Matter & Energy News

November 22, 2025

Top Headlines

Century-old Catalysis Puzzle Cracked by Measuring a Fraction of an Electron

Nov. 21, 2025 Scientists have directly measured the minuscule electron sharing that makes precious-metal catalysts so effective. Their new technique, IET, reveals how molecules bind and react on metal surfaces with unprecedented clarity. The insights promise ...

A Twist of Light Could Power the Next Generation of Memory Devices

Nov. 21, 2025 Researchers have discovered a way to store information using a rare class of materials called ferroaxials, which rely on swirling electric dipoles instead of magnetism or charge. These vortex-like states are naturally stable and resistant to outside ...

Light Has Been Hiding a Magnetic Secret for Nearly 200 Years

Nov. 20, 2025 New research shows that light’s magnetic field is far more influential than scientists once believed. The team found that this magnetic component significantly affects how light rotates as it passes through certain materials. Their work challenges ...

A Compact Fusion Machine Just Hit Gigapascal Pressures

Nov. 20, 2025 Operating a new device named the Fusion Z-pinch Experiment 3, or FuZE-3, Zap Energy has now achieved plasmas with electron pressures as high as 830 megapascals (MPa), or 1.6 gigapascals (GPa) total, comparable to the pressures found deep below ...

Nearly 47 Million Americans Live Near Hidden Fossil Fuel Sites

Nov. 20, 2025 A nationwide analysis has uncovered how sprawling fossil fuel infrastructure sits surprisingly close to millions of American homes. The research shows that 46.6 million people live within about a mile of wells, refineries, pipelines, storage sites, ...

MIT Ultrasonic Tech Pulls Drinking Water from Air in Minutes

Nov. 20, 2025 MIT engineers have created an ultrasonic device that rapidly frees water from materials designed to absorb moisture from the air. Instead of waiting hours for heat to evaporate the trapped water, the system uses high-frequency vibrations to release ...

Quantum Computers Just Simulated Physics Too Complex for Supercomputers

Nov. 19, 2025 Researchers created scalable quantum circuits capable of simulating fundamental nuclear physics on more than 100 qubits. These circuits efficiently prepare complex initial states that classical computers cannot handle. The achievement demonstrates a ...

Nanoscale Trick Makes “Dark Excitons” Glow 300,000 Times Stronger

Nov. 19, 2025 Researchers have found a way to make “dark excitons”—normally invisible quantum states of light—shine dramatically brighter by trapping them inside a tiny gold-nanotube optical cavity. This breakthrough boosts their emission 300,000-fold and ...

This Tiny Quantum Clock Packs a Billion-fold Energy Mystery

Nov. 17, 2025 Scientists built a tiny clock from single-electron jumps to probe the true energy cost of quantum timekeeping. They discovered that reading the clock’s output requires vastly more energy than the clock uses to function. This measurement process ...

“Great Unified Microscope” Reveals Micro and Nano Worlds in a Single View

Nov. 17, 2025 A new dual-light microscope lets researchers observe micro- and nanoscale activity inside living cells without using dyes. The system captures both detailed structures and tiny moving particles at ...

Dark Matter Acts Surprisingly Normal in a New Cosmic Test

Nov. 16, 2025 Dark matter may be invisible, but scientists are getting closer to understanding whether it follows the same rules as everything we can see. By comparing how galaxies move through cosmic gravity wells to the depth of those wells, researchers found ...

Floating Device Turns Raindrops Into Electricity

Nov. 15, 2025 A new floating droplet electricity generator is redefining how rain can be harvested as a clean power source by using water itself as both structural support and an electrode. This nature-integrated design dramatically reduces weight and cost ...

Latest Headlines

updated 6:21am EST

Physicists Reveal a New Quantum State Where Electrons Run Wild

Nov. 17, 2025 Electrons can freeze into strange geometric crystals and then melt back into liquid-like motion under the right quantum conditions. Researchers identified how to tune these transitions and even ...

Extreme-Pressure Experiment Reveals a Strange New Ice Phase

Nov. 16, 2025 Researchers at KRISS observed water’s rapid freeze–melt cycles under ultrahigh pressure and discovered Ice XXI, the first new ice phase found in decades. Using advanced high-pressure tech and ...

Hypersonic Breakthrough Could Enable Planes That Fly 10 Times the Speed of Sound

Nov. 14, 2025 Hypersonic flight could one day make long-haul travel as quick as a short movie. Researchers are testing how turbulence behaves at extreme speeds, a ...

Breakthrough Shows Light Can Move Atoms in 2D Semiconductors

Nov. 14, 2025 Laser light can physically distort Janus TMD materials, revealing how their asymmetrical structure amplifies light-driven forces. These effects could power breakthroughs in photonic chips, sensors, ...

Scientists Uncover Hidden Atomic Process That Supercharges Propylene Production

Nov. 14, 2025 Scientists have decoded the atomic-level secrets behind catalysts that turn propane into propylene. Their algorithms reveal unexpected oxide behavior ...

Wild New “gyromorph” Materials Could Make Computers Insanely Fast

Nov. 13, 2025 Researchers engineered “gyromorphs,” a new type of metamaterial that combines liquid-like randomness with large-scale structural patterns to block light from every direction. This innovation ...

A Radical Upgrade Pushes Quantum Links 200x Farther

Nov. 13, 2025 Scientists have developed a new way to build rare-earth crystals that boosts quantum coherence to tens of milliseconds. This leap could extend quantum communication distances from city blocks to ...

Scientists Just Found a Material That Beats Diamond at Its Own Game

Nov. 12, 2025 Boron arsenide has dethroned diamond as the best heat conductor, thanks to refined crystal purity and improved synthesis methods. This discovery could transform next-generation electronics by ...

