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Have physicists finally discovered glueballs? New evidence points to yes.
“It’s the strongest evidence yet that particles dominated by a glueball component can exist in nature.”...
A Space Expert Hoped to Use the Eclipse as Science Class. The D.J.s Had Other Plans.
Mar Carretero-Castrillo, an astrophysicist, returned to her remote village in Spain to be in the path of totality. Hundreds of partygoers came too.
US and Israeli physicists hail China’s glueball discovery as a ‘triumph’
Emory biophysicist Shashank Shekhar’s research into tiny cellular force generators nets two major federal awards
Emory assistant professor Shashank Shekhar has been awarded $3.5 million in funding for his innovative research focused on how biochemical interactions influence actin, the vital protein responsible for cell structure and movement.
UCLA-Led Team Selected for National Science Foundation Quantum Technology Award
A UCLA-led team of physicists, engineers and computer scientists has been selected by the U.S. National Science Foundation for $4 million in funding through the NSF National Quantum Virtual Laboratory, or NQVL, a national initiative designed to accelerate the development of useful quantum technologies and make advanced quantum tools and testbeds available to researchers across the country
Emory biophysicist Shashank Shekar’s research into tiny cellular force generators nets two major federal awards
Emory assistant professor Shashank Shekhar has been awarded $3.5 million in funding for his innovative research focused on how biochemical interactions influence actin, the vital protein responsible for cell structure and movement.
How Trump’s ‘America first’ administration could shut US scientists out of the next Nobel-worthy discovery
A proposed White House rule would give political appointees unprecedented control over scientific funding. One physicist, who helped discover the Higgs boson, explains how the rule would’ve stifled that breakthrough.
How Trump’s “America First” Administration Could Shut U.S. Scientists Out of the Next Nobel-Worthy Discovery
A proposed White House rule would give political appointees unprecedented control over scientific funding. One physicist, who helped discover the Higgs boson, explains how the rule would’ve stifled that breakthrough.
A planetarium for the brain
Neuroscientists should take a cue from astrophysicists and use planetariums to inspire awe, argues Tyler Sloan. His new film takes a first step.
Physicists Created an 'Electron Lighthouse' That Steers Current With Light
The tiniest, quantum-iest lighthouse ever built.
Emory receives U.S. Genesis Mission award to speed discovery through AI
Emory physicists will lead a team using AI to advance understanding of the fluid dynamics of plasma — from the lab to the cosmos — through the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission.
Scientists used children’s ‘silly sprinklers’ to solve a physics problem Richard Feynman could not; the reverse version spins 50 times slower
If you’ve ever watched a “silly sprinkler” in action (those bright, looping contraptions that twist and spray water in wild patterns) you’ve probably just seen them as summer fun. But a group of mathematicians have turned these backyard toys into tools for solving a famous physics puzzle that stumped even Nobel Prize–winning physicist Richard Feynman.
Rare Pair of Improbably Light ‘Super-Puff’ Planets Is Discovered
They’re less dense than cotton candy, and they will help astrophysicists better understand the most unusual ways giant planets can form.
Physicists recreate black hole energy extraction in the lab
Researchers have recreated the physics of extracting energy from a spinning black hole using a stationary device that produces synthetic ultrafast rotation. The achievement transforms a long-standing theoretical idea into a practical experiment and could inspire new advances in optics, wireless communications, and quantum science.
Physicists finally build a quantum material predicted more than a decade ago
Researchers have achieved a major milestone by creating a long-sought two-dimensional quantum material and confirming its unusual conducting edge states. The ability to control these states through strain could make the material a promising platform for future room-temperature quantum electronics.
A landmark cosmic project will reveal new truths about the universe
The Legacy Survey of Space and Time has begun, and a Northeastern physicist is helping search for the universe's dark matter and energy.
‘Check your ingredients’: A new blueprint for using Fermi’s ‘Golden Rule’
Fermi’s “Golden Rule” is a formula that connects theoretical quantum mechanics and what scientists observe in experiments, yet it is often misapplied. A new study by Yale physicists put this foundational formula through its paces.
'Time was speeding up, slowing down, or even stopping': Physicist demonstrates a key theory of time by building a 'mini-universe' in his lab
By ignoring part of his own experiment, a physicist coaxed time to emerge from within a closed quantum system.
Jesse Thaler named director of the Laboratory for Nuclear Science
Jesse Thaler has been named director of the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science. Thaler is a theoretical particle physicist who combines techniques from quantum field theory and machine learning to address outstanding questions in fundamental physics.
Changing tides: How gravity warps our oceans - Futura-Sciences
Why gravity makes water uneven Water at any point in the ocean is pulled straight down, perpendicular to what physicists call an equipotential surface. Along this surface, the pull of gravity is identical everywhere. The specific equipotential surface that aligns with global sea level is known as the geoid. On...
For the 2014 film Interstellar, director Christopher Nolan hired Caltech physicist Kip Thorne as his science consultant — and the visual simulations Thorne helped design for the film's black hole were so mathematically accurate that they generated two peer-reviewed scientific papers and became the model for how astrophysicists visualize black holes today
In late 2012, when the American film director Christopher Nolan formally took over the production of a Warner Brothers science-fiction project that had been drifting through Hollywood development since approximately 2005 (originally intended for Steven Spielberg, based on a screenplay concept the film producer Lynda Obst had developed jointly with the Caltech theoretical physicist Kip […]
Physicists Simulated a Black Hole in a Lab. Then It Started to 'Evaporate'.
A glimpse into darkness.
APS Fellow Persis Drell heads DOE science advisory committee
Drell, a Stanford physicist, began in the new role in February.
There Is a Universal Law in The Shape of All Poop, Physicists Reveal
This is serious science.
What Happens When You Throw a Paper Plane From Space? These Physicists Found Out
A simulated A4 paper plane takes a death dive from the ISS for science.
Public invited to trivia with scientists gathering from around the world in Lead
Dakota Shivers Brewing in Lead will host a series of pub talks and trivia nights featuring physicists from the workshop posing science-related questions.
A Visit to the Network School in Forest City
Last week I traveled to Singapore to give an invited talk at the AI4X conference, an exciting new venue gathering computer scientists, physicists and engineers to discuss how AI will accelerate
Science news this week: Goblin shark filmed for first time, California close to a major quake, physicists split photon, and inside China's plans to 'tame nature'
June 20, 2026: Our weekly roundup of the latest science in the news, as well as a few fascinating articles to keep you entertained over the weekend.
