Physics

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

A schematic of the VaTD training scheme.  Credit: Credit: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology A research team has developed a novel direct sampling method based on deep generative models. Their method enables efficient sampling of the Boltzmann distribution across a continuous temperature range. The findings have been published in Physical Review Letters. The

The illustration shows what happens on the surface of ice when another object, such as skis, ice skates or shoe soles, comes into contact with it: the previously orderly crystal structure of the water molecules is suddenly disrupted. Credit: AG Mueser For over a hundred years, schoolchildren around the world have learned that ice melts

An atom as seen in a field ion microscope. Credit: From the Eberly Family Special Collections, Penn State University Libraries / Penn State. Creative Commons Seventy years ago, in Osmond Laboratory on Penn State’s University Park campus, Erwin W. Müller, Evan Pugh Research Professor of Physics, became the first person to “see” an atom. In doing

Specimen design and experimental test protocol. Credit: Nature (2025). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-025-09300-8 A team from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) and the University of Vigo (UVigo) has just published in Nature the results of a study in which they have uncovered why bridges—specifically steel truss bridges—do not collapse when affected by a catastrophic event such

Comparison of the SR and ordinary fluorescence decay rates in 86Rb. Credit: Physical Review Letters (2025). DOI: 10.1103/l3c1-yg2l At any given moment, trillions of particles called neutrinos are streaming through our bodies and every material in our surroundings, without noticeable effect. Smaller than electrons and lighter than protons, these ghostly entities are the most abundant

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Playwright Tom Stoppard, in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead,” provides one of the best definitions of science: “The scientific approach to the examination of phenomena is a defense against the pure emotion of fear.” Nowhere is this more true than in the study of electricity in the wild; namely, lightning. Primitive