/ en-us Â鶹ÒùÔº internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Â鶹ÒùÔºics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. In the 17th century, astronomers Christiaan Huygens and Giovanni Cassini trained their telescopes on Saturn and uncovered a startling truth: the planet's luminous bands were not solid appendages, but vast, separate rings composed of countless nested arcs. /news/2025-09-simulations-saturn-moon-enceladus-ice.html Planetary Sciences Tue, 30 Sep 2025 15:52:04 EDT news678466322 Researchers from The University of New Mexico and Los Alamos National Laboratory have developed a novel computational framework that addresses a longstanding challenge in statistical physics. /news/2025-09-ai-tensor-network-based-framework.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Condensed Matter Tue, 30 Sep 2025 13:12:04 EDT news678456722 Plutonium has captured the attention of scientists since its discovery in the early 1940s. This enigmatic element has an important role to play in emerging energy technologies like nuclear batteries and reactors, but it also has complicated electronic behavior that causes some intriguing effects. Its electron structure contributes to unconventional entropic properties at low temperatures, multiple phase transitions before melting, and complex bonding patterns. /news/2025-09-covalent-bonds-alpha-plutonium-unusual.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Mon, 22 Sep 2025 12:00:03 EDT news677761046 A research team has developed a novel direct sampling method based on deep generative models. Their method enables efficient sampling of the Boltzmann distribution across a continuous temperature range. The findings have been published in Â鶹ÒùÔºical Review Letters. The team was led by Prof. Pan Ding, Associate Professor from the Departments of Â鶹ÒùÔºics and Chemistry, and Dr. Li Shuo-Hui, Research Assistant Professor from the Department of Â鶹ÒùÔºics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). /news/2025-09-deep-method-enables-efficient-boltzmann.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Condensed Matter Wed, 03 Sep 2025 16:20:03 EDT news676135202 In the past decade, astronomers have witnessed three interstellar objects (ISOs) passing through the solar system. These include the enigmatic 'Oumuamua in 2017, the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov in 2019, and 3I/ATLAS in July 2025. This latest object also appears to be a comet, based on recent observations that showed it was actively releasing water vapor as it neared the sun. /news/2025-08-interstellar-1ioumuamua-2iborisov-3iatlas.html Astronomy Planetary Sciences Tue, 19 Aug 2025 15:55:05 EDT news674837701 Topological quantum systems are physical systems exhibiting properties that depend on the overall connectivity of their underlying lattice, as opposed to local interactions and their microscopic structure. Predicting the evolution of these systems over time and their long-range quantum correlations is often challenging, as their behavior is not defined by magnetization or other parameters linked to local interactions. /news/2025-08-topological-properties-quantum-liquids-rydberg.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Sun, 17 Aug 2025 08:00:02 EDT news674470369 The endangered South African cycad Encephalartos horridus may resemble a relic from the Jurassic age, but the species itself evolved long after dinosaurs disappeared. Still, it carries a biochemical legacy inherited from its distant ancestors—plants that once thrived alongside Jurassic fauna. A team led by Hiroshima University (HU) researchers found that its spiky, silvery-blue leaves owe their color not to pigment, but to a wax-based optical effect produced by a lipid compound that may date back to the dawn of land plants. /news/2025-08-rare-cycad-wax-crystals-conjure.html Plants & Animals Molecular & Computational biology Fri, 08 Aug 2025 11:15:32 EDT news673870526 In the ERC project HelixMold, a team from TU Graz developed a method for the computer-based design of artificial proteins, with a focus on custom biocatalysts for pharmaceutical applications or the degradation of biopolymers. /news/2025-08-fragments-function-based-custom-proteins.html Biotechnology Molecular & Computational biology Thu, 07 Aug 2025 11:18:03 EDT news673784281 One of ANSTO's advanced imaging instruments Dingo now delivers a rare fusion of simulation and radiobiology, becoming a launchpad for an innovative neutron therapy innovation. /news/2025-07-neutron-platform-simulation-biology-advanced.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Fri, 25 Jul 2025 08:22:26 EDT news672650541 At the forefront of discovery, where cutting-edge scientific questions are tackled, we often don't have much data. Conversely, successful machine learning (ML) tends to rely on large, high-quality data sets for training. So how can researchers harness AI effectively to support their investigations? /news/2025-07-human-ai-teamwork-uncovers-hidden.