New science advisory council forms to help US government ‘resolve the UAP mystery’
Theoretical physicist and Harvard University Professor Avi Loeb shared early details about the new UAP Science Advisory Council.
The world's first nuclear clock just ticked on — and it could help detect a fifth fundamental force of physics
By using a rare thorium nucleus as a timekeeper, physicists have demonstrated the first working nuclear clock, a device that could lead to even more precise clocks and new ways to search for dark matter.
Scientists found a way to explain bird flocks that “defy” Newton’s third law
Physicists have solved a long-standing problem involving systems that appear to violate Newton’s third law, such as bird flocks and bacterial swarms. By adding carefully designed “imaginary partners” to their models, they can now simulate these complex systems with unprecedented accuracy.
Ask me anything: Mary Bishai – ‘For a self-professed nerd like me, doing big science is heaven’
Mary Bishai is an experimental neutrino physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US
Oxford physicists just made Schrödinger’s cat even stranger
Oxford physicists have created an entirely new type of Schrödinger’s cat-like quantum state using components that are themselves highly quantum in nature. The advance could open new possibilities for more resilient quantum computers and deeper insights into the strange rules that govern the quantum universe.
Your brain built a reality bubble. Literature, science, and philosophy can pop it.
Our brains give us a usable version of the world, not a complete one. A neuroscience and a physicist show why that gap matters for bias, free will, and the responsibility we carry into whatever happens next.
Scientists Found a Continent-Sized Geological Structure Hiding Beneath Antarctica
A team led by a geophysicist in Italy now believes that about 90% of Earth’s fresh water ice may not be on solid ground after all.
Collaborative research by FSU physicists uncovers novel electronic properties in quantum material
Florida State University physicists are part of a team that has discovered unusual superconducting states in parts of graphene, with the potential to
Chinese black hole-hunting scientist Dai Liang quits US for Shanghai post
The physicist who received a fellowship reserved for the ‘brightest young scientists’ in North America has joined Fudan University.
Scientists Are Taking Improv Classes So People Will Trust Them More
What does it look like when biologists and physicists do comedy? We sat in on a session.
The cult of objectivity has broken consciousness science
With 22 competing theories and no consensus in sight, the science of consciousness is lost. In this exclusive IAI interview, Berkeley psychedelics researcher and bestselling author of a new book on consciousness Michael Pollan insists that even though consciousness lies beyond traditional forms of scientific investigation, we should resist becoming dualists who see it as something radically different from ordinary stuff in the world. Instead, he makes the case for reimagining science itself: it must stop reaching for objective descriptions of physical reality, and instead embrace subjectivity as the indispensable core of all inquiry. Alasdair Craig: How did your experiences with psychedelics get you interested in consciousness?Michael Pollan: One of the things that happens on psychedelics is that they foreground consciousness. What formerly seemed perfectly transparent and ever present—and yet, non-existent, as water is to fish—suddenly you see it. The metaphor I use in the book is that psychedelics sponge the windscreen. Suddenly you realize: wow, there’s a windscreen, there is this phenomenon that’s mediating my relationship to reality. This is not an unusual realization on psychedelics. I think a lot of people are called to think about consciousness after psychedelic experiences. So that was the proximate inspiration for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness (2026).And then there was a more specific way in which psychedelics influence the book. That was a particular experience I had on psilocybin. I had the sensation that the plants in my garden were conscious and returning my gaze, with their own point of view and agency, and I got curious as to how to evaluate an insight like that. I mean, what’s the truth quotient of insights you have on psychedelics? And I was reading William James—who, of course, wrote beautifully about mystical experience—and he said, we can’t judge the metaphysics here, but we should pay attention to two criteria: (1) How useful is it to think this is true? He was a pragmatist, of course. And (2) can we subject it to other ways of knowing to validate it? Because maybe we should treat these insights as hypotheses. And that’s kind of how I approach psychedelics, as a great generator of hypotheses, but they need to be tested against other ways of knowing. And so that led me down this long path exploring the science of plant intelligence and plant sentience.AC: I love your phrase, “smudging the windowpane of conscious experience.” So do you now start to think, actually, even when I’m not on psychedelics, I’m just seeing a screen all the time, which is not reality, but rather is my conscious experience, behind which reality is hidden?MP: Well, you know, not when I’m brushing my teeth and making breakfast! But yes, in meditation, certainly. I mean, one of the things you realize is that my experience happens to be this way now, but it could be another way. And many things can affect it. My morning coffee changes the screen in various ways, sharpens certain things.___The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness.___There’s this wonderful metaphor in Aldous Huxley’s book, The Doors of Perception, where he thinks we channel consciousness, and that what the brain does is edit it, and there’s a reducing valve. And psychedelics open the reducing valve wider. I don’t know that I’m ready to buy into the idea that consciousness exists outside brains, but I do love that metaphor because there are times when you are more conscious than others. I know I’ve switched from window pane to valve, but you know, a camera aperture can open wider or narrower. And I do have a sense of that. I have a sense of when I’m being less conscious, and when I’m being more conscious, by which I mean, you know, more present, taking in more sensory information. So when you start thinking about consciousness as a matter of degree, that changes things also.I think when we scroll on social media, obviously, we’re conscious. But minimally so, because we don’t have to generate our own thoughts. We’re basically taking these little hits from other people and thinking their thoughts.The process of writing this book made me kind of relativize everyday consciousness as just one type, which is exactly what William James said. Normal consciousness is one type, separated by the flimsiest of screens from the other types.AC: If we stick with the metaphor of the smudge on the window that you get when you take psychedelics, it seems like we’re saying that consciousness has become like an object that you’re looking at, right? You’re looking at the smudge and that just is consciousness. But sometimes we’ll talk about consciousness as a state that you’re in, rather than an object you can perceive. You’re either conscious or you’re not conscious. So it’s difficult to really know what sort of thing we’re talking about when we talk about consciousness, right?MP: Yeah. When you say that consciousness is an object, what’s the subject? Consciousness also? The only tool we have to understand consciousness is consciousness. So we’re in a closed loop and when we get a perspective on consciousness, we’re not achieving any distance from it. That’s one of the problems with studying consciousness. Science is predicated on an objective, God’s eye view of things, and you never get that. There’s no such thing. SUGGESTED VIEWING The brain filters consciousness With Àlex Gómez-Marín But, yeah, there is this sense, I think, that consciousness is something you can approach. Certainly, when you’re writing and trying to recreate a conscious experience, it’s a fiction, but you’re standing back from