Physics World

These exotic states could be useful for simulating exotic many-body physics and potentially even in fields like catalysis 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/KAUa5101nOh

Having recently given a keynote talk to high-flying executives and tech leaders entitled “How to tame the AI wild west”, Honor Powrie decided to look for concrete examples of how AI is not just bad or ugly but actually good. Find out what she discovered. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/genai-can-...

Electrical charge built up through repeated collisions between two levitated particles follows a clear, predictable pattern 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/qn995100ZMK

Researchers have engineered a hybrid perovskite that’s an extreme thermal insulator and is also exceptionally stiff. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/rigid-hybr...

A nanoparticle in an optical trap detects collisions with individual atoms and molecules 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/nlRf5100oYA

Theorists use a cloud-based BEC to study tunnelling. 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/Emrx5100aOZ

The human genome doesn’t seem to mind being in zero-gravity environments, and in some cases, the mitochondria that produce energy for cells actually benefit from spending time outside the Earth’s magnetic field. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/earths-gra...

A new hybrid optical-neural system can detect deepfake videos with up to 97.8% accuracy. The technique can simultaneously process 15 or more independent video streams and is less energy-hungry than existing methods with similar levels of performance. 🧪⚛️💡 physicsworld.com/a/to-detect-...

Detailed simulations of conditions in the early universe suggest that the mysterious “little red dots” recently observed by the JWST could be young, fast-growing black holes. 🧪⚛️🔭 physicsworld.com/a/astronomer...

Real-world active matter systems can be hard to model mathematically. Physicists sometimes study simpler “toy” systems instead, but in this case they went a step further, building an active matter system from literal toys called Hexbug nanos or "bristlebots" physicsworld.com/a/chiral-bri... 🧪⚛️

For the first time, physicists have trapped a single positron such that its lowest-energy quantum states can be fully resolved 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/Xmvq50ZZgot

A newly-synthesized allotrope of carbon forms covalent bonds in 3D, just like diamond does. Unlike diamond, however, carbon atoms in this new "diamondiyne" material form these bonds at relatively low pressure, producing a more porous crystal. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/new-3d-for...

A new phase of solid superionic ice has been created for the first time in the laboratory. The demonstration could help us better understand the structure of ice giant planets like Uranus & Neptune, which may harbour this form of ice deep within their interiors. physicsworld.com/a/new-type-o... 🧪⚛️🔭

UK medical technology start-up Siloton is awarded an £8.4 million contract to accelerate the development of its portable eye imaging system. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/siloton-se...

Ignacio Cirac, quantum pioneer and winner of the IOP's Isaac Newton Medal, is our podcast guest 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/3j8150ZY0N6

How fast can a refrigerator cool down a bottle of beer? The answer depends on various details of the system, but the minimum wait time does not. Instead, it’s #quantum mechanics that imposes a limit on how fast something can thermalize to a particular temperature. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/your-beer-...

Low-level sea clouds can make offshore wind farms more efficient. The improvement is due to atmospheric mixing effects that reduce the wake of slower air that forms behind nearby turbines. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/low-level-...

In the 1980s, scientists measured quantized jumps in the energy of ions. In the 2000s, it was photons’ turn. Now researchers @stanford.edu report that phonons – mechanical vibrations such as those that carry sound – also display this quantum behaviour. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/sound-wave...

The particle-physics process of string breaking has been modelled on a trapped ion quantum computer 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/g6vU50ZX5gf

In our latest podcast we explore why neutrinos are the subject of so many physics Nobel prizes 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/v13350ZVW8x

In a clinical trial first, an international research team has demonstrated that optogenetic therapy is safe to use and shows potential for restoring visual function in patients with blindness due to the disorder retinitis pigmentosa. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/optogeneti...

A new study showing how tumour cells behave when surrounded by a disordered microenvironment could help cancer researchers by providing a biophysics model describing how cancers spread within the human body. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/disordered...

Astronomers have discovered the fastest-known star in the Milky Way zooming around Sagittarius A* in an extremely close orbit. Observations of this star, known as S301, could shed new light on the spin of the supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/fastest-st...

We've reported a lot on nuclear clocks over the years. Now, two independent groups in China and Europe have finally gone and built them. This is the culmination of >20 years of research and could herald unprecedented precision in tests of fundamental physics. physicsworld.com/a/nuclear-cl... ⚛️🧪

Researchers in the Netherlands have shown that they can turn off the dipole moment of molecules that are normally polar, drastically altering the molecules’ behaviour in low-energy collisions. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/collisions...

By combining architected metals with a lightweight polymer foam, researchers in Australia & France created lightweight, strong, open-cell titanium structures that can float in water. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/titanium-p...

there are observable oscillation in nobel prize-yness of neutrinos, empirical period is roughly 10 years. This suggests that neutrino research is not a nobel eigenstate

A rare solo #NobelPrize in physics goes to neutrino scientist Francis Halzen “for decisive contributions to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory and the discovery of high-energy neutrinos of astrophysical origin”. Full coverage here: physicsworld.com/a/francis-ha... 🧪⚛️

Our feature on 50 years of Hofstadter's butterfly would be extra timely if Douglas Hofstadter himself were to win the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics (as his dad once did). You never know... 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/hofstadter...

Karl Deisseroth, Peter Hegemann and Georg Nagel win Nobel Prize for "discoveries concerning light-gated ion channels and optogenetics" - a breakthrough that enables mapping of the brain in a way that we could once only dream of. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/inventors-...

As we gear up for the announcement of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics on 6 October, find out why Pakistan's one and only science Nobel laureate has never been fully celebrated in his home country.🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/abdus-sala...

How confident, or perhaps delusional, do you have to be to travel to Stockholm because you’re so certain you’ll be awarded a Nobel prize? One person who did just that was the Indian physicist C V Raman in 1930. Preetish Kakoty recounts how he did end up winning. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/c-v-raman-...

Picture a room where every photon bouncing off a doorbell camera, every acoustic reflection captured by a passing delivery drone, and every drop of ambient thermal noise is fed into a Bayesian inference engine. This is the courtroom in the new movie Mercy.🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/demon-in-t...

Next time you brush your teeth, comb your hair, switch on a light or ride on a bus, spare a thought for tribologists and their dedication to making the world run smoothly. Honor Powrie thinks it’s hard to think of anything that doesn’t involve tribology at all. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/the-secret...

We make some predictions for next week's Nobel Prize in Physics and chat about some of the rich history of Nobel laureates 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/wg8X50ZTwSu

Check out our latest infographics that charts national firsts for the Nobel Prize in Physics 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/hctN50ZTvmP

Physicists have experimentally reconstructed the quantum probability distribution of an exciton for the first time using super-fast time-resolved photoemission orbital tomography. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/exciton-wa...

Physics World has had some luck with predicting who is going to win a Nobel Prize in Physics. Will we get it right in 2026? 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/S63G50ZTaTk

At this week’s ASTRO 2026 meeting in Boston, MA, researchers presented new evidence that could help inform how we deliver care to patients with brain metastases. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/radiothera...

A 300 TeV photon from a powerful gamma-ray burst should never have reached the Earth. Scientists have examined two hypothetical effects - axion-like particles and a violation of Lorentz invariance - that could allow such a photon to survive. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/scientists...

An energy-efficient DNA computer that calculates as it settles into thermal equilibrium has been unveiled 🧪⚛️ ow.ly/BRf050ZSXQf