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 17 Jul 2025 05:10:24 EDT news671947355 Magnetic micropillar arrays consist of tiny, vertical pin-shaped structures, arranged in a grid-like pattern. These micropillars can change their shape to a pre-programmed geometry when exposed to a magnetic field. They are made from magnetically responsive composites, comprising rubbery polymers like polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) embedded with magnetic particles. These composites can change their shape and recover repeatedly without any deterioration. /news/2025-07-disulfide-networks-uv-enable-permanent.html Materials Science Mon, 14 Jul 2025 09:30:10 EDT news671703722 As a mild-mannered statistics professor, it's not often that I get contacted directly by the CEO of a multi-million-dollar company, much less regarding allegations of cheating and malfeasance among world champions. /news/2025-07-im-statistics-professor-embroiled-world.html Mathematics Wed, 09 Jul 2025 13:28:28 EDT news671286502 The first results of the ETH Zurich and ANSTO collaboration focused on silicon carbide (SiC) devices have been reported in two publications. /news/2025-07-impact-silicon-carbide-devices-space.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Condensed Matter Thu, 03 Jul 2025 15:58:59 EDT news670777135 It can be found inside gas giants such as Jupiter and is briefly created during meteorite impacts or in laser fusion experiments: warm dense matter. This exotic state of matter combines features of solid, liquid and gaseous phases. Until now, simulating warm dense matter accurately has been considered a major challenge. /news/2025-06-enables-exotic-state.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Plasma Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 25 Jun 2025 15:21:38 EDT news670083690 Professional astronomers don't make discoveries by looking through an eyepiece like you might with a backyard telescope. Instead, they collect digital images in massive cameras attached to large telescopes. /news/2025-06-astronomy-major-problem-simulating-realistic.html Astronomy Mon, 23 Jun 2025 14:05:04 EDT news669906302 Recent advances in electronics and optics have opened new possibilities for terahertz (THz) waves—an invisible type of light that falls between infrared light and microwaves on the spectrum. The use of THz scattering for medical diagnosis is a promising frontier in this field, as THz waves can probe tissue structures in ways that traditional imaging methods cannot. Emerging THz measurement methods have the potential to detect subtle changes in tissue architecture that occur in diseases like cancer and burn injuries, serving as a powerful diagnostic tool. /news/2025-06-terahertz-polarimetry-microscopic-tissue-linked.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 09 Jun 2025 15:24:04 EDT news668701441 Very soon after the Big Bang, the universe enjoyed a brief phase where quarks and gluons roamed freely, not yet joined up into hadrons such as protons, neutrons and mesons. This state, called a quark-gluon plasma, existed for a brief time until the temperature dropped to about 20 trillion Kelvin, after which this "hadronization" took place. /news/2025-05-thermodynamic-properties-quark-gluon-plasma.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Plasma Â鶹ÒùÔºics Fri, 30 May 2025 10:00:03 EDT news667816855 In the depths of the San Lázaro rock-shelter in Segovia, Central Spain, archaeologists from the Complutense University of Madrid and collaborators have uncovered a compelling trace of Neanderthal symbolic cognition: a pigment-marked granite stone bearing a human fingerprint, and the deliberate placement of red ocher in relation to three mostly natural indentations, creating the potential image of a human face. /news/2025-05-red-dot-year-fingerprint-stone.html Archaeology Wed, 28 May 2025 09:30:01 EDT news667642425 Wide binary stars with separation greater than about 2000 astronomical units are interesting natural laboratories that allow a direct probe of gravity at low acceleration weaker than about 1 nanometer per second squared. Astrophysicist Kyu-Hyun Chae at Sejong University (Seoul, South Korea) has developed a new method of measuring gravity with all three components of the velocities (3D velocities) of stars, as a major improvement over existing statistical methods relying on sky-projected 2D velocities. /news/2025-05-3d-velocity-analysis-wide-binaries.html Astronomy Tue, 27 May 2025 11:51:05 EDT news667565462 High-entropy alloys (HEAs) offer tunable compositions and surface structures, presenting significant potential for creating novel active sites to enhance CO2 reduction (CO2RR) catalysis, a key process for sustainable energy. /news/2025-05-graph-neural-network-discovery-cu.html