it, and looking at it. But there’s no real subject-object distinction.AC: That’s so interesting, because when philosophers start talking about consciousness, they often talk about what they call “qualia”, which is their word for the felt experience of, say, the color red. And I think that way of speaking often makes us think of the qualia as an object, which you can see out there: the redness of red. But, as you say, we also want to collapse the subject-object distinction when we talk about consciousness. So there’s something strange going on here…MP: Oh, yeah, there are many strange things going on! *AC: Let’s talk about the varieties of consciousness. Apart from perceptions, there are, pains, emotions, thoughts, and so on. What is it that holds all this diversity together so that they all count as instances of consciousness? What is it that they all have in common?MP: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I mean, there is sensory information, right? Which we perceive coming from the world outside ourselves. And then there’s internal information, which is what’s called interoception. And this is very important too. This is where feelings come from—what are sometimes called homeostatic feelings—that are intended to get the brain to keep us in these narrow ranges of temperature and glucose and so on. That’s a very important part of consciousness. And according to some researchers, who I think are probably right, this is where consciousness begins, with these very primal feelings, like hunger and thirst and warmth and itch, and things like that. And then there’s this third thing, which is our thinking about thinking.And what holds all this together is, I think, the sense of self. Consciousness generates a self: it is probably an organizing principle. All this stuff is happening to the self. It’s a construct, I think, but it is very useful. It can connect all these different streams of consciousness to a single being or a place, metaphorically speaking.* AC: The first half of your book is about the science of consciousness. Is consciousness just another thing, like black holes or the origin of life, which we don’t yet understand, but which we should have every hope that science will one day get to the bottom of, or is there something special about consciousness that makes this unlikely?MP: It depends how you define science. As we define science now, it’s going be very difficult. Science since Galileo has had a set of rules or assumptions, which is that the proper remit of science is to deal with the objective, quantifiable, third-person world. And the physical sciences have done amazing work under that set of limitations. Galileo—for tactical reasons, not for philosophical reasons—said science should not deal with the soul, which at the time was what consciousness was considered to be. So what is subjective, what is qualitative, what is first person, we’re going to leave to the church, he said. And this was a good agreement, and it probably kept many scientists from getting burned at the stake. But it leaves science in an awkward spot, now that it wants to venture into that territory of qualities, of first-person experience. And I don’t think it has the proper tools. I think it will have to add to its toolkit in some way, and find a way to bring in phenomenology, or lived experience and introspection, which science is usually dismissive of.The challenge—we alluded to it earlier—is that the only tool you have to study consciousness with is consciousness. And what I mean by that is, the whole scientific enterprise is a manifestation of consciousness. As much as scientists like to flatter themselves with this idea that they attain a godlike perspective on what they study, when it comes to consciousness, there’s no such thing. And it’s fine for all the things you can step outside of and study from that perspective. But two areas it won’t work are consciousness and cosmology.___It could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.___With cosmology, too, you have to study the universe from inside the universe. It’s not that cosmologists haven’t made progress. We know a lot about the age of the universe and expansion and things like that. But we can’t penetrate what happened before the Big Bang. We just don’t have the tools because we can’t stand outside.The fact that there are 22 full-scale theories of consciousness tells you all you need to know: we’re kind of lost. And I was surprised to find that we are more lost than I thought we were when I started this. I thought that there’d be leading theories, or that we had experiments that we could conduct that would nail some of this down. And the fact is, we don’t.So, I don’t know if science can solve it. But, of course, we can change the rules of science. A really influential book for me was a book called The Blind Spot, by two physicists, Marcello Gleiser and Adam Frank, and a philosopher, Evan Thompson. It’s a reminder that science is a social practice. It’s organized in a certain way and it can be organized in a different way. But it has this huge blind spot at the center of it, which is its failure to recognize that it is a form of consciousness itself, and it doesn’t have a good way of taking account of lived experience.AC: On the one hand, I think you want to resist traditional dualism, which would say that consciousness is something magical, something supernatural, right? But on the other hand, you’re accepting that there is this division in reality between the stuff that you can investigate objectively and measure, and so on—the stuff that science has been good at finding out about—and consciousness, which, for some reason, you can’t objectively measure. Some would take this to suggest that the dualism is actually right. Is there a way of reconciling these two strands of your thinking?MP: To call it magical is full of value judgement. I mean, you could just say immaterial. The interesting thing is, I think, that intuitively we’re all dualists. And I don’t know whether that’s because we’re children of Descartes and other cultures are less dualist than we are. Or it may be because that’s how consciousness feels. It feels different than the body. It feels separate from the body. But I don’t think we should trust that intuition.AC: So let’s think about ways that science might be changed to get at consciousness. I suppose the starting point would be the way that you begin the second half of your book. You have this nice line from William James, where he says, “We now begin our study of the mind from within.” Could you give us some sense of the ways of studying the mind from within? What does this involve?MP: I don’t know what that science looks like. But one of the points I’m making is that it depends on the humanities. I found that I learned as much, if not more, about consciousness, from reading novels and poetry. There is a sense of the fullness and complexity of consciousness that you don’t get in any scientific account. I interviewed this stream-of-consciousness writer and I approached her as an expert on consciousness, and she is. So I think that dialogue is really important.I’m reading Ben Lerner’s new novel, Transcription. Just read the first page of this novel: it’s a man falling asleep on a train, going to conduct an interview, and there is the experience of being in the train, facing backwards, there’s the view outside, but there’s a reflection of himself through which he’s seeing outside. There’s the memory of dropping his kids off at school. All this is going on in one moment of consciousness. Scientists aren’t going anywhere near that. But I think it’s useful for them to think about. That’s where we’re trying to go: like, how does such a layered experience happen? You know, it also makes you wonder, could a computer ever do this? And it gives you some doubt.