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Planets need more water to support life than scientists previously thought

Unfortunately for science fiction fans, desert worlds outside our solar system are unlikely to host life, according to new research from the University of Washington. Scientists show that an Earth-sized planet needs at least 20 to 50% of the water in Earth’s oceans to maintain a critical natural cycle that keeps water on the surface.

Scientists believe that there are billions of planets outside our solar system. More than 6,000 of these exoplanets are confirmed, but only some of them are candidates for life. The search for life has focused on planets in the “habitable zone,” a sweet spot that is neither too close nor too far from a central star. Planets in this zone are considered viable because they can maintain liquid surface water.

“When you are searching for life in the broad landscape of the universe with limited resources, you have to filter out some planets,” said lead author Haskelle White-Gianella, a UW doctoral student of Earth and space sciences.

Marine sponge bacterium enzyme reveals a two-part route to make terpenoids

The molecular structure of an enzyme from a marine bacterium with potential industrial uses has been determined by RIKEN researchers. The insights they have gained could help make a range of useful compounds through genetic modification. The research is published in the journal Chemical Science.

The class of natural compounds known as terpenoids is nothing if not versatile, being used in a wide assortment of products, from perfumes and insect repellents to pesticides and drugs. More than 100,000 terpenoids have been identified so far. They are produced by an impressive range of organisms spanning animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, and viruses.

Recently, marine organisms such as corals, sponges, and marine bacteria have been found to produce terpenoids with complex structures that show promise for fighting infectious diseases.

Dark matter could explain the earliest supermassive black holes

A growing mystery in astronomy is the presence of gargantuan black holes—some weighing as much as a billion suns—existing less than a billion years after the Big Bang. According to the standard theory of black hole formation, these black holes simply should not have had enough time to grow so large. A study led by University of California, Riverside graduate student Yash Aggarwal shows that dark matter decays could be the key to understanding the origin of these cosmic behemoths. Published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, the research shows that the energy released from dark matter decay could alter the chemistry of early galaxies enough to cause some of them to directly collapse into black holes rather than forming stars.

The result is timely, since NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope continues to observe unusually large black holes in the early universe that could have formed by direct collapse. Astronomers had believed this process requires a coincidence of nearby stars shining onto pre-stellar gas and so expected it to be rare.

Aggarwal’s team goes beyond the standard approach by using dark matter—the unknown 85% of the matter in the universe that helps form galaxies. They show that if dark matter decays, it can leak a small amount of its energy into the gas and supercharge the direct collapse rate. Each decaying dark matter particle would only need to inject an amount of energy that is a billion trillionths of the energy of a single AA battery.

Spatiotemporal light pulses could secure optical communication by masking data

Researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev have developed a new approach to secure optical communication that hides information in the physical structure of light, making it difficult for unauthorized parties to intercept or decode. The study addresses a growing challenge: advances in quantum computing are expected to weaken many of today’s encryption methods. While most security solutions rely on complex mathematical algorithms, this research adds protection earlier in the process—during the transmission of the signal itself.

The research was led by Dr. Judith Kupferman and Prof. Shlomi Arnon from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. The findings were published in Optical and Quantum Electronics.

The researchers propose a communication method based on specially shaped light pulses, known as spatiotemporal optical vortices. These light beams are designed so that their key features are not visible in standard measurements.

Quantum simulations reveal spin transport in 1D materials

Researchers from the Department of Energy’s Quantum Science Center (QSC) headquartered at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have achieved a significant milestone by demonstrating the first digital quantum simulations of how spin currents change over time in a 1-D model of a quantum spin material. The results, now published in Physical Review Letters, establish a new, programmable way to use quantum computers to study the transport of spin—a fundamental quantum variable—in materials.

Spin transport measurements are a cornerstone of condensed matter physics, providing important insight into how quantum materials carry energy and information. In this work, QSC researchers, led by Purdue University’s Arnab Banerjee, demonstrated how a quantum computer can simulate spin transport behavior across ballistic, diffusive, and superdiffusive—meaning a faster and farther spread than typical diffusion—motion.

These different cases of spin transport represent fundamental changes in how the material responds to experimental probes. The simulation results make a direct comparison with experimental materials and open new avenues for understanding complex quantum phenomena such as coherence and energy flow in quantum materials.

Any color you like: Scientists create ‘any wavelength’ lasers in tiny circuits for light

Computer chips that cram billions of electronic devices into a few square inches have powered the digital economy and transformed the world. Scientists may be on the cusp of launching a similar technological revolution—this time using light.

In a significant advance toward that goal, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientists and collaborators have pioneered a way to make integrated circuits for light by depositing complex patterns of specialized materials onto silicon wafers. These so-called photonics chips use optical devices such as lasers, waveguides, filters and switches to shuttle light around and process information.

The new advance could provide a big boost for emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computers and optical atomic clocks.

Self-propulsion or slow diffusion: How bacteria, cells, and colloids respond to stimuli

What physical processes govern the movement of microscopic structures capable of interacting with their environment? The answer lies in two mechanisms: self-propulsion, to escape unfavorable locations; and slow diffusion, to move toward more advantageous ones. This is the finding of scientists Jacopo Romano and Andrea Gambassi from SISSA-Scuola Internazionale Superiore di Studi Avanzati in their new study published in Physical Review Letters.

In their work, the researchers combined computer simulations with mathematical calculations, taking inspiration from nature. It is well known that feedback-driven motion underlies the behavior of various microorganisms, which analyze incoming and outgoing signals and adapt their direction of movement accordingly. The study reproduces the physical behavior of natural and synthetic agents in two distinct scenarios: when a specific destination must be avoided based on signals, and when it must instead be reached.

The researchers found that in the first case, a process of “superdiffusion” occurs, with accelerated motion, while in the second case a subdiffusive process takes place, with much slower movement. These findings provide important insights for the design of smart particles capable of moving at the microscale, with potential applications in medicine, particularly for more efficient drug delivery.

Why this single-chip LED advance could shrink AR glasses and boost quantum links

Researchers at The University of Osaka, in collaboration with ULVAC, Inc. and Ritsumeikan University, have developed a new LED structure that generates circularly polarized light from a single chip. By combining a semipolar InGaN light-emitting structure with a stripe-shaped silicon nitride metasurface, the team created a compact light source that reduces energy-conversion loss and operates at room temperature.

This advancement could help bring ultra-compact, durable light sources closer to practical use in AR/VR, 3D displays, quantum communication, and optical security. The work is published in the journal Optical Materials Express.

Circularly polarized light is useful for a wide range of next-generation technologies. However, previous circularly polarized LEDs have struggled to combine high polarization, high efficiency, durability, and scalable manufacturing. In many previous designs, only one circular polarization component can be extracted from unpolarized light, placing a theoretical limit of 50% on conversion efficiency.

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