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40 stories from Planck Standard. Latest: November 10, 2026.
Instead of rigid molecular links, the Nature Materials study uses bendy ones that rearrange as particles meet, limiting how many neighbors each particle can grab.
MIT and UC Santa Barbara theorists find that kicks in a fast quark's momentum are lopsided, hinting that quark-gluon plasma behaves more like a liquid than a gas.
A new calculation predicts how heavy quarks are jostled inside quark-gluon plasma, the fluid that filled the universe moments after the Big Bang.
The system ZTF J0440+2325, reported in Nature Astronomy, is the first caught with one low-mass object steadily feeding on another, and it could last for billions of years.
The 'arm qubit' design uses a quarton coupler to keep storage and communication apart. In simulation it holds state as long as the best existing designs while operating faster.
Wolfgang Ketterle's group worked through a 2025 proposal to build a coherent neutrino beam from a Bose-Einstein condensate. The recoil alone ends it, and then there is the problem of neutrinos being fermions.
Two laser pulses — one to scramble the electrons, one to read them out — settled a long-running argument about how a second charge pattern forms in erbium tritelluride.
Existing methods can only read the top layer. Real devices have five or more. The new technique heats a sample with laser pulses and reads the buried layers with ultrafast X-rays.
Niobium diselenide is a promising two-dimensional superconductor that starts corroding the instant it meets oxygen. Researchers solved it by growing the crystal inside a gap less than a nanometer wide — under the protective layer instead of beneath it.
When levels of a gene-regulating factor called GATA6 fall, colorectal cancer cells revert to a primitive, fetal-like state that can invade the bloodstream and seed tumors in the liver, a Weill Cornell and MIT study finds.
A single Air Force-developed propellant ran both a chemical engine and electric electrospray thrusters in the lab — a dual-mode design that could send briefcase-sized CubeSats to Mars.
Revolutionary propulsion system combines chemical and electric thrusters using a single green fuel, potentially enabling CubeSats to explore deep space.
New dual-mode system uses single fuel for both rapid maneuvers and efficient long-distance travel, potentially transforming small satellite capabilities.
Breakthrough technology uses single fuel to power both rapid maneuvers and efficient long-distance travel, potentially transforming small satellite missions.
The breakthrough technology could give small satellites unprecedented flexibility in space missions, combining rapid acceleration with highly efficient long-range travel.
Revolutionary propulsion system combines chemical and electric thrusters using single fuel, potentially transforming small satellite capabilities with NASA-supported mission testing technology in orbit.
Cysteine found in meat, dairy, and beans activates immune cells to release healing signals, helping stem cells rebuild damaged intestinal tissue.
MIT physicists develop new method to detect dark matter interactions hidden within cosmic collisions, with one LIGO signal showing potential evidence.
Researchers found that cysteine-rich diets activate immune cells that release healing signals, potentially offering new treatment for cancer patients with gut damage.
MIT physicists have developed a new method to search for dark matter signatures in ripples from merging black holes, with one LIGO signal showing promising results.
MIT physicists detect potential dark matter signature in LIGO data, offering new way to study the universe's most mysterious substance.
Multi-slice electron ptychography reveals the polar-domain structure inside lead magnesium niobate, the workhorse of medical ultrasound and sonar.
Three-dimensional atomic mapping reveals unexpected charge patterns in relaxor ferroelectrics used in ultrasound and sonar systems for decades.
Relaxor ferroelectrics power ultrasounds and sonar for decades, but their atomic structure remained unknown until breakthrough 3D mapping.
Breakthrough imaging reveals three-dimensional structure of relaxor ferroelectrics, materials that power ultrasound machines and sonar systems worldwide.
Breakthrough mapping of relaxor ferroelectrics challenges decades of assumptions and opens path to better-designed devices.
Research reveals that ozone-depleting chemicals still permitted for industrial use are escaping into the atmosphere at much higher rates than previously thought.
Industrial chemical leaks are occurring at much higher rates than expected, potentially delaying ozone healing until 2047.
A new class of bulk crystal synthesized at MIT creates conditions in which electrons behave as if propagating through 4D space — a result with sweeping implications for superconductivity and commercial quantum materials.
MIT physicists have directly imaged, for the first time, the collective oscillations of superconducting electrons using a terahertz-light microscope — an observation that could unlock the physics behind high-temperature superconductivity.
The GWTC-4 catalog, led by MIT, adds 128 new events from LIGO's fourth observing run — including a 260-solar-mass merger, the fastest-spinning binary on record, and a new measurement of the universe's expansion rate.
A DOE-funded collaboration successfully integrated cryogenic control electronics directly into an ion-trap quantum system, offering the first viable path to building quantum computers with tens of thousands of qubits.
A new technique using grazing-angle particle interactions allows physicists to directly measure how gluons behave under extreme nuclear density — the particles that literally hold the universe together.
By squeezing terahertz light smaller than its own wavelength, MIT physicists captured the synchronized quantum oscillations of Cooper pairs in BSCCO — a step toward understanding room-temperature superconductivity.
Physicists at MIT have directly observed the quantum oscillations of electrons inside a superconductor for the first time in history, publishing results in Nature that could accelerate the search for room-temperature superconductors and next-generation wireless technology.
Intelectin-2, a lectin found throughout the gastrointestinal tract, was shown in Nature Communications to bind to bacteria's sugar coat and also crosslink mucin proteins to reinforce the mucus barrier, acting as a dual-purpose defender that could inspire new treatments for inflammatory bowel disease.
Using spintronic terahertz emitters to circumvent the diffraction limit, physicists led by Alexander von Hoegen observed for the first time the collective oscillation of Cooper pairs inside a superconducting copper-oxide material — a breakthrough that could accelerate the development of room-temperature superconductors.
Professor Nuh Gedik's team used their new spintronic terahertz emitter and Bragg-mirror system to directly image the Higgs amplitude mode of a superconductor for the first time — a collective electron oscillation predicted for decades but never seen — with major implications for room-temperature superconductors and 6G wireless.
By operating control electronics at near-absolute-zero temperatures alongside the trapped ions themselves, researchers from Fermilab and MIT Lincoln Laboratory have demonstrated a path to millions of qubits that bypasses the wiring bottleneck that has stalled quantum computing scale-up.
A revolutionary terahertz microscope has captured quantum oscillations inside superconducting electrons for the first time, opening a new window on one of physics' greatest puzzles.