*AC: Before we get to computers, perhaps we could talk briefly about plants. How did you come to feel that they are sentient?MP: Well, it was a psychedelic experience, and it’s not unusual on psychedelics. In fact, there’ve been studies about how people become animists during psychedelic experience. Their belief in animism arises after a single psychedelic experience.You know, most scientists would say this is all a myth. But we have only 400 years of the age of enlightenment and science. Before that, we were animists, and if you go around the world, most indigenous cultures are still animists, and children are animists, by and large, until they go to school. So it could be that we live in this anomaly of not believing nature is conscious. And maybe psychedelics are teaching us something we’ve forgotten.As I said, I wanted to test this idea, and see whether there was conventional scientific evidence for it. And there’s fascinating work going on in a field that calls itself—in a rather cheeky way—plant neurobiology. These are people who fully realize there are no neurons in plants, but they’re trolling conventional botanists! And they’re doing experiments that are demonstrating that plants can learn and remember, which is kind of amazing: how do you store a memory without neurons? They’re finding plants that can solve problems, that can hear and see. In fact, they have 20 senses to our five or six. For example, a bean plant looking for something to twine, and given a pole within eight inches or so of it, knows where that pole is and will aim its spiraling reach at that pole. What is that about? Is it bouncing signals off of it?One of the spookiest things is the fact that the same anesthetics that put us out put plants out. You might think that plants are already out, but they’re not. They’re just slow. If you take a plant with a fast behavior, like a Venus flytrap, and give it an anesthetic, it will stop reacting. So you have to ask yourself, what is lost when the plant is anaesthetized? Some state of alertness, of awareness, of its environment, of reactivity. I’m not prepared to call that consciousness, but maybe it’s sentience—which is a simpler form of consciousness, and involves the ability to sense what’s going on in your environment and assess what’s good and bad for you and act appropriately. That may be a universal quality of life.AC: Let’s turn from plants to AI. You point out that LLMs are trained on the internet rather than direct interactions with reality. You put this really nicely when you say the internet is not the world so much as a shadow cast by the world. So LLMs are living in this kind of shadow world, or in Plato’s cave, as you put it. What’s the significance of this for AI consciousness and moral consideration? And, to recall the beginning of our conversation, if we’re stuck behind a veil or screen of consciousness, are we also stuck in a kind of shadow world?MP: I don’t think they’re the same shadow worlds because our world includes nature and other people. And even if it’s mediated in some ways... There is a reality out there, and we are in relation to it, through consciousness. There’s friction with it. What’s missing from the LLMs is that friction with the real world. There’s more to the world than human representation, which is what they’re dealing with. And that means that so far, AI is a cultural technology for combining thoughts we’ve already had. SUGGESTED VIEWING Cracking the code for thought With Roger Penrose, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, Max Tegmark, Güneş Taylor Genuine creativity is more than collage. A lot of what AI does now is tantamount to collage, putting this with that and you know, that’s part of art, certainly. But there are also genuinely new ideas that come into the world that don’t come in through manipulating the representations we already have. So it remains to be seen whether AIs can be truly creative in that more radical sense.But my arguments against AI becoming conscious have to do with the fact that the idea of AI consciousness is based on this faulty metaphor that the brain is a computer. There are dimensions in which the brain is like a computer—it certainly does its share of computation. But computers have this sharp distinction between hardware and software, and brains don’t. In a brain, hardware and software are identical. Every memory is a physical change to the brain. Brains are not interchangeable in the way computers are. So this idea that you could take the consciousness out and somehow run it on another substrate, a silicon substrate, seems foolhardy.Anyway, it’s a more extended argument, and I may be wrong. And when we move to computers that aren’t based on silicon—neuromorphic computers and things like that—all bets may be off.AC: Regarding your point about LLMs being stuck in the world of our representations—the internet or whatever—and not being able to interact with reality, are these representations, the world of the internet, themselves part of reality? We’ve created the internet, but it’s still a real thing that exists. And so while the LLMs may be trapped within that part of reality, they’re nevertheless within reality and interacting with it and so on. So it’s not obvious that there’s a barrier there to them becoming conscious and being creative.MP: Yeah, I mean, if our consciousness is built out of human culture, which is what we’re talking about with all those representations. But I tend to think consciousness comes a bit more out of nature and friction with the natural world, but...AC: So there’s a fundamental divide between the natural world and human artefacts?MP: And we lose track of that, and especially people in this computer world. You know, the people who are creating these AI systems, my guess is they’ve been into video games since the age of three, and they didn’t go outside a lot. And their own contact with nature is somewhat limited. I could be wrong, it’d be a very interesting thing to ask, all the wizards of AI, whether they like to go fishing and hiking and do things like that. Or were they on computers from a very early age? I interviewed Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who came to believe that LaMDA, the Google LLM out at the time, was conscious and deserved personhood. It was very clear that he didn’t see a distinction between this bubble in which he lived and the real world. And I think we’ve all been distanced from the natural world, and this is taking us even further away. But it’s still there, you know, and we still have bodies, and we’re still mortal, and we don’t live in a simulation.AC: I think that’s a great place to finish. Michael Pollan, thank you very much!
Physicists achieve 'perfect randomness' for the first time ever
Physicists used quantum bits to achieve 'perfect randomness' in a world-first experiment. The results of their research could strengthen cryptography and other security systems.
Scientists uncover Feynman’s formula for finding best holiday restaurant
Late physicist turned issue of when to stop searching for a better place to eat into mathematical problem
The math of choosing a restaurant meal is revealed in Richard Feynman’s notes
Physicist Richard Feynman turned a lunch dilemma into a math problem. Researchers finally cracked his notes and found people approximate his solution on their own.
Astrophysicist Paz Beniamini snags science prize — a feather in the cap for underdog Open University
In a first for the 52-year-old institution, Beniamini wins the Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists in Israel for physics based on his work on 'extreme' events
Scientists Stunned: Two Black Holes Captured Together in a Historic First - Futura-Sciences
The Golden Age—and a New Dawn for Black Hole Physics It’s widely agreed that the so-called “Golden Age” of theoretical black hole physics ran from Roy Kerr’s 1963 solution describing a rotating black hole to Stephen Hawking’s revelation of black hole evaporation in 1973. The combined puzzle-solving of physicists and...
The 'Doomsday Glacier' is poised to lose its ice shelf this year. An Antarctic researcher explains what that means for global sea levels
Researchers have warned that the Thwaites Glacier, one of the largest glaciers in the world, is about to lose its eastern ice shelf. We spoke to marine geophysicist Robert Larter about what this means for the "Doomsday Glacier."
Reiner Kruecken Named Berkeley Lab’s Associate Laboratory Director for Physical Sciences
Reiner Kruecken, an internationally recognized nuclear physicist, has been named the ALS for the Physical Sciences Area.
So, Trump fired the National Science Board. But what is the National Science Board?