Analytical Chemistry Wed, 21 May 2025 12:48:25 EDT news667050503 Materials with self-adaptive mechanical responses have long been sought after in material science. Using computer simulations, researchers at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Hyderabad, now show how such adaptive behavior can emerge in active glasses, which are widely used as models for biological tissues. /news/2025-05-uncover-mechanism-enabling-glasses-brittleness.html Soft Matter Mon, 19 May 2025 10:34:13 EDT news666869646 Today DSE and the University of Arkansas published a study in the Journal of Data Science, Statistics, and Visualization and an open source tool that show the need for changes to federal crop insurance programs that could benefit farmers, companies, and the climate. /news/2025-04-tool-corn-farmers-future-climate.html Ecology Agriculture Mon, 28 Apr 2025 11:50:05 EDT news665058817 In the intricate world of quantum physics, where particles interact in ways that seem to defy the standard rules of space and time, lies a profound mystery that continues to captivate scientists: the nature of deconfined quantum critical points (DQCPs). These elusive critical phenomena break away from the conventional framework of physics, offering a fascinating glimpse into a realm where quantum matter behaves in ways that challenge our classical understanding of the fundamental forces shaping the universe. /news/2025-04-physicists-uncover-hidden-quantum-world.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Wed, 23 Apr 2025 09:59:04 EDT news664621142 Researchers from the Hefei Institutes of Â鶹ÒùÔºical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have developed a neural network model based on self-attention mechanisms to rapidly predict radiation shielding designs for space reactors. /news/2025-04-intelligent-neural-network-space-reactor.html Space Exploration Tue, 22 Apr 2025 11:10:05 EDT news664539001 In-situ resource utilization will likely play a major role in any future long-term settlement of the moon. However, designing such a system in advance with our current level of knowledge will prove difficult, mainly because there's so much uncertainty around both the availability of those resources and the efficacy of the processes used to extract them. /news/2025-04-lunar-situ-resource-future-prototypes.html Space Exploration Planetary Sciences Tue, 01 Apr 2025 15:20:03 EDT news662739601 At hypersonic speeds, complexities occur when the gases interact with the surface of the vehicle, such as boundary layers and shock waves. Researchers in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at The Grainger College of Engineering, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, were able to observe new disturbances in simulations conducted for the first time in 3D. /news/2025-03-hypersonic-3d-simulations-expose-disturbances.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Soft Matter Wed, 26 Mar 2025 11:05:50 EDT news662205946 Many systems in nature—and in society—can suddenly change their properties: Water freezes at normal pressure at 32°F, a power grid collapses when a central substation fails, or a society splits into opposing factions following a major event. All of these processes are examples of so-called phase transitions—tipping points where a system abruptly shifts into a new state. /news/2025-03-suddenly-insights-hard-transitions.html General Â鶹ÒùÔºics Mon, 24 Mar 2025 15:10:04 EDT news662047406 Researchers at the Fritz Haber Institute have developed the Automatic Process Explorer (APE), an approach that enhances our understanding of atomic and molecular processes. By dynamically refining simulations, APE has uncovered unexpected complexities in the oxidation of palladium (Pd) surfaces, offering new insights into catalyst behavior. The study is published in the journal Â鶹ÒùÔºical Review Letters. /news/2025-03-machine-reveals-hidden-complexities-palladium.html Analytical Chemistry Materials Science Thu, 06 Mar 2025 15:49:54 EST news660498592 Quantum entanglement—a phenomenon where particles are mysteriously linked no matter how far apart they are—presents a long-standing challenge in the physical world, particularly in understanding its behavior within complex quantum systems. /news/2025-01-physicists-entanglement-microscopy-algorithm-quantum.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Thu, 23 Jan 2025 09:14:05 EST news656846041 A research team discovered a quantum state in which electrons move in a completely new way under a twisted graphene structure. The unique electronic state is expected to contribute to the development of more efficient and faster electronic devices. It may also be applicable to technologies such as quantum memory, which can process complex computations. /news/2025-01-electrons-graphene-fractional-quantum-hall.html Quantum Â鶹ÒùÔºics Tue, 21 Jan 2025 12:57:07 EST news656686619