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Category: particle physics

Swimming in a shared medium makes particles synchronize without touching

Several years ago, scientists discovered that a single microscopic particle could rock back and forth on its own under a steady electric field. The result was curious, but lonely. Now, Northwestern University engineers have discovered what happens when many of those particles come together. The answer looks less like ordinary physics and more like mystifying, flawlessly timed choreography.

The study appears in the journal Nature Communications.

In the work, the team found that groups of tiny particles suspended in liquid oscillate together, keeping time as though they somehow sense one another’s motion. Nearby particles fall into sync, forming clusters that appear to sway in unison—rocking back and forth with striking coordination.

Collaboration of elementary particles: How teamwork among photon pairs overcomes quantum errors

Some things are easier to achieve if you’re not alone. As researchers from the University of Rostock, Germany have shown, this very human insight also applies to the most fundamental building blocks of nature.

At its very core, quantum mechanics postulates that everything is made out of elementary particles, which cannot be split up into even smaller units. This made Ph.D. candidate Vera Neef, first author of the recent publication “Pairing particles into holonomies,” wonder: “What can two particles only accomplish if they work as a team? Can they jointly achieve something, that is impossible for one particle alone?”

AI makes quantum field theories computable

An old puzzle in particle physics has been solved: How can quantum field theories be best formulated on a lattice to optimally simulate them on a computer? The answer comes from AI.

Quantum field theories are the foundation of modern physics. They tell us how particles behave and how their interactions can be described. However, many complicated questions in particle physics cannot be answered simply with pen and paper, but only through extremely complex quantum field theory computer simulations.

This presents exceptionally complex problems: Quantum field theories can be formulated in different ways on a computer. In principle, all of them yield the same physical predictions—but in radically different ways. Some variants are computationally completely unusable, inaccurate, or inefficient, while others are surprisingly practical. For decades, researchers have been searching for the optimal way to embed quantum theories in computer simulations. Now, a team from TU Wien, together with teams from the U.S. and Switzerland, has shown that artificial intelligence can bring about tremendous progress in this area. Their paper is published in Physical Review Letters.

From fleeting to stable: Scientists uncover recipe for new carbon dioxide-based energetic materials

When materials are compressed, their atoms are forced into unusual arrangements that do not normally exist under everyday conditions. These configurations are often fleeting: when the pressure is released, the atoms typically relax back to a stable low-pressure state. Only a few very specific materials, like diamond, retain their high-pressure structure after returning to room temperature and atmospheric pressure.

But locking those atomic arrangements in place under ambient conditions could create new classes of useful materials with a wide range of potential applications. One particularly compelling example is energetic materials, which are useful for propellants and explosives.

In a study published in Communications Chemistry, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) identified a first-of-its-kind carbon dioxide-equivalent polymer that can be recovered from high-pressure conditions.

Watching atoms roam before they decay

Together with an international team, researchers from the Molecular Physics Department at the Fritz Haber Institute have revealed how atoms rearrange themselves before releasing low-energy electrons in a decay process initiated by X-ray irradiation. For the first time, they have gained detailed insights into the timing of the process—shedding light on related radiation damage mechanisms. Their research is published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

High-energy radiation, for example in the X-ray range, can cause damage to our cells. This is because energetic radiation can excite atoms and molecules, which then often decay—meaning that biomolecules are destroyed and larger biological units can lose their function. There is a wide variety of such decay processes, and studying them is of great interest in order to better understand and avert radiation damage.

In the study, researchers from the Molecular Physics Department, together with international partners, investigated a radiation-induced decay process that plays a key role in radiation chemistry and biological damage processes: electron-transfer-mediated decay (ETMD). In this process, one atom is excited by irradiation. Afterward, this atom relaxes by stealing an electron from a neighbor, while the released energy ionizes yet another nearby atom.

Hubble Images of 3I/ATLAS During Its Rare Alignment with the Sun-Earth Axis on January 22, 2026

Good news. The rare cosmic alignment between the interstellar visitor 3I/ATLAS, the Earth and the Sun, was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on January 22, 2026.

A new set of six 170 second exposures, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope between 13:10:30 and 13:43:33 UTC on January 22, 2026, were just posted here. The exposures display brightness maps of the glowing halo surrounding 3I/ATLAS. The glow is elongated by about 100,000 kilometers in the direction of the Sun, a length scale which is about ten times larger than the Earth’s diameter.

In a new paper that I published with Mauro Barbieri here, we alerted astronomers to this “full Moon phase” of 3I/ATLAS when observers from Earth will see it from the direction of the Sun to within an extremely small misalignment angle of just 0.012 radians. This rare alignment resulted in a brightness surge whose magnitude and growth rate are dictated by the composition and structure of the particles shed by jets of 3I/ATLAS. No new data other than the Hubble images was made public as of yet.

Breakthrough laser technique holds quantum matter in stable packets

For the first time, physicists have generated and observed stable bright matter-wave solitons with attractive interactions within a grid of laser light.

In the quantum world, atoms usually travel as waves that spread out, but solitons stay concentrated in one spot. They have been created before in open space, but this is the first time they have been stabilized inside a repeating laser structure using attractive forces. This development gives scientists a new way to hold and guide clusters of atoms, a key requirement for developing future quantum technologies.

The research is published in a paper in Physical Review Letters.

Universe emerged as quantum Info running on computer

🚀 The Universe Runs on Quantum Information (Like a Computer 💻🌌)
https://lnkd.in/geGmy856
What if the universe didn’t start with matter or space…
but with information?

Not particles.
Not time.
Not gravity.

Just pure quantum information, like a computer that’s powered on but hasn’t loaded anything yet.

Astrophysicists discover largest sulfur-containing molecular compound in space

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE), in collaboration with astrophysicists from the Centro de Astrobiología (CAB), CSIC-INTA, have identified the largest sulfur-bearing molecule ever found in space: 2,5-cyclohexadiene-1-thione (C₆H₆S). They made this breakthrough by combining laboratory experiments with astronomical observations. The molecule resides in the molecular cloud G+0.693–0.027, about 27,000 light-years from Earth near the center of the Milky Way.

With a stable six-membered ring and a total of 13 atoms, it far exceeds the size of all previously detected sulfur-containing compounds in space. The study is published in Nature Astronomy.

Transforming hydrogen energy by flattening granular catalysts into paper-thin sheets

Catalysts are the invisible engines of hydrogen energy, governing both hydrogen production and electricity generation. Conventional catalysts are typically fabricated in granular particle form, which is easy to synthesize but suffers from inefficient use of precious metals and limited durability.

KAIST researchers have introduced a paper-thin sheet architecture in place of granules, demonstrating that a structural innovation—rather than new materials—can simultaneously reduce precious-metal usage while enhancing both hydrogen production and fuel-cell performance.

Professor EunAe Cho of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering has developed a new catalyst architecture that dramatically reduces the amount of expensive precious metals required while simultaneously improving hydrogen production and fuel-cell performance.

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