The physics desk
Physics from the quantum to the cosmos: particle physics, quantum computing, astrophysics, cosmology and the discoveries that change what is possible.
A McGill University team coaxed electrons to sprint through a crystal just a few atoms thick, releasing tunable packets of quantum vibration that could power a new class of 'sound lasers.'
Watching a distant supernova flicker four times in a quickening rhythm, astronomers caught the moment an ultra-magnetic neutron star switched on — and saw Einstein's relativity at work in an exploding star.
A new 'optical centrifuge' built at the University of British Columbia can grab molecules floating in ultracold helium and set them twirling on command, opening a window into one of matter's strangest states.
Physicists say a collision between two objects lighter than the Sun, detected last November, could point to black holes born in the first instant after the Big Bang — and to the identity of dark matter.
A Vienna-led team kept the tiny magnetic waves alive for 18 microseconds, showing their fragility was never a law of nature — just a matter of material purity.
A proposed semiconductor detector would convert theoretical dark-matter particles into light and tune itself simply by changing a magnetic field, potentially opening mass ranges that have long eluded searches.
Rensselaer researchers coaxed light and a perovskite crystal into a bizarre quantum phase that is both a rigid crystal and a frictionless fluid — no cryogenics required.
A Los Alamos team designed control protocols that make quantum systems appear to run backward, reviving Maxwell’s demon in a modern quantum form.
A gravitational wave from an impossibly light object has scientists asking whether primordial black holes could explain dark matter.
Using ultracold cesium atoms in a quantum wire, an Innsbruck team realized a bizarre new phase of matter that breaks the textbook rule for how particles fill energy levels.
An Aalto University-led team used AI to sift a near-infinite space of material combinations and pinpoint the kagome-lattice compounds YRu3B2 and LuRu3B2, whose superconductivity springs from flat electronic bands.
Researchers led by the University of Vienna kept 'magnons' alive for 18 microseconds — long enough to carry quantum information — and found the only real limit is how pure the crystal is.
The new LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA release includes the clearest gravitational-wave signal ever recorded and fresh evidence that some black holes are built from the wreckage of earlier mergers.
Featured on the cover of Nature, the giant underground observatory measured key neutrino properties with record precision after just two months of data — and put itself on track to crack one of physics' biggest puzzles.
The new TES detector at Germany's BESSY II synchrotron, cooled to near absolute zero, can probe atom-thin materials and ultra-dilute samples that were previously impossible to study.
An extraordinarily bright X-ray flare could be the first direct evidence of a long-sought intermediate-mass black hole tearing apart and devouring a dead star.
An upgraded quantum facility aboard the International Space Station is chilling atoms to near absolute zero, exploiting weightlessness to build matter waves impossible to make on Earth.
Physicists propose using a flaw in diamond as an exquisitely sensitive quantum sensor to detect altermagnets, a newly discovered class of materials that could reshape electronics.
By mechanically rotating stacked sheets of hexagonal boron nitride, researchers tuned single-photon emitters across a record range — a step toward practical quantum computers and secure communications.
Using the XRISM X-ray observatory, astronomers tracked ferocious outflows from the supermassive black hole in NGC 4151 that can strip away the very gas needed to build new stars.
Spectra from a glowing red object called GLIMPSE-17775 reveal a supermassive black hole wrapped in a dense cocoon of gas just 1.8 billion years after the Big Bang.
Chalmers University researchers etched nanoscale ridges into a substrate to keep an ultrathin superconducting film stable at higher temperatures and under stronger magnetic fields.
A Leiden University team's 'Quantum Memory Matrix' theory suggests spacetime stores an imprint of every interaction, a single framework its authors say could also resolve the black-hole information paradox.
The Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory's first results, published in Nature, sharpen two key oscillation parameters by a factor of 1.6 — a major step toward solving the neutrino mass puzzle.
Carnegie Mellon, Stanford and Purdue researchers harnessed surface phonon polaritons to move up to four times more heat across tiny gaps — a possible breakthrough for cooling computer chips.
Oxford physicists demonstrate quantum superposition built from squeezed states rather than classical wave packets, opening possibilities for more resilient quantum computers.
Theoretical study suggests massive stellar collapse might trigger birth of tiny cosmos driven by dark energy, forming exotic objects called gravastars.
University of Tennessee physicists detected Earth's gravitational pull on particles of light in a benchtop interferometer, probing the elusive seam between general relativity and quantum mechanics.
A large survey of alien-world rotation rates shows mass alone does not set how fast a world spins, pointing to magnetic fields and formation as the deciding factors.
China's JUNO observatory achieves record precision in neutrino measurements, bringing scientists closer to solving the neutrino mass hierarchy puzzle.