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New optogenetic tool inhibits activity in neurons and heart muscle cells

Researchers from Ruhr University Bochum have partnered with colleagues in Göttingen, Berlin, Paris and Essen to develop new optogenetic tools that can selectively inhibit cellular activity through light. These tools could help investigate diseases in which the balance between excitation and inhibition is disrupted, such as cardiac arrhythmias.

The team working alongside Dr. Brix Mücher, Dr. Ida Siveke and professor Stefan Herlitze from the Department of General Zoology and Neurobiology at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, reports its findings in the journal Science Signaling on Oct. 20, 2026.

Optogenetic tools can be used to activate and deactivate nerve cells via light. In their present study, the researchers coupled a light-sensitive receptor named Opn4L to a modified potassium channel named GIRK1, which activates a G-protein-coupled signaling pathway.

Atomic memory keeps distant ions entangled for about 10 seconds

Quantum networks, systems that connect devices and allow them to exchange information encoded in the quantum states of particles, could enable more secure communications. To build these networks, physicists need to devise strategies that allow distant particles to share quantum states, preserving them long enough to perform calculations or enable communication between devices.

Researchers at the University of Oxford recently realized a quantum network with four qubits (i.e., units of quantum information) encoded in trapped ions distributed between two locations linked by optical fibers. This network, outlined in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, relied on electrically charged atoms held in place by electromagnetic fields, also known as trapped ions.

“The work grew out of our efforts to build a quantum network in which each node can do more than create an entangled link to another node,” Dr. Gabriel Araneda, co-senior author of the paper, told Phys.org.

Laser-made lattice reveals discrete light solitons in tunable atomic vapor

Scientists from the Quantum Technologies Group at the Institute of Physics Zagreb, in collaboration with a colleague from the Physics Department at the Faculty of Science (PMF), have experimentally demonstrated for the first time the existence of discrete one-dimensional (1D) solitons in an optically induced photonic lattice in warm rubidium vapor.

The work was published in Laser & Photonics Reviews.

These results open new possibilities for research in nonlinear optics, photonic lattice physics and complex quantum systems.

Perovskite laser maintains stable performance over 400 million pulses

In a study published in Advanced Optical Materials, researchers at Vilnius University (VU) demonstrated perovskite-based laser structures that maintained stable performance over more than 400 million pulses. Their findings address one of the major challenges limiting the practical use of perovskites: their instability. These semiconductor materials could play an important role in next-generation optical technologies, but their tendency to degrade has long posed a challenge for researchers worldwide.

In some sense, perovskites can be compared to graphene. Like perovskites, graphene spent years being studied in labs because of its potential before industry eventually began using it. Today, it’s widely applied in solar energy, electronics and batteries. Perovskites may hold even greater potential, but they come with a major drawback: they’re highly unstable and degrade quickly in the presence of moisture.

Scientists are putting effort into figuring out how to overcome these hurdles and unlock perovskites’ potential. Among these researchers are Vilnius University doctoral student and junior researcher Abdul Mannan Majeed and Dr. Patrik Ščajev.

Building brain-inspired semiconductor chips for smarter, greener data centers

With artificial intelligence (AI) data centers consuming electricity at a growing rate, identifying a sustainable computing solution to offset these massive community and environmental disruptors is proving critical.

Researchers from the University of Ottawa, Columbia University and Hanyang University believe building brain-inspired computing systems could provide the answer to this global conundrum, with small, fast, energy-efficient and scalable artificial neurons able to support the large-scale computing systems that are now regularly dotting our landscapes.

“The materials and architectures described in this review represent a fundamentally different way to process information. By operating more like a human brain than a traditional processor, these emerging technologies will lead to physical devices that are dramatically more energy-efficient, faster and adaptive,” explained lead author Dr. Kannan Udaya Mohanan, a postdoctoral fellow in professor Chang-Hyun Kim’s research group at uOttawa.

Hubble observations challenge supernova winds’ role in cosmic reionization

An international team of researchers, including members from the University of Michigan, has revealed surprising results that could rewrite our understanding of a key transition in the early universe.

Within the first billion years after the Big Bang, the universe filled with a fog of neutral hydrogen that was impenetrable to ultraviolet light. Today, however, that fog has cleared thanks to an epoch that began about 13 billion years ago known as reionization.

During reionization, energetic radiation from galaxies in the early universe collided with neutral hydrogen that made up the fog and broke it apart into charged, or ionized, protons and electrons.

X-ray free-electron laser sets new record for shortest high-energy pulses

Researchers at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have measured the shortest high-energy X-ray pulses ever recorded at an X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL). The pulses had photon energies of about 9 kiloelectronvolts (keV) and clocked in at durations of 100 to 400 attoseconds—mere billionths of a billionth of a second. The results are published in Nature Photonics.

These high-energy, or “hard,” attosecond X-ray pulses are invaluable for researchers studying the universe at its smallest, fastest scales. “The pulses are both energetic enough to look deep into atomic systems and fast enough to record electronic motion frozen in time,” said Agostino Marinelli, a study author and professor of photon science, particle physics and astrophysics at SLAC.

The challenge, Marinelli explained, wasn’t creating these ultrashort pulses, but rather proving that it had been done. “Over the course of several years, we’ve learned how to create these high-energy attosecond pulses, but measuring pulses this short is really, really difficult. This was the first diagnostic that proves the pulses are indeed only a few hundred attoseconds long.”

Ultrafast light can control ferromagnetism without relying on heating

Despite being known for more mundane uses such as sticking notes to refrigerators or keeping bags shut, magnetization is one of the most fundamental and useful properties of a material. Indeed, it forms the physical basis for storing most of our digital information, encoding the bits used in hard drives, computer memories and credit cards.

In a new study published in the journal Nature Communications, Illinois researchers have found a noninvasive way to control magnetization on the order of trillionths of a second in the ferromagnetic semiconductor chromium germanium telluride (Cr₂Ge₂Te₆, or CGT). Their technique uses ultrafast laser pulses to steer CGT’s magnetization around in time, taking advantage of an effect that couples its conduction electrons to its magnetic states.

James Webb Finds a Tiny World’s Rings Changing in Opposite Ways

James Webb has revealed unexpected changes in Chariklo’s two rings, which appear to be evolving in opposite ways over only a few years.

For much of modern astronomy, rings were believed to belong only to the giant planets of the Solar System, including Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. That assumption changed in 2013, when astronomers discovered two dense rings around Chariklo, a small body only about 250 kilometers across that travels between Saturn and Uranus at nearly 17 times the Earth-Sun distance.

On October 18, 2022, researchers led by the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia (IAA-CSIC) used the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) to examine Chariklo’s rings during a stellar occultation. This method tracks how a star’s light dims as an object passes in front of it. A new study published in Science Advances, also led by the IAA-CSIC, now shows for the first time that Chariklo’s rings can change measurably over the course of only a few years.

New Research Reveals a Hidden Weakness Inside Electric Vehicle Batteries

Researchers analyzing years of EV driving data discovered how differences between individual battery cells can intensify over time.

An electric vehicle (EV) battery can reach the end of its useful life even when many of its individual cells still have substantial capacity remaining. New research shows that a small number of rapidly aging cells can shorten the lifespan of an entire battery pack, leaving a significant share of its potential energy resources unused.

Published in Nature Energy, the study analyzed batteries operating in real vehicles over more than three years. Researchers found that differences between individual cells can reduce battery lifespan, restrict power output, and become more pronounced as vehicles accumulate mileage.