An international team led by UCLA, LMU Munich, and JGU Mainz has achieved a first: laser excitation of the thorium-229 atomic nucleus in a non-transparent material. Published in Nature, this breakthrough overcomes a major hurdle on the path to building an optical nuclear clock, a future timepiece of unmatched precision.
CERN engineers have installed the first giant refrigerators for the High-Luminosity LHC, a major upgrade launching in 2030. The 16-meter-long cold boxes, built by Linde, will help chill the accelerator to 1.9 kelvin (-271°C), enabling a massive increase in particle collisions for groundbreaking physics research.
Using the unique Superfuge centrifuge at Sandia National Laboratories, NASA has successfully tested its 1,000-pound VIPER rover against brutal launch forces. The rover is now one step closer to its 2027 mission to map water ice at the moon’s South Pole.
Tesla has filed a patent for a revolutionary vehicle roof designed to hide satellite antennas, signaling a direct integration path for SpaceX’s Starlink internet. This could enable Tesla cars to maintain a high-speed data connection anywhere on Earth, seamlessly switching between 5G and satellite networks.
An international team led by Lancaster University discovered that shaking magnets with ultra-short light pulses, leveraging spin-orbit interaction, creates a 10-fold larger magnetic deflection. This breakthrough could enable faster, more energy-efficient data storage and quantum devices.
South Korean researchers led by Seong-Bin Lee have created a transformative, airless wheel that expands from 230mm to 500mm, survives 4-meter falls and fire, and traverses lunar-like terrain—key for exploring the Moon’s radiation-shielded caves.
Eighty years after the Hiroshima bombing, Kanagawa Dental University scientists used DNA from preserved hair to identify 13-year-old Hatsue Kajiyama. Her nephew’s search and a breakthrough in forensic analysis finally corrected a decades-old misidentification among 70,000 unknown remains.
Scientists at Northwestern University led by Professor Ludmilla Aristilde have decoded how iron oxide minerals in soil trap carbon. They found ferrihydrite uses a nanoscale mosaic of mixed charges plus chemical and hydrogen bonds to lock away diverse molecules, securing over one-third of soil’s stored carbon.
Collaboration can be a beautiful thing, especially when people work together to create something new. Take, for example, a longstanding
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