Trump fired all 24 members of the National Science Board at the end of April. In this bite we explore what this means for the NSF, science funding, and, more broadly, the American government, with a perspective from Dr. Keivan Stassun, an astrophysicist at Vanderbilt and a recent NSB member.
John Hill Named Director of Brookhaven National Laboratory
Physicist John Hill has been named director of Brookhaven National Laboratory effective May 21. Hill has served as interim lab director since September 2025.
CERN Physicists Observe New Exotic Particle
Physicists with the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have observed the Bc*+ meson, an excited version of the Bc+ meson -- both consist of a charm quark and a bottom antiquark.
Scientists find a place where time moves backward
Physicists in South Africa ran the math on collapsing neutron stars and landed somewhere odd. Researchers from Durban University of Technology and the University of KwaZulu-Natal found that inside the...
Quantum supremacy just ran into an unexpected rival: An ordinary laptop armed with new math
Using a conventional computer and cutting-edge mathematical tools and code, physicists at the Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ) at the Simons Foundation's Flatiron Institute and collaborators ...
Scientists discover strange “narwhal” waves that trap light beyond known limits
Physicists at Peking University have uncovered a new way to confine light far beyond conventional limits — without relying on metals and their inherent energy dissipation. By formulating the singular dispersion equation, the team discovered narwhal-shaped wavefunctions that trap light at deep-subwavelength volumes in purely dielectric materials. The advance, dubbed singulonics, could pave the way for ultra-efficient photonic chips, new quantum technologies, and imaging tools with unprecedented resolution.
Physicists finally solve the strange mystery of “breathing” lasers
Scientists have finally figured out how mysterious “breather” laser pulses work, solving a puzzle that has frustrated laser physicists for years. These unusual ultrafast lasers produce light pulses that rhythmically grow and shrink instead of staying steady, almost like they’re breathing.
Physicists confirm 'negative time' is real by asking the atoms themselves
A new experiment confirms that photons passing through a cloud of atoms can spend a negative amount of time there, and the atoms themselves are the ones saying so.
A strange ripple in spacetime could be the first fingerprint of dark matter
Black holes crashing together may be revealing clues about dark matter hidden across the universe. Physicists created a new model predicting how dark matter could subtly distort gravitational waves produced during black hole mergers. When they tested the method on real LIGO data, one signal stood out as potentially carrying a dark matter imprint.
String theory suddenly emerged from simple physics rules
Physicists may have uncovered a surprising new clue that string theory—the idea that the universe is built from unimaginably tiny vibrating strings—could be more than just a mathematical fantasy. Instead of assuming strings existed from the start, researchers began with a few simple rules about how particles behave at extreme energies and discovered that the equations naturally produced the telltale fingerprints of string theory all on their own.
Emory physicist takes science out of the lab and onto the playground
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Emory physicist takes science out of the lab and onto the playground
Top Singapore-based physicist moves to China after superconductor breakthrough
Prominent young professor becomes doctoral supervisor at leading Chinese research university amid high-level recruitment drive.
Scientists Create “Living” Materials That Crawl, Walk, and Dig on Their Own
Physicists studying active matter — materials that can use their own internal energy to respond to forces — have uncovered surprising behaviors that challenge conventional ideas in mechanics.
Space Weather and Sun Science: A Conversation with Christina Cohen
Cohen, a space physicist, has been a member of the Solar Radiation Lab at Caltech for three decades.
British scientists among winners of top Spanish award
British chemists David Klenerman and Shankar Balasubramanian joined French biophysicist Pascal Mayer in winning Spain's top science award on Wednesday for DNA sequencing research that helped combat coronavirus.
A Physicist Who Thinks in Poetry from the Cosmic Edge
In her second pop-science book, theoretical cosmologist Chanda Prescod-Weinstein returns to her celestial and cultural roots.
Physicists find evidence that the universe isn't perfectly uniform — potentially unraveling a 100-year-old model of cosmology
The universe may not be perfectly uniform after all, a new series of papers hints. If confirmed, this could upend a nearly 100-year-old model of cosmology.
Physicists discover quantum particles that break the rules of reality
Physicists may have just cracked open a hidden side of the quantum world. For decades, every known particle was thought to belong to one of two categories — bosons or fermions — but researchers have now shown that bizarre “in-between” particles called anyons could also exist in a one-dimensional system. Even more exciting, these strange particles may be adjustable, allowing scientists to tune their behavior in ways never before possible.
Quiz of the week: what device have physicists used to print 'structural colours'?
Have you been keeping up to date with physics news? Try our short quiz to find out
The National Academy of Sciences Elects Two Berkeley Lab Researchers
Two Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) scientists have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. They are part of a cohort of 120 new members and 25 international members. The National Academy of Sciences is a private, nonprofit institution that was established under a congressional charter signed by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. It recognizes achievement in science by election to membership, and — alongside the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine — provides science, engineering, and health policy advice to the federal government and other organizations. The 2026 electees bring the total number of active members to 2,705 with 557 international members. Gary Karpen is a biologist senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Biological Systems and Engineering Division and a Professor of Cell and Developmental Physiology in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology at UC Berkeley. Karpen studies how the structure, organization, and maintenance of genetic material impact inheritance and cell function. His lab focuses on chromatin — a packaged form of DNA strands wrapped around proteins that comprises our chromosomes — with a particular emphasis on centromeres, rarely expressed sequences called heterochromatin, DNA repair, and regulatory RNAs. His research reveals insights into fundamental aspects of nuclear organization and genome regulation that are shared across the tree of life, broadening our understanding of cancer and other diseases, birth defects, and aging. Kam-Biu Luk is a Professor Emeritus of physics at UC Berkeley and a retired senior faculty scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Physics Division. He is an experimental particle physicist whose research has focused on neutrinos: nearly massless, electrically neutral elementary particles that can pass through matter virtually undetected. Neutrinos are created during radioactive decay processes, including the fusion process occurring in stars and the fission process that powers nuclear reactors. Luk initiated and co-led the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, a project based in China with more than 200 international collaborators. In 2012, the Daya Bay experiment discovered a new form of a phenomenon called “neutrino oscillation” in which neutrinos change from one type to another. For this discovery, Luk and his collaborator Yifan Wang received the 2014 American Physical Society Division of Particles and Fields W.K.H. Panofsky Prize for outstanding work in experimental particle physics, and he was also the co-recipient of the 2016 Breakthrough Prize. Luk is currently participating in the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) hosted by Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which will investigate any potential difference in behavior between neutrinos and antineutrinos that may shed light on the evolution of the universe, especially why antimatter is absent in the present universe. ### Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is committed to groundbreaking research focused on discovery science and solutions for abundant and reliable energy supplies. The lab’s expertise spans materials, chemistry, physics, biology, earth and environmental science, mathematics, and computing. Researchers from around the world rely on the lab’s world-class scientific facilities for their own pioneering research. Founded in 1931 on the belief that the biggest problems are best addressed by teams, Berkeley Lab and its scientists have been recognized with 17 Nobel Prizes. Berkeley Lab is a multiprogram national laboratory managed by the University of California for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
Science diplomacy lessons from a North Korean volcano
Mount Paektu, a mythic, active volcano on the border between North Korea and China, is almost the epitome of a scientific challenge that crosses political lines. In 946 CE, it erupted in one of the five biggest volcanic events of the past 10,000 years, kicking up huge quantities of ash and sending destructive mud flows down river channels for hundreds of kilometres. Should this happen again, the entire region, including easternmost Russia, South Korea and even Japan could be hit. “It’s definitely got the potential to be big,” said James Hammond, a professor of geophysics at Birkbeck, University of London. An eruption on the scale of 946 would have “huge regional impact.” For the past 15 years, Hammond has helped lead a groundbreaking collaboration with North Korean scientists to study the volcano, navigating scientific sanctions, tough export controls on scientific equipment and a long, pandemic-enforced exodus from the country. Although he seems more at home on far-flung research expeditions – before speaking to Science|Business, Hammond was camping out on a Greenland ice sheet – he has also advised the European Commission on its changing science diplomacy strategy. His long experience with North Korea has made Hammond sceptical of blanket bans on science collaboration, no matter the country.This is a live question in Europe, where in the wake of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, institutional ties with Russian universities were almost entirely severed, although some scientists fear this could undermine our understanding of climate change’s impact on the Arctic. Here, Hammond tells the story of the Mount Paektu mission and the policy lessons he takes from it. Ominous rumblingsThe genesis of Hammond’s collaboration came in 2002, when Mount Paektu began to rumble ominously. Earthquake activity picked up and the volcano began to emit unusual gases. North Korean scientists took notice. “People felt we need to know more about this volcano,” said Hammond. In 2011, North Korean vulcanologists put out a request for international expertise to help them learn more. At the time, Hammond and his collaborator, Clive Oppenheimer, were working on a vulcanology project in another sanctioned country, Eritrea, and so decided to answer the call. Within a month, they had flown into Pyongyang. “It was pretty incredible,” recalls Hammond (left). “We were made to feel like honoured guests, and invited to official celebrations.” The scientific opportunity was huge. Paektu is unusually positioned, a thousand kilometres from where tectonic plates rub against each other in the Pacific. “It was an incredibly interesting volcano, but not much research had been done, at least not in the international community,” he said. “There was so much we felt we could do. And we had these partners that were super keen to engage.”The mission received an unusual visitor in the form of volcano-obsessed filmmaker Werner Herzog, who accompanied Hammond and Oppenheimer while directing his 2016 film Into the Inferno about volcanos across the world. Four days into the trip, the German director delivered a long speech about reunification to his North Korean hosts, recalls Hammond. “He got to the heart of the Koreans and how they felt, and how they thought, in a way that I'm not sure I ever will,” he said. UN sanctionsHowever, Hammond realised he’d been “naïve” about how difficult it would be to collaborate with North Korea, which was sanctioned far more heavily than Eritrea. “We didn’t fully appreciate the all-encompassing nature of restrictions,” he said. In 2016, as tensions escalated over Pyongyang’s nuclear tests, a United Nations resolution banned all joint scientific work with North Korea. However, the UN sanctions did allow countries to request carve outs, and the UK successfully requested an exemption for Hammond’s work. Related articlesEU pushes for joint science diplomacy, but care needed to avoid gridlock, experts sayRussia severs its last ties with German scienceAnchor Greenlanders in Arctic climate research, experts tell EU ahead of policy updateExport controls have also delayed Hammond’s work. In one case, it took 18 months to get approval from the UK government to take seismometers, which measure earthquakes, to North Korea. “It was frustrating,” he said. “But they didn’t just say no.” However, one instrument, called an induction coil, used to measure how the earth conducts electricity, was blocked entirely because it can in theory be used to detect submarines. Karaoke bondingSince the collaboration started in 2011, Hammond has visited the country around 15 times, although the pandemic closed off North Korea for more than five years. A trip last November was Hammond’s first since the outbreak. Despite this lengthy interlude, Hammond has deep bonds in the country. The North Korean scientists Hammond works with are somewhat isolated, as they struggle to access the latest research papers and travel to international conferences. That said, they are “excellent geophysicists” and are “very well trained in the field,” he said. Over karaoke and chats about their families, “we’ve made friendships, for sure,” he said. The authorities have to sign-off things like the placement of seismometers, for example, but Hammond said these requests have been approved. “Everything that we've asked for within a scientific context has been delivered.”Scientific backchannels? These kind of personal links between scientists across political lines are one purported benefit of science diplomacy. During the Cold War, some historians argue, scientific contact between the US and Soviet Union laid a groundwork of trust for other cooperation, such as on arms control. Hammond agrees that backchannel contacts to North Korean geophysicists are hardly likely to defuse a military crisis on the Korean peninsula, but the simple fact of the scientific collaboration makes contacts between diplomats that little bit easier. “It creates opportunities to understand each other a little bit better,” he said. “When maybe you have those more difficult discussions as diplomats, it's coming from a slightly better place.” Cutting tiesDrawing lessons from the Mount Paektu mission for today’s links with Russian science isn’t simple. The analogy is far from exact, Hammond said, “because one is essentially a Cold War, versus a pretty hot war in the case of Russia.” But Hammond’s broader argument is that the challenges we face, such as climate change, pandemics, biodiversity loss, pollution and so on, have globalised in an unprecedented way, making blanket shutdowns in collaboration with any country unwise.He’s somewhat critical of the UN scientific sanctions imposed on North Korea in 2016, even though they did allow for exceptions. “I think a blanket halt to some of these things, when we face big global challenges [. . .] that’s quite a risky thing to do,” he said.Institutional endorsement?European academics are still by and large free to work individually with Russian counterparts. However, official, institutional partnerships have largely ended. Shortly following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Russian university rectors wrote a public letter endorsing the war, meaning European universities fear official collaboration could also be seen as a kind of endorsement. Hammond acknowledges there is a risk of legitimising regimes, and state-controlled universities, through scientific cooperation. “That’s the trade off you have to make,” he said. Strategic projectsWith Russia, instead of giving a green light to restart all Arctic science, a middle ground might be firing up a few carefully selected “strategic” projects, said Hammond. After all, European countries are still collaborating with Russia on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, an experimental nuclear fusion plant in the south of France. However, even if Europe did try to revive Arctic science with Russia, there’s no guarantee Russian scientists would play ball. A series of high-profile arrests of physicists in Russia accused of sharing their findings with the outside world has made collaboration fraught. Even before the invasion of 2022, “the Russian regime made it increasingly difficult, and this sort of discouraged people,” Dag Rune Olsen, rector of the Arctic University of Norway, told Science|Business last year.
