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2024, for all of its challenges, has seen a remarkable amount of scientific discoveries by Israeli researchers across various disciplines.

From novel approaches to treating cancer to unraveling the intricacies of the human gut biome, these findings not only expand our understanding of the world but also pave the way for groundbreaking advancements in the future.

Let’s delve into 24 of the most fascinating discoveries made by Israeli scientists in 2024.


Take a look at these groundbreaking discoveries by Israeli researchers that are shaping our understanding of the world and its complexities.

Recent findings from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument suggest the possibility of new physics that extends beyond the current standard model of cosmology. Using the lab’s new Aurora exascale computing system, the research team conducted high-resolution simulations of the universe’s evoluti

MIT scientists have snapped the first-ever images of individual atoms interacting freely in space, making visible the elusive quantum effects that govern their behavior. Using a unique technique that briefly traps atoms in place with a lattice of light, the researchers captured never-before-seen

A Princeton team uncovered a surprising chiral quantum state in a supposedly non-chiral material, shedding light on elusive symmetry-breaking effects and opening doors to new quantum technologies. Chirality, the property of being different from one’s mirror image, has fascinated scientists in fie

Arianna Gleason is an award-winning scientist at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory who studies matter in its most extreme forms—from roiling magma in the center of our planet to the conditions inside the heart of distant stars. During Fusion Energy Week, Gleason discussed the current state of fusion energy research and how SLAC is helping push the field forward.

Fusion is at the heart of every star. The tremendous pressure and temperature at the center of a star fuses atoms together, creating many of the elements you see on the periodic table and generating an immense amount of energy.

Fusion is exciting, because it could provide unlimited energy to our . We’re trying to replicate here on Earth, though it’s a tremendous challenge for science and engineering.

In a paper published in Physical Review C, the ALICE collaboration reports measurements that quantify the transmutation of lead into gold in CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Transforming the base metal lead into the precious metal gold was a dream of medieval alchemists. This long-standing quest, known as chrysopoeia, may have been motivated by the observation that dull gray, relatively abundant lead is of a similar density to gold, which has long been coveted for its beautiful color and rarity. It was only much later that it became clear that lead and gold are distinct chemical elements and that chemical methods are powerless to transmute one into the other.

With the dawn of nuclear physics in the 20th century, it was discovered that could transform into others—either naturally, by radioactive decay—or in the laboratory, under a bombardment of neutrons or protons. Though gold has been artificially produced in this way before, the ALICE collaboration has now measured the transmutation of lead into gold by a new mechanism involving near-miss collisions between at the LHC.

In collisions of argon and scandium atomic nuclei, scientists from the international NA61/SHINE experiment have observed a clear anomaly indicative of a violation of one of the most important symmetries of the quark world: the approximate flavor symmetry between up and down quarks.

The existence of the anomaly may be due to hitherto unknown inadequacies in current nuclear models, but the potential connection to the long-sought-after “new physics” cannot be ruled out.

If we were to assemble a structure using the same number of wooden and plastic blocks, we would expect the proportions between the blocks of the two types not to alter after it has been dismantled. Physicists have so far lived in the belief that a similar of the initial and final states, called flavor symmetry, occurs in collisions between particles containing up and down quarks.

Eyes may be the window to the soul, but a person’s biological age could be reflected in their facial characteristics. Investigators from Mass General Brigham developed a deep learning algorithm called “FaceAge” that uses a photo of a person’s face to predict biological age and survival outcomes for patients with cancer.

They found that patients with , on average, had a higher FaceAge than those without and appeared about five years older than their .

Older FaceAge predictions were associated with worse overall across multiple cancer types. They also found that FaceAge outperformed clinicians in predicting short-term life expectancies of patients receiving palliative radiotherapy.