https://phys.org/physics-news/physics/ en-us The latest news on physics, materials, nanotech, science and technology. Crystals, bacterial colonies, flame fronts: the growth of surfaces was first described in the 1980s by the Kardar–Parisi–Zhang equation. Since then, it has been regarded as a fundamental model in physics, with implications for mathematics, biology, and computer science. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-universal-surface-growth-law-dimensions.html General Physics Fri, 10 Apr 2026 18:20:02 EDT news695047237 A new type of radiofrequency trap can capture particles with extremely different requirements and could theoretically hold both types of particles at the same time. Researchers in the group of Professor Dmitry Budker from the PRISMA++ Cluster of Excellence and the Helmholtz Institute at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) were able to trap calcium ions or electrons in the same apparatus. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-dual-frequency-paul-potential-antihydrogen.html General Physics Fri, 10 Apr 2026 13:10:01 EDT news695044661 Deep underground in a Canadian mine, a refrigerator nearly 1,000 times colder than outer space has just reached its target temperature—a milestone that brings scientists one step closer to potentially detecting dark matter, the invisible material thought to make up most of the mass in the universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-dark-detector-milestone.html General Physics Fri, 10 Apr 2026 09:40:04 EDT news695030161 For years, Rutgers physicist David Shih solved Rubik's Cubes with his children, twisting the colorful squares until the scrambled puzzle returned to order. He didn't expect the toy to connect to his research, but recently he realized the logic behind the puzzle was exactly what he needed to solve a problem involving particle physics. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ai-rubik-cube-solver-particle.html General Physics Wed, 08 Apr 2026 15:20:04 EDT news694871223 When fundamental particles are heavier or lighter than expected, physicists' understanding of the universe can tip into the unknown. A particle that is just beyond its predicted mass can unravel scientists' assumptions about the forces that make up all of matter and space. But now, a new precision measurement has reset the balance and confirmed scientists' theories, at least for one of the universe's core building blocks. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-physicists-mass-fundamental-boson-particle.html General Physics Wed, 08 Apr 2026 12:00:08 EDT news694775101 Nearly every object we interact with in our lives has a mass, but where does this mass come from? Modern physics says matter acquires its mass from interaction with a physical vacuum—it is not an empty space, but contains a complex structure. Investigating the system of a meson—a composite particle made of a quark, an elementary particle, and its anti-matter, anti-quark—bound to an atomic nucleus, a mesic nucleus, provides precious insight into the vacuum structure, or mass generation mechanism. Scientists are now one step closer to further understanding the origin of mass thanks to new experimental results on a completely new type of mesic nucleus. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-mesic-nuclei-reveal-mass.html General Physics Tue, 07 Apr 2026 16:50:01 EDT news694797241 In a new Nature Physics publication, University of Amsterdam researchers introduce human-made materials that spring to life. These 'metamaterials' don't just learn to change shape, but can autonomously adapt their shape-changing strategy, perform reflex actions and move around like living systems do. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-metamaterial-chains-hinge.html General Physics Tue, 07 Apr 2026 14:20:05 EDT news694780502 The doctoral thesis of Sophia Hollick, Ph.D. '25, a recent graduate of Yale's Wright Lab in professor Reina Maruyama's group, has significantly contributed to answering a decades-long question in her field about whether or not a signal observed in an experiment that has taken data since 1997 was indicative of a direct detection of dark matter. The results of her analysis, which have excluded the dark matter explanation with greater confidence, were published in Physics Review Letters in the article "Combined Annual Modulation Dark Matter Search with COSINE-100 and ANAIS-112." https://phys.org/news/2026-04-refute-dark.html General Physics Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:40:04 EDT news694698063 An instrument that uses high-energy electrons to take "snapshots" of ultrafast chemical processes at the atomic and molecular level just got a major upgrade. Researchers have conducted the first experiment using a new detector, installed in the megaelectronvolt ultrafast electron diffraction (MeV-UED) instrument, at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-detector-triples-electron-camera-enabling.html General Physics Mon, 06 Apr 2026 09:00:03 EDT news694684441 One of the greatest mysteries of modern physics, the "black hole information paradox," might have finally found an elegant solution, and the answer could also reveal the origins of the mass of fundamental particles. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-secrets-black-holes-higgs-mass.html General Physics Fri, 03 Apr 2026 08:40:01 EDT news694423741 Researchers at IPhT (CEA, CNRS) and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have shown that gravity—and with it, supersymmetry—emerge as logical necessities whenever a massive spin-3/2 particle exists in nature. Two principles are enough: causality, the fact that no signal can travel faster than light, and unitarity, the requirement that probabilities are conserved in quantum mechanics. The structure of supergravity is not assumed: it bootstraps itself. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-gravity-positivity-massive-particle-logically.html General Physics Thu, 02 Apr 2026 12:00:05 EDT news694343281 Australia's bid to detect elusive dark matter has taken a major step forward, with new research confirming that cosmic radiation levels deep inside the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL) are low enough to support the world-class experiment that will commence later this year. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-underground-lab-crucial-hurdle-dark.html General Physics Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:40:01 EDT news694342788 For the first time, an international team of physicists has successfully harnessed a rare orbital transition in atoms of ytterbium to create a new type of atomic clock that is both highly precise and extremely sensitive to fundamental physical effects. Publishing their results in Nature Photonics, the researchers, led by Taiki Ishiyama at Kyoto University, say their approach could pave the way for some of the most stringent tests yet of predictions made by the Standard Model. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-ytterbium-atomic-clock-window-fundamental.html General Physics Thu, 02 Apr 2026 10:00:01 EDT news694338430 Gravitational waves could be responsible for the production of dark matter during the early phases of our universe's formation, according to results of a new study by Professor Joachim Kopp from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the PRISMA Cluster of Excellence in cooperation with Dr. Azadeh Maleknejad from Swansea University. Their work, published in Physical Review Letters, presents new calculations that explