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Category: particle physics – Page 12

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.

Harnessing nanoscale magnetic spins to overcome the limits of conventional electronics

Researchers at Kyushu University have shown that careful engineering of materials interfaces can unlock new applications for nanoscale magnetic spins, overcoming the limits of conventional electronics. Their findings, published in APL Materials, open up a promising path for tackling a key challenge in the field and ushering in a new era of next-generation information devices.

The study centers around magnetic skyrmions—swirling, nanoscale magnetic structures that behave like particles. Skyrmions possess three key features that make them useful as data carriers in information devices: nanoscale size for high capacity, compatibility with high-speed operations in the GHz range, and the ability to be moved around with very low electrical currents.

A skyrmion-based device could, in theory, surpass modern electronics in applications such as large-scale AI computing, Internet of Things (IoT), and other big data applications.

Particle permutation task can be tackled by quantum but not classical computers, study finds

Quantum computers, systems that process information leveraging quantum mechanical effects, are expected to outperform classical computers on some complex tasks. Over the past few decades, many physicists and quantum engineers have tried to demonstrate the advantages of quantum systems over their classical counterparts on specific types of computations.

Researchers at Autonomous University of Barcelona and Hunter College of CUNY recently showed that quantum systems could tackle a problem that cannot be solved by classical systems, namely determining the even or odd nature of particle permutations without marking all and each one of the particles with a distinct label. This task essentially entails uncovering whether re-arranging particles from their original order to a new order requires an even or odd number of swaps in the position of particle pairs.

These researchers have been conducting research focusing on problems that entail the discrimination between quantum states for several years. Their recent paper, published in Physical Review Letters, demonstrates that quantum technologies could solve one of these problems in ways that are unfeasible for classical systems.

A Study Appears to Stunningly Contradict Newton and Einstein’s Theory of Gravity

“This systematic deviation agrees with the boost factor that the AQUAL theory predicts for kinematic accelerations in circular orbits under the Galactic external field,” Chae says in the paper.

Similar to how the Newton-Einstein theory relies on the ever-elusive particle known as dark matter, MOND contains its own limitations and challenges. Chae’s study appears to be a big +1 in the pro column for Modified Newtonian Dynamics, but the theory is still just that—a theory. It will need much more observational support before it upends our modern understanding of gravity and the universe we inhabit.

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