Physics News

September 17, 2025

Top Headlines

Tiny Magnetic Spirals Unlock the Future of Spintronics

Sep. 14, 2025 — Scientists in Korea have engineered magnetic nanohelices that can control electron spin with extraordinary precision at room temperature. By combining structural chirality and magnetism, these nanoscale helices can filter spins without complex ...

Graphene Just Broke a Fundamental Law of Physics

Sep. 12, 2025 — For the first time, scientists have observed electrons in graphene behaving like a nearly perfect quantum fluid, challenging a long-standing puzzle in physics. By creating ultra-clean samples, the team at IISc uncovered a surprising decoupling of ...

Scientists Just Built a Detector That Could Finally Catch Dark Matter

Sep. 10, 2025 — Physicists have unveiled a new superconducting detector sensitive enough to hunt dark matter particles smaller than electrons. By capturing faint photon signals, the device pushes the search into uncharted ...

The Invisible Plastic Threat You Can Finally See

Sep. 10, 2025 — Researchers in Germany and Australia have created a simple but powerful tool to detect nanoplastics—tiny, invisible particles that can slip through skin and even the blood-brain barrier. Using an "optical sieve" test strip viewed under a regular ...

Light-powered Chip Makes AI 100 Times More Efficient

Sep. 9, 2025 — Artificial intelligence is consuming enormous amounts of energy, but researchers at the University of Florida have built a chip that could change everything by using light instead of electricity for a core AI function. By etching microscopic lenses ...

Tiny Gold Quantum Needles with Astonishing Powers Discovered

Sep. 5, 2025 — Scientists at the University of Tokyo have unveiled “gold quantum needles,” a newly discovered nanocluster structure formed under unusual synthesis conditions. Unlike typical spherical clusters, these elongated, pencil-shaped formations display ...

Scientists Just Found a Hidden Quantum Geometry That Warps Electrons

Sep. 5, 2025 — A hidden quantum geometry that distorts electron paths has finally been observed in real materials. This “quantum metric,” once thought purely theoretical, may revolutionize electronics, superconductivity, and ultrafast ...

A Simple Metal Could Solve the World’s Plastic Recycling Problem

Sep. 3, 2025 — Scientists at Northwestern University have developed a groundbreaking nickel-based catalyst that could transform the way the world recycles plastic. Instead of requiring tedious sorting, the catalyst selectively breaks down stubborn polyolefin ...

Scientists Create Scalable Quantum Node Linking Light and Matter

Aug. 29, 2025 — Quantum scientists in Innsbruck have taken a major leap toward building the internet of the future. Using a string of calcium ions and finely tuned lasers, they created quantum nodes capable of generating streams of entangled photons with 92% ...

A Strange Quantum Effect Could Power Future Electronics

Aug. 29, 2025 — Rice University physicists confirmed that flat electronic bands in kagome superconductors aren’t just theoretical, they actively shape superconductivity and magnetism. This breakthrough could guide the design of next-generation quantum materials ...

Scientists Finally Solve a Century-old Quantum Mystery

Aug. 29, 2025 — A Vermont research team has cracked a 90-year-old puzzle, creating a quantum version of the damped harmonic oscillator. By reformulating Lamb’s classical model, they showed how atomic vibrations can be fully described while preserving quantum ...

A Tiny Chip May Have Solved One of Clean Energy’s Biggest Problems

Aug. 28, 2025 — In just one afternoon, scientists used a nanoparticle “megalibrary” to find a catalyst that matches or exceeds iridium’s performance in hydrogen fuel production, at a fraction of the ...

Latest Headlines

updated 9:38am EDT

Rare Einstein Cross With Extra Image Reveals Hidden Dark Matter

Sep. 17, 2025 — A strange “Einstein Cross” with an extra, impossible fifth image has revealed the hidden presence of a massive dark matter halo. An international team of astronomers, including Rutgers ...

Strange Signals at Absolute Zero Hint at Dark Matter’s Secrets

Sep. 16, 2025 — QROCODILE has set record-breaking sensitivity in the search for dark matter, detecting signals at energy levels once thought impossible. These results may be just the first step toward finally ...

Physicists Just Found a Way to Make “something from Nothing”

Sep. 14, 2025 — Researchers at UBC have found a way to mimic the elusive Schwinger effect using superfluid helium, where vortex pairs appear out of thin films instead of electron-positron pairs in a vacuum. Their ...

NASA's Webb Space Telescope Just Found Strange Red Dots That Shouldn’t Exist

Sep. 14, 2025 — Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope have uncovered mysterious “little red dots” that may not be galaxies at all, but a whole new ...

Scientists Capture Elusive Liquid Carbon — a Diamond in Disguise

Sep. 12, 2025 — Scientists have, for the first time, successfully studied liquid carbon in the lab by combining a powerful high-performance laser with the European XFEL x-ray laser. The experiment captured fleeting ...

Black Holes Just Proved Stephen Hawking Right With the Clearest Signal Yet

Sep. 12, 2025 — Gravitational-wave astronomy has exploded since 2015, capturing hundreds of black hole and neutron star collisions. With ever-clearer signals, researchers are testing Einstein’s relativity and ...

Black Hole Explosion Could Change Everything We Know About the Universe

Sep. 11, 2025 — Physicists may soon witness a cosmic fireworks show: the explosive death of a primordial black hole. Once thought to be unimaginably rare, new research suggests there’s up to a 90% chance of ...

Scientists Just Made the First Time Crystal You Can See

Sep. 7, 2025 — Physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have created the first time crystal that humans can actually see, using liquid crystals that swirl into never-ending patterns when illuminated by ...

Scientists Watch an Atomic Nucleus Flip in Real Time

Sep. 4, 2025 — Scientists at Delft University of Technology have managed to watch a single atomic nucleus flip its magnetic state in real time. Using a scanning tunneling microscope, they indirectly read the ...

