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Even or odd numbers: A single molecule makes all the difference in the quantum world

The researchers in the Quantum Detection Microscopy group at CIC nanoGUNE, in collaboration with chemists at CiQUS of the University of Santiago de Compostela, have demonstrated that adding or removing a single molecule from a quantum chain can fundamentally change its interaction with a superconductor.

The key lies in a property as simple as parity—that is, whether the chain contains an even or odd number of units. While chains with an odd number interact magnetically with the superconductor, those with an even number do not. The results of this study have been published in the journal Nature.

A Virus Gives Itself Away the Moment It Attacks

Researchers have found the trigger behind a powerful bacterial defense against viruses.

Viruses that prey on bacteria could become an increasingly important tool for treating bacterial infections, particularly as antibiotic resistance makes some infections harder to control. These viruses, known as bacteriophages (phages), can infect and destroy harmful bacteria without damaging human cells.

Using phages as treatments, however, comes with a major challenge. Bacteria are not defenseless against viruses. They possess their own immune systems, and understanding those defenses could help scientists design phage therapies that are better able to overcome them.

This “Lightsaber” Beam Is Actually a Working Radio Antenna

A plasma antenna resembling a lightsaber has transmitted radio waves and could let future spacecraft retune and redirect their antennas by adjusting a laser.

Changing a radio antenna’s length can be difficult in space exploration equipment, even though that dimension helps determine which frequencies it can transmit and receive. Researchers have now demonstrated a possible alternative by transmitting radio waves with an antenna made from a laser-generated column of plasma.

“One of the questions we wanted to explore with this work was whether it would be possible to create plasma antennas using lasers, which would allow us to generate antennas at whatever length was needed,” says Prya Darshni, corresponding author of the journal article describing the work and a Ph.D. student at North Carolina State University. “And we have now shown that it is possible.”

NASA Captures a Strange Formation on Earth With a Surprising Lunar Connection

A NASA astronaut captured a stunning 600-million-year-old rock formation in Madagascar that shares a surprising geological connection with the Moon.

A striking patch of bright rock in southern Madagascar has an unexpected connection to the Moon. Surrounded by rocks that were twisted and stretched by ancient geological forces, the formation contains anorthosite, the same type of rock that makes up much of the Moon’s bright highlands.

Viewed from space, the unusual formation stands out against Madagascar’s dry, rugged landscape. Anorthosite is an igneous rock found in abundance on the Moon, where it forms the highly reflective regions known as the lunar highlands. These pale regions are so prominent that they can be distinguished from Earth without a telescope.

Scientists Discover a Surprising Shortcut to Nuclear Fusion

Scientists may have found a surprising shortcut to nuclear fusion that could dramatically cut the energy needed to ignite the power of the Sun.

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) have identified a potentially much more efficient way to achieve nuclear fusion, the process that powers the Sun. Their calculations suggest that changing the order in which plasma is heated and compressed could dramatically reduce the energy needed to reach ignition, a crucial milestone in the pursuit of practical fusion power.

For more than seven decades, scientists have relied on an equation called the Lawson criterion to determine whether plasma can remain sufficiently hot and dense for long enough to sustain fusion reactions without additional external heating. Developed in the 1950s, this equation establishes the conditions required for ignition, but it does not explain the most efficient way to achieve them.

Webb Discovers Something Extraordinary in the Clouds of a World With No Sun

A world with no sunrise still has changing skies, and Webb has caught its water clouds thickening and thinning just 7.5 light-years away.

Astronomers have tracked weather on WISE 855, the coldest known brown dwarf, using the James Webb Space Telescope. A team led by Brittany Miles of the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory watched the Jupiter-sized object for 11 hours, recording a spectrum of its light every 15 minutes. Those observations allowed researchers to distinguish shifting water clouds from gases carried upward by heat deep inside the atmosphere.

The findings, published in The Astrophysical Journal, provide the most detailed time-series view yet of this frigid neighbor. They also offer the first direct confirmation that water clouds on another world change thickness over time, a familiar feature of weather on Earth.

Researchers Demonstrate OpenBSD Root Exploit Chaining 37-Year-Old Shared-Memory Bug

A local privilege escalation exploit published today gains root on OpenBSD 7.9 by chaining a roughly 37-year-old integer overflow with a separate kernel flaw, bypassing OpenBSD’s KARL kernel-address randomization and its SMAP and SMEP hardware protections. Security firm Calif, which found and reported the flaws, published a detailed writeup and full proof-of-concept code after OpenBSD shipped patches for both issues in September.

The integer overflow in the shmat attach function was fixed in errata 018, shipped September 14 as a reliability fix. The reference-counting use-after-free that completes the chain was fixed separately in errata 26, shipped September 30 as a security fix.

Both are available through syspatch and cover all architectures. OpenBSD 7.8 also received the integer-overflow fix.

Attackers Tampered with AOMEI Backupper’s Update Servers for Minutes to Deliver a Backdoor

Attackers repeatedly changed the files that AOMEI Backupper fetches from the vendor’s own update servers, in windows of five to ten minutes at a time between May and July 2026, so that any copy of the Windows backup program that checked for an update during one of those windows would download and run a backdoor.

Google Threat Intelligence Group, Mandiant, and ManageEngine’s Threat Analysis Lab, which disclosed the campaign this week, say AOMEI has reported fixing its servers, but that fix does not remove the backdoor from machines that were already hit.

AOMEI Backupper is Windows backup and disk-cloning software made by AOMEI Technology, a vendor registered in Hong Kong. Like the company’s remote-desktop tool AnyViewer, it runs background services that regularly check AOMEI’s servers over HTTPS for software updates and promotional pop-ups.