UC Berkeley astronomers have directly imaged the aftermath of two giant collisions around the star Fomalhaut, 25 light-years away. The Hubble data shows dust clouds from impacts between objects 60 km wide—the first such fireworks ever seen in another solar system.
Scientists at the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics have created a bromine-based flow battery with a novel two-electron transfer system. The design slashes corrosion, enabling a 5 kW system to run for over 700 cycles, paving the way for affordable, long-duration grid storage.
University of Cincinnati physicist Professor Jure Zupan and colleagues have solved a real particle physics puzzle featured on The Big Bang Theory. Their study proposes using future fusion reactors to hunt for axions, the hypothetical particles that may constitute dark matter.
Researchers from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Tsinghua University have developed the LightGen optical AI chip. Led by Professor Chen Yitong, it performs generative tasks over a hundred times faster and with far greater energy efficiency than Nvidia’s A100, using over 2 million photonic neurons to create images and video.
A team at ICFO in Barcelona, led by ICREA Prof. Jens Biegert, has generated a 19.2-attosecond soft X-ray pulse—the shortest light flash ever measured. This record-breaking pulse creates an unparalleled tool for filming electron dynamics in real time.
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.
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