NASA's Webb Finds Life’s Building Blocks Frozen in a Galaxy Next Door

Nov. 12, 2025 Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have uncovered a trove of complex organic molecules frozen in ice around a young star in a neighboring galaxy — including the first-ever detection ...

Entangled Spins Give Diamonds a Quantum Advantage

Nov. 11, 2025 UC Santa Barbara physicists have engineered entangled spin systems in diamond that surpass classical sensing limits through quantum squeezing. Their breakthrough enables next-generation quantum ...

Tiny Laser Could Transform Medicine and Quantum Science

Nov. 9, 2025 A team at the University of Stuttgart has engineered a compact short-pulse laser that achieves up to 80% efficiency—far surpassing current models. Their new multipass design reuses light within a ...

MIT Quantum Breakthrough Edges Toward Room-Temp Superconductors

Nov. 8, 2025 MIT scientists uncovered direct evidence of unconventional superconductivity in magic-angle graphene by observing a distinctive V-shaped energy gap. The discovery hints that electron pairing in this ...

Einstein Might Have Been Wrong About Black Holes

Nov. 8, 2025 Researchers are using black hole shadows to challenge Einstein’s theory of relativity. With new simulations and future ultra-sharp telescope images, they may uncover signs that his famous equations ...

Turning CO2 Into Clean Fuel Faster and Cheaper

Nov. 5, 2025 A new copper-magnesium-iron catalyst transforms CO2 into CO at low temperatures with record-breaking efficiency and stability. The discovery paves the way for affordable, scalable production of ...

CERN Creates Cosmic “fireballs” That Could Reveal the Universe’s Hidden Magnetism

Nov. 7, 2025 Using CERN’s Super Proton Synchrotron, researchers generated plasma fireballs to simulate blazar jets. The beams stayed stable, suggesting plasma instabilities aren’t responsible for missing ...

Breakthrough Links Magnetism and Electricity for Faster Tech

Nov. 5, 2025 Engineers at the University of Delaware have uncovered a way to bridge magnetism and electricity through magnons—tiny waves that carry information without electrical current. These magnetic waves ...

Physicists Prove the Universe Isn’t a Simulation After All

Nov. 10, 2025 New research from UBC Okanagan mathematically demonstrates that the universe cannot be simulated. Using Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, scientists found that reality requires “non-algorithmic ...

“Really Bizarre” Quantum Discovery Defies the Rules of Physics

Nov. 9, 2025 Researchers have discovered quantum oscillations inside an insulating material, overturning long-held assumptions. Their work at the National Magnetic Field Laboratory suggests that the effect ...

Scientists Turn Common Semiconductor Into a Superconductor

Oct. 30, 2025 Researchers have made germanium superconducting for the first time, a feat that could transform computing and quantum technologies. Using molecular beam epitaxy to embed gallium atoms precisely, the ...

Hidden Clues in Ghostly Particles Could Explain Why We Exist

Oct. 30, 2025 In a rare global collaboration, scientists from Japan and the United States joined forces to explore one of the universe’s deepest mysteries — why anything exists at all. By combining years of ...

Twin Black Hole Collisions Put Einstein’s General Relativity to Its Most Extreme Test

Oct. 30, 2025 Two recently observed black hole mergers, occurring just weeks apart in late 2024, have opened an extraordinary new window into the universe’s most extreme events. These collisions not only ...

It Sounds Creepy, but These Scientific Breakthroughs Could Save Lives

Oct. 30, 2025 From mini-brains to spider-inspired gloves and wolf apple coatings, scientists are turning eerie-sounding experiments into real innovations that could revolutionize health and sustainability. ...

Stanford Discovers an Extraordinary Crystal That Could Transform Quantum Tech

Nov. 9, 2025 Stanford scientists found that strontium titanate improves its performance when frozen to near absolute zero, showing extraordinary optical and mechanical behavior. Its nonlinear and piezoelectric ...

MIT Physicists Just Found a Way to See Inside Atoms

Oct. 26, 2025 MIT researchers have devised a new molecular technique that lets electrons probe inside atomic nuclei, replacing massive particle accelerators with a tabletop setup. By studying radium monofluoride, ...

Gold Flakes Expose the Secret Forces Binding Our World Together

Oct. 23, 2025 Chalmers researchers have developed a simple, light-based platform to study the mysterious “invisible glue” that binds materials at the nanoscale. Gold flakes floating in salt water reveal how ...

Astronomers Just Captured the Sharpest View of a Distant Star Ever Seen

Oct. 25, 2025 A UCLA-led team has achieved the sharpest-ever view of a distant star’s disk using a groundbreaking photonic lantern device on a single telescope—no multi-telescope array required. This ...

How Algae Learned to Harness the Sun Without Getting Burned

Oct. 22, 2025 Under the sea, green algae have evolved a clever way to handle too much sunlight. Scientists found that a special pigment called siphonein acts like a natural sun shield, protecting the algae’s ...

Physicists Discover Strange Spinning Crystals That Behave Like Living Matter

Oct. 21, 2025 Physicists have uncovered the fascinating world of “rotating crystals” — solids made of spinning particles that behave in strange, almost living ways. These odd materials can twist instead of ...

Dark Matter May Be Lighting Up the Heart of the Milky Way

Nov. 5, 2025 Researchers using new simulations suggest that the Milky Way’s past collisions may have reshaped its dark matter core. This distorted structure could naturally explain the puzzling gamma-ray glow ...

Physicists Uncover Hidden “doorways” That Let Electrons Escape

Nov. 4, 2025 Scientists at TU Wien found that electrons need specific “doorway states” to escape solids, not just energy. The insight explains long-standing anomalies in experiments and unlocks new ways to ...