Physicists Say It’s Possible to Send Messages Backward in Time
A team figured out the practical mechanics behind one of sci-fi epic film Interstellar’s most out-there ideas.
Physicists just found a tiny flaw in time itself
Physicists are rethinking one of quantum mechanics’ biggest puzzles: how fuzzy possibilities become definite reality. New research suggests that spontaneous “collapse” processes—possibly linked to gravity—could subtly blur time itself. This wouldn’t affect clocks we use today, but it reveals a hidden limit to how precise time can ever be. The findings open a new path toward uniting quantum physics with gravity.
Fargo physicist says Bluetooth headphones pose no health risk
Whether hitting the gym, walking the dog, or hopping on a bike, many people are wearing headphones. But with Bluetooth technology more popular than ever, some are asking if wireless headphones are actually safe.
Are your memories real? Physicists revisit the Boltzmann brain paradox
A new analysis of the “Boltzmann brain” paradox suggests our memories and sense of reality could, in theory, be random illusions born from cosmic chaos. By uncovering circular reasoning in how physicists think about time and entropy, the study raises fresh doubts about what we can truly know about the past.
Ralph, Schlom elected to National Academy of Sciences
Physicist Daniel Ralph, Ph.D. ’93, and materials scientist Darrell Schlom are Cornell’s 2026 electees to the National Academy of Sciences, the academy announced April 28.
AI just discovered new physics in the fourth state of matter
Physicists have taken a major step toward using AI not just to analyze data, but to uncover entirely new laws of nature. By combining a specially designed neural network with precise 3D tracking of particles in a dusty plasma—a strange “fourth state of matter” found from space to wildfires—the team revealed hidden patterns in how particles interact. Their model captured complex, one-way (non-reciprocal) forces with over 99% accuracy and even overturned long-held assumptions about how these forces behave.
Physicist: I Believe You Can Enhance Your Consciousness—And Expand Your Perception Into a ‘Different Realm’
Quantum-enhanced humans could enter into an entirely “different realm.”
Physicist Nitin Samarth elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Nitin Samarth, Verne M. Willaman Professor of Physics, has been elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for distinguished contributions to the physical sciences.
Science On Screen Series Brings Films And Experts
LEWISBURG — In Lewisburg, the Campus Theatre will host Science on Screen events pairing films with expert discussions. Organizers say the series is supported by a national grant promoting science education through entertainment. Officials say the next event is April 23 at 7pm featuring “2001: A Space Odyssey” with physicist Alan Lightman. Organizers say the program explores
Montana State physicist wins National Science Foundation CAREER award
The $400,000 award will fund research of strong gravity in binary neutron stars.
'The chances of you living 50 years are very small': Theoretical physicist explains why humanity likely won't survive to see all the forces unified
Live Science spoke with Nobel prize-winning physicist David Gross, who recently received the $3 million Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, about the quest to unite all the forces and why humanity might not live to see a unified theory.
Physicists share the glory and the wealth after winning $3M for exploring muon mysteries
A University of Washington professor and hundreds of others who measured the muon's magnetism have won a $3 million Breakthrough Prize.
Science news this week: Physicists witness faster-than-light darkness pinpricks, humans are still evolving, and some polar bears are getting fatter than ever
April 18, 2026: Our weekly roundup of the latest science in the news, as well as a few fascinating articles to keep you entertained over the weekend
Science news this week: Physicists witness faster-than-light darkness pinpricks, humans are still evolving, and some polar bears are getting fatter than ever
April 18, 2026: Our weekly roundup of the latest science in the news, as well as a few fascinating articles to keep you entertained over the weekend
Renowned physicist alarmed by 'unheard of' number of scientists dying or vanishing now on White House's radar
Multiple scientists linked to UFO research, nuclear labs and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have mysteriously vanished or died in recent years.
Acclaimed astrophysicist and electric slam poet blend science and storytelling in upcoming UCSC lecture
The second annual Landesman Lecture features UC Santa Cruz professor Enrico Ramirez Ruiz in conversation with slam poet Jasmine Schlafke—blending science, poetry and storytelling to explore our deepest origins and shared humanity. The lecture series is made possible by UC Santa Cruz faculty retirees, Edward (Ed) and Miriam Landesman.
Physicists just witnessed pinpricks of darkness moving faster than the speed of light — without breaking the laws of relativity
For the first time, researchers measured singularities in combined light and sound waves moving faster than the speed of light. The findings have implications in fluid dynamics, optics and many other fields.
'Really, really weird': Physicists entangle two moving atoms for the first time, validating 'spooky' quantum theory
For the first time, scientists have observed quantum entanglement in the momentum of massive particles. The result, decades in the making, could help physicists probe the relationship between quantum mechanics and gravity.
Brian Cox: ‘We don’t know how powerful AI is going to become – it’s both exciting and potentially a problem’
The physicist, BBC presenter and author on snowflakes, art v science and the time Paul McCartney quizzed him about one of Saturn’s moons
Health Physicists: The Quiet Experts Keeping Radiation Risks in Check
When radioactive materials are involved, whether at a former nuclear weapons site, a decommissioned reactor, or a legacy industrial facility, the goal is simple: protect workers, safeguard communities and reduce potential radiation risks to levels that are demonstrably safe. At the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), health physicists are the professionals responsible for making that happen. Their work is often behind the scenes but always with consequences that matter deeply to the public.
