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Newly discovered ‘super-Earth’ offers prime target in search for alien life

The discovery of a possible “super-Earth” less than 20 light-years from our own planet is offering scientists new hope in the hunt for other worlds that could harbor life, according to an international team including researchers from Penn State. They dubbed the exoplanet, named GJ 251 c, a “super-Earth” as data suggest it is almost four times as massive as Earth, and likely to be a rocky planet.

“We look for these types of planets because they are our best chance at finding life elsewhere,” said Suvrath Mahadevan, the Verne M. Willaman Professor of Astronomy at Penn State and co-author of a paper about the discovery published in The Astronomical Journal.

“The exoplanet is in the habitable or the ‘Goldilocks Zone,’ the right distance from its star that liquid water could exist on its surface, if it has the right atmosphere.”

Scientists capture real-time melting of 2D skyrmion lattices using magnetic fields

What occurs during the melting process in two-dimensional systems at the microscopic level? Researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) have explored this phenomenon in thin magnetic layers.

“By utilizing skyrmions, i.e., miniature magnetic vortices, we were able to directly observe, for the first time, the transition of a two-dimensional ordered structure into a disordered state at the in real time,” explained Raphael Gruber, who conducted the research within the working group of Professor Mathias Kläui at the JGU Institute of Physics.

The findings, published in Nature Nanotechnology, are fundamental to a deeper understanding of melting processes in two dimensions and the behavior of skyrmions, which may revolutionize future data storage technologies.

Common crystal proves ideal for low-temperature light technology

Superconductivity and quantum computing are two fields that have seeped from theoretical circles into popular consciousness. The 2025 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded for work in superconducting quantum circuits that could drive ultra-powerful computers. But what may be less well known is that these promising technologies are often possible only at cryogenic temperatures—near absolute zero. Unfortunately, few materials can handle such extremes. Their cherished physical properties disappear when the chill is on.

In a new paper published in Science, however, a team of engineers at Stanford University spotlights a promising material—strontium titanate, or STO for short—where the optical and mechanical characteristics do not decline at extreme low temperatures, but actually get significantly better, outperforming existing materials by a wide margin.

They believe these findings suggest that STO could become the building block for new light-based and mechanical cryogenic devices that push , , and other fields to the next level.

Simulations hint at new strongly correlated states of matter in ultracold polar molecules

Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) are fascinating states of matter that emerge when atoms or molecules are cooled to extremely low temperatures just slightly above absolute zero (0 K). In 2023, physicists at Columbia University realized BECs comprised of ultracold molecules for the very first time.

Building on their work, another research group at TU Wien and the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology recently set out to investigate the behavior of these ultracold dipolar molecules, while also exploring the possibility that they could spontaneously organize themselves into new forms of matter. Their findings, published in Physical Review Letters, suggest that new correlated states could emerge in ultracold polar molecules, showing that these states could be probed in future experiments.

“BECs of ultracold polar molecules were a decade-long goal, but have only been realized experimentally very recently,” Matteo Ciardi, co-author of the paper, told Phys.org.

Microscopic ‘ocean’ on a chip reveals new nonlinear wave behavior

University of Queensland researchers have created a microscopic “ocean” on a silicon chip to miniaturize the study of wave dynamics. The device, made at UQ’s School of Mathematics and Physics, uses a layer of superfluid helium only a few millionths of a millimeter thick on a chip smaller than a grain of rice.

The work is published in the journal Science.

Dr. Christopher Baker said it was the world’s smallest wave tank, with the quantum properties of superfluid helium allowing it to flow without resistance, unlike classical fluids such as water, which become immobilized by viscosity at such small scales.

The search for neutrinoless double beta decay gets some noise cancelling headphones

Deep under a mountain in Italy, researchers continue to push the boundaries of science with an experiment that could rewrite the Standard Model of Particle Physics.

Their experiment, known as the Cryogenic Underground Observatory for Rare Events (CUORE), which includes researchers from Yale, has now collected two ton-years of data (the equivalent of collecting data for two years if the cube-shaped crystals in the CUORE detector weighed one ton) in a years-long effort to document a theory of rare nuclear particle called neutrinoless double beta decay.

Standard double beta decay is already a proven particle process. When it occurs, two neutrons, which are uncharged particles in the nucleus of an atom, transform into two protons and emit two electrons and two antineutrinos. Antineutrinos are the antimatter counterpart to neutrinos.

With a new molecule-based method, physicists peer inside an atom’s nucleus

Physicists at MIT have developed a new way to probe inside an atom’s nucleus, using the atom’s own electrons as “messengers” within a molecule.

In a study appearing today in the journal Science, the physicists precisely measured the energy of electrons whizzing around a atom that had been paired with a fluoride atom to make a molecule of radium monofluoride. They used the environments within molecules as a sort of microscopic particle collider, which contained the radium atom’s electrons and encouraged them to briefly penetrate the atom’s .

Typically, experiments to probe the inside of atomic nuclei involve massive, kilometers-long facilities that accelerate beams of electrons to speeds fast enough to collide with and break apart nuclei. The team’s new molecule-based method offers a tabletop alternative to directly probe the inside of an atom’s nucleus.

Gluten sensitivity linked to gut–brain interaction, not gluten itself, study finds

A study has revealed that gluten sensitivity, which affects approximately 10% of the global population, is not actually about gluten but part of the way the gut and brain interact.

The findings are expected to set a new benchmark for how gluten sensitivity is defined, diagnosed and treated.

The research review, published today in The Lancet, examined current published evidence for non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS) to better understand this highly prevalent condition.

Family and peer conflicts predict teenage mental health issues, study finds

Identifying the factors that contribute to psychopathology and increase the risk of experiencing specific mental health conditions is a long-standing goal for many psychology researchers. While past studies have highlighted the crucial role of some experiences, particularly challenging events unfolding during childhood and adolescence, in the development of mental health disorders, their influence is often difficult to quantify and differentiate from other factors that could contribute to psychopathology.

Recent technological advances, particularly the development of increasingly sophisticated and computational analysis tools, have opened new possibilities for the study of disorders and their underlying patterns. When used to analyze the large amounts of data collected by and professionals over the past decades, these methods could help to uncover correlations between specific variables and hidden trends that are associated with psychopathology.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis and Washington University School of Medicine recently set out to explore the possible contribution of different factors to poor mental health among teenagers using data mining techniques (i.e., computational approaches to uncover patterns in data). Their findings, published in Nature Mental Health, suggest that , particularly conflicts between , bullying or a loss of reputation among peers, are the strongest predictors of psychopathology in adolescents.

A flexible lens controlled by light-activated artificial muscles promises to let soft machines see

Inspired by the human eye, our biomedical engineering lab at Georgia Tech has designed an adaptive lens made of soft, light-responsive, tissuelike materials. Our study is published in the journal Science Robotics.

Adjustable camera systems usually require a set of bulky, moving, solid lenses and a pupil in front of a camera chip to adjust focus and intensity. In contrast, human eyes perform these same functions using soft, flexible tissues in a highly compact form.

Our lens, called the photo-responsive hydrogel soft lens, or PHySL, replaces rigid components with soft polymers acting as artificial muscles. The polymers are composed of a hydrogel —a water-based polymer material. This hydrogel muscle changes the shape of a soft lens to alter the lens’s focal length, a mechanism analogous to the ciliary muscles in the human eye.

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