheed Martin and photonic quantum computing company Xanadu have established a research initiative to advance the foundational theory and emerging applications of Quantum Machine Learning (QML). The research will focus on generative models, machine learning techniques that learn from data to create new, realistic representations. Generative models underpin much of today's progress in AI, for example in large language models, but these are data-hungry energy-intensive techniques that struggle in applications where data is scarce. The newly launched collaboration will explore how quantum computers can exploit Fourier-based operations that are fundamentally inaccessible to classical machine learning methods, opening up new potential...

The books, TV, games and more that New Scientist staff have enjoyed this week

Researchers at the University of Arizona were awarded up to $1.8 million by the Advanced Research Projects Agency

Superconducting computing circuits were briefly heralded as the future of computing in the 1980s. Columnist Karmela Padavic-Callaghan visits a quantum chip foundry where one company is betting this technology’s second act will revolutionise quantum computers

Author(s): Sophia ChenA group of physicists are developing a quantum computer that’s entirely open source, from hardware to software [Physics 19, 24] Published Thu Feb 26, 2026

Leaders acknowledge White House role in controversial moves

Researchers have found a way to fabricate film-thin membranes imbued with super strength that could extend the durability of decarbonization technologies. Chemical engineers at The University of Queensland are harnessing an intricate building technique to produce the hyper-thin film membranes that boost the reliability, efficiency, and lifespan of key clean energy systems. The research is published in Nature Synthesis.

Tiny changes at the atomic scale can determine the future of clean energy. In a new study, Tohoku University researchers have revealed how the precise coordination environment surrounding a single cobalt atom dramatically influences its catalytic behavior in the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR)—a key process in fuel cells and sustainable hydrogen peroxide production.

We all know we live in three-dimensional space. But what does it mean when people talk about four dimensions? Is it just a bigger kind of space? Is it "space-time," the popular idea which emerged from Einstein's theory of relativity?

Researchers have discovered new ways to shape quantum light, creating high-dimensional states that can carry much more information per photon. Using advanced tools like on-chip photonics and ultrafast light structuring, they’re pushing quantum communication and imaging into exciting new territory. Although long-distance transmission remains tricky, innovative approaches—such as topological quantum states—could make these fragile signals far more resilient. The momentum suggests quantum optics is entering a bold new phase.

For the first time, a team of US researchers has used sensors containing highly excited Rydberg atoms to detect signals from an ordinary handheld radio. Through a careful approach to demodulating the incoming signals, Noah Schlossberger and colleagues at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) were able to recover audio encoded in multiple public radio channels, with promising implications for everyday uses in consumer electronics. The research has been published in Physical Review Applied.

A dying star has ejected its outer layer and illuminated it with its powerful radiation. The resulting nebula looks every bit like a transparent human skull. Astronomers are calling the unusual structure the Exposed Cranium Nebula.

In many quantum materials—materials with unusual electrical and magnetic properties driven by quantum mechanical effects—electrons can organize themselves into Landau levels. Landau levels are essentially quantized energy states that form when charged particles move in a magnetic field.

The nebula is possibly being produced by a type of unstable star called a Wolf–Rayet star.

Monarch Quantum, a quantum photonics company developing technologies for quantum computing, quantum sensing, and quantum communications, will deliver quantum light engines for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Quantum Gravity Gradiometer Pathfinder (QGGPf) mission. QGGPf is the first planned space deployment of a quantum gravity gradiometer. The planned neutral-atom quantum sensor is designed to measure minute variations in Earth's gravitational field from orbit. Space-based quantum gravity sensing enables ultra-precise Earth observation, subsurface mapping, climate monitoring, and next-generation inertial navigation systems that operate without GPS. Space-based quantum gravity gradiometers consist of multiple tightly...

Scientists at the University of Chicago have found an innovative way to create infrared light, which has long been a more difficult task compared to visible light, due to the different materials required. The method, which uses quantum dots, performs as well as or better than current infrared light sources while being much simpler to make. The researchers hope the breakthrough could lead to cheaper and more efficient infrared technology. “The configuration improves the power conversion efficiency by about 100-fold, leading to possibly the most efficient mid-infrared LEDs made so far with any materials,” said study co-author Philippe Guyot-Sionnest, professor of physics and chemistry at the University of Chicago and...

Mechanism could pave the way for more robust quantum computation, but questions remain over scalability The post Read-out of Majorana qubits reveals their hidden nature appeared first on Physics World.