Physics

Hall A, the area at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab) where the MARATHON experiment was carried out, equipped with a state-of-the-art facility including high-resolution spectrometers and other detectors. Credit: Jefferson Lab Hall A Tritium Collaboration. Nucleons, which include protons and neutrons, are the composite particles that make up atomic nuclei. While these particles […]

What would Thomas Bayes think? In 1763, he proposed a new approach to calculate probabilities. An international team has now updated his ideas to deliver a quantum Bayes’ rule. Credit: Centre for Quantum Technologies How likely you think something is to happen depends on what you already believe about the circumstances. That is the simple

Chiara Maccani, doctoral student at CERN and Padova University, installing the TWOCRYST Fibre Tracker detector in the LHC tunnel. Credit: Sune Jakobsen Might two bent crystals pave the way to finding new physics? The Standard Model of particle physics describes our world at its smallest scales exceptionally well. However, it leaves some important questions unanswered,

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Summertime is beer time—even if the consumption of alcoholic beer is declining in Switzerland. And for beer lovers, there is nothing better than a head of foam topping the golden, sparkling barley juice. But with many beers, the dream is quickly shattered, and the foam collapses before you can take your

The glass beads used in the bulldozing experiments and mapped with X-rays. Credit: Andrés Felipe Escobar Rincón What looks like ordinary sand, rocks or snow flowing in one direction can actually hide swirling currents that move in multiple directions beneath the surface. When grains move in a landslide, most follow the steepest downhill path. This

Flexoelectricity in ice electrification events. Credit: Nature Physics (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41567-025-02995-6 A study co-led by ICN2 reveals that ice is a flexoelectric material, meaning it can produce electricity when unevenly deformed. Published in Nature Physics, this discovery could have major technological implications while also shedding light on natural phenomena such as lightning. Frozen water is

In viscous fluids like honey, where turbulence is absent, true mixing is challenging as it requires an interplay of external stirring and molecular-level noise. Credit: MPI-DS, LMP In turbulent fluids, mixing of the components happens easily. However, in more viscous fluids such as those enclosed within cellular compartments, the intermixing of particles and molecules is

The ISOLDE facility at CERN. Credit: CERN An experiment carried out at CERN’s ISOLDE facility has determined the western shore of a small island of atomic nuclei, where conventional nuclear rules break down. The atomic nucleus was discovered over a century ago, yet many questions remain about the force that keeps its constituent protons and

Characterization of nanomagnets and magnetic interactions. Credit: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2502361122 Everybody makes mistakes. Biology is no different. However, living organisms have certain error-correction mechanisms that enable their biomolecules to assemble and function despite the defective slough that is a natural byproduct of the process. A Cornell-led collaboration has

Caption:The sPHENIX detector is the newest experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and is designed to precisely measure products of high-speed particle collisions. This image shows the installation of the inner hadronic calorimeter within the core of the sPHENIX superconducting solenoid magnet. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory A new and powerful particle