NASA’s Webb Telescope Just Found 300 Galaxies That Defy Explanation

Aug. 31, 2025 — Astronomers at the University of Missouri, using the James Webb Space Telescope, have uncovered 300 unusually bright cosmic objects that may be some of the earliest galaxies ever formed. By applying ...

This Tiny Iron Catalyst Could Transform the Future of Clean Energy

Aug. 27, 2025 — Hydrogen fuel cells could power cars, devices, and homes with nothing but water as a byproduct—but platinum’s cost holds them back. Chinese researchers have now unveiled a breakthrough iron-based ...

Scientists Switch on the World’s Largest Neutrino Detector Deep Underground

Aug. 26, 2025 — Deep beneath southern China, JUNO has launched one of the most ambitious neutrino experiments in history. With its massive 20,000-ton liquid scintillator detector now operational, it’s poised to ...

Scientists Turn Spin Loss Into Energy, Unlocking Ultra-Low-Power AI Chips

Aug. 25, 2025 — Scientists have discovered that electron spin loss, long considered waste, can instead drive magnetization switching in spintronic devices, boosting efficiency by up to three times. The scalable, ...

Scientists Unlock Nature’s Secret to Superfast Mini Robots

Aug. 24, 2025 — Ripple bugs’ fan-like legs inspired engineers to build the Rhagobot, a tiny robot with self-morphing fans. By mimicking these insects’ passive, ultra-fast movements, the robot gains speed, ...

Tiny Quantum Dots Unlock the Future of Unbreakable Encryption

Aug. 23, 2025 — By using quantum dots and smart encryption protocols, researchers overcame a 40-year barrier in quantum communication, showing that secure networks don’t need perfect hardware to outperform ...

The Higgs Boson Just Revealed a New Secret at the Large Hadron Collider

Aug. 25, 2025 — Scientists at CERN’s ATLAS experiment have uncovered compelling evidence of Higgs bosons decaying into muons, an incredibly rare event that could deepen our understanding of how particles acquire ...

Tiny Reactor Boosts Fusion With a Sponge-Like Trick

Aug. 23, 2025 — Researchers at the University of British Columbia have shown that a small bench-top reactor can enhance nuclear fusion rates by electrochemically loading a metal with deuterium fuel. Unlike massive ...

What Came Before the Big Bang? Supercomputers May Hold the Answer

Aug. 22, 2025 — Scientists are rethinking the universe’s deepest mysteries using numerical relativity, complex computer simulations of Einstein’s equations in extreme conditions. This method could help explore ...

Strange New Shapes May Rewrite the Laws of Physics

Aug. 18, 2025 — By exploring positive geometry, mathematicians are revealing hidden shapes that may unify particle physics and cosmology, offering new ways to understand both collisions in accelerators and the ...

Caltech Breakthrough Makes Quantum Memory Last 30 Times Longer

Aug. 27, 2025 — While superconducting qubits are great at fast calculations, they struggle to store information for long periods. A team at Caltech has now developed a clever solution: converting quantum information ...

AI Finds Hidden Safe Zones Inside a Fusion Reactor

Aug. 13, 2025 — Scientists have developed a lightning-fast AI tool called HEAT-ML that can spot hidden “safe zones” inside a fusion reactor where parts are protected from blistering plasma heat. Finding these ...

Scientists Supercharge Solar Power 15x With Black Metal Tech

Aug. 24, 2025 — A Rochester team engineered a new type of solar thermoelectric generator that produces 15 times more power than earlier versions. By enhancing heat absorption and dissipation rather than tweaking ...

Scientists Just Made Vibrations So Precise They Can Spot a Single Molecule

Aug. 16, 2025 — Rice University scientists have discovered a way to make tiny vibrations, called phonons, interfere with each other more strongly than ever before. Using a special sandwich of silver, graphene, and ...

How Scientists Made Quantum Dots Smarter and Cheaper

Aug. 15, 2025 — Researchers have found a clever way to make quantum dots, tiny light-emitting crystals, produce streams of perfectly controlled photons without relying on expensive, complex electronics. By using a ...

Scientists Capture the Secret Quantum Dance of Atoms for the First Time

Aug. 11, 2025 — Using the world’s most powerful X-ray laser, researchers have captured the hidden, never-ending vibrations of atoms inside molecules. This first-ever direct view of zero-point motion reveals that ...

Scientists Freeze Quantum Motion Without Cooling

Aug. 11, 2025 — ETH Zurich researchers levitated a nano glass sphere cluster with record-setting quantum purity at room temperature, avoiding costly cooling. Using optical tweezers, they isolated quantum zero-point ...

Room-Temperature Quantum Breakthrough Freezes Motion Without Cooling

Aug. 18, 2025 — ETH Zurich scientists have levitated a tower of three nano glass spheres using optical tweezers, suppressing almost all classical motion to observe quantum zero-point fluctuations with unprecedented ...

Scientists Discover Forgotten Particle That Could Unlock Quantum Computers

Aug. 23, 2025 — Scientists may have uncovered the missing piece of quantum computing by reviving a particle once dismissed as useless. This particle, called the neglecton, could give fragile quantum systems the full ...

Rutgers Physicists Just Discovered a Strange New State of Matter

Aug. 1, 2025 — At the edge of two exotic materials, scientists have discovered a new state of matter called a "quantum liquid crystal" that behaves unlike anything we've seen before. When a ...

From Lead to Gold in a Flash at the Large Hadron Collider

Aug. 11, 2025 — At the Large Hadron Collider, scientists from the University of Kansas achieved a fleeting form of modern-day alchemy — turning lead into gold for just a fraction of a second. Using ...