What is the quantum ‘Ghost Murmur’ purportedly used in Iran? Scientists question CIA’s claim of long-range heartbeat detection
Ghost Murmur was described as a futuristic CIA tool that could detect a heartbeat from vast distances. Physicists say the public story clashes with the basic limits of magnetic sensing
Physicists zero in on the mass of the fundamental W boson particle
When fundamental particles are heavier or lighter than expected, physicists' understanding of the universe can tip into the unknown. A particle that is just beyond its predicted mass can unravel scientists' ...
MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science
Source: NBER With all the other terrible news right now, you may not have noticed that Donald Trump is in the process of killing American science. OK, that’s an exaggeration — but not that much of an exaggeration. The Trump administration’s latest budget proposal calls for a gigantic increase in military spending combined with severe cuts to social programs. But as the chart above shows, it also calls for debilitating reductions in research funding. Furthermore, Trump appointees have already been strangling science by sharply reducing the rate at which research grants are approved. Here, for example, is the number of new grants approved by the National Science Foundation: Source: Nature Large numbers of existing grants have also been frozen or terminated, especially in the study of infectious diseases. Add to this a sharp drop in visas issued to foreign students, who often play a direct role in research and who help support academic departments that do research: Put all of this together, and much U.S. scientific research is set to come to a screeching halt — not a few years from now, but over the course of the next year or two. This new assault on U.S. science is taking place at a time when the role of American science in the world has already been greatly eroded. The chart below, based on research recently reported by the National Bureau of Economic Research, measures national strength in science by the share of publications in highly ranked journals. In the 1990s the United States had more such publications than the rest of the world combined. Since then we’ve dropped into third place — well behind China and slightly below the European Union. And this was before the Trump administration’s attack on science had time to take its full effect. Source Some erosion in U.S. scientific preeminence was inevitable given China’s growing sophistication and wealth. But we’ve also fallen behind Europe, even though everyone says that Europe is lagging economically and technologically. Claims about Europe’s underperformance are, in fact, dubious if one looks hard at the data. But it’s still striking to see America lagging. What’s going on? There are presumably multiple factors behind America’s scientific lag. But even before Trump II the growing hostility of the U.S. right to science surely had some negative effect. And since the rise of MAGA G.O.P. attitudes toward science in general have become overwhelmingly hostile. This is true even for the Republican rank and file: And while I haven’t been able to find good survey data, it’s obvious that the anti-science turn has been even more pronounced — and began earlier — among the Republican political elite. Chris Mooney published The Republican War on Science in 2005, and even then was describing a longstanding trend. Why have Republicans turned so anti-science? Part of the answer is that they believe that scientists don’t support them. And they’re right! A study of who scientists give money to shows that only a small percentage gave money to Republicans even 20 years ago, and that almost none of them donate to Republicans now: Social scientists have always been strongly pro-Democratic, while there used to be a significant number of physical, “hard” scientists supporting the GOP. But these days physicists are almost as uniformly Democratic, or at least non-Republican, as sociologists. Why are there almost no Republican scientists? It’s not a mystery. GOP political orthodoxy includes positions that are at odds with the scientific consensus on multiple issues, ranging from the validity of the theory of evolution, to the reality of climate change, to the efficacy and safety of vaccines. In each case the scientific consensus is solidly grounded in evidence. But even before the rise of MAGA the U.S. right was increasingly hostile to evidence-based policymaking — especially, of course, where the evidence is unfavorable to fossil fuel interests or quack medicine, both financial mainstays of right-wing politics. So scientists don’t support Republicans, and the feeling is mutual. Today’s Republican Party doesn’t like science or scientists. It doesn’t like having its preconceived views challenged by appeals to evidence. It knows that very few scientists are on its side electorally. In general, it sees scientific research as a threat to its grasp on political power. Add in MAGA’s combination of rabid anti-intellectualism and allergy to any hint of criticism, and one has the makings of a drastic anti-science turn in policy. “Ignorance is strength” might was well be an official MAGA motto. And as I said, we aren’t talking about something that will happen over the course of multiple years: The U.S. scientific enterprise is threatened with severe damage, even collapse, over just the next year. There are many reasons to find this prospect horrifying: Think of all the beneficial advances, affecting almost every part of life, that won’t happen because U.S. science — still crucial to the world — has been eviscerated. But think, also, of America’s international standing. Can a nation that has forfeited its role as a leader, or even a contender, in global science, still be a Great Power? No. MUSICAL CODA
Physicists moved volatile antimatter by truck for the first time ever — paving the way for groundbreaking new research
CERN scientists transported antimatter by truck for the first time, enabling ultraprecise studies that could reveal why matter dominates the universe.
Earthquake science unites threatened scholar with Cornell researchers
A team of geophysicists from Cornell, Cameroon and South Africa is using machine learning tools to unearth new information from earthquake data collected by Cornell 15 years ago – providing a lifeline for a scholar whose career was upended by conflict.
Biophysicist Joins Ranks of Elite Scientists as AAAS Fellow
Dr. G. Andrés Cisneros has been recognized by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his contributions to biophysics, computational enzymology and computational chemistry. Dr. G. Andrés Cisneros, professor and department head of physics at The University of Texas at Dallas, has been elected to the 2025 class of American Association for the […]
Physicists Found Something That Can Move Faster Than Light: The Darkness Inside It
This is fine.
Physicists just solved a strange fusion mystery that stumped experts
Fusion scientists have solved a long-standing mystery inside tokamaks, the donut-shaped machines designed to harness fusion energy. For years, experiments showed that escaping plasma particles hit one side of the exhaust system far more than the other, but simulations couldn’t explain why. Now, researchers have discovered that the rotation of the plasma itself plays a crucial role—working together with sideways particle drift to create the imbalance.
Two physicists and a curious host walk into a studio…
On GBH’s new show The Curiosity Desk, MIT LIGO researchers revel in the beauties of fundamental discovery science and MIT astronomers talk planetary defense.
‘To do something nobody’s done’: physicist Zhu Zijie leaves Europe for China
Rising star scientist returns to China to undertake cutting-edge research in the field of cold atoms.
This quantum computing breakthrough may not be what it seemed
A team of physicists set out to test some of the most exciting claims in quantum computing—and found a very different story. Instead of confirming breakthroughs, their careful replication studies revealed that signals once hailed as major advances could actually be explained in simpler ways. Despite the importance of these findings, their work initially struggled to get published, highlighting a deeper issue in science.
Scientists mimicking the Big Bang accidentally turn lead into gold
The physicists made an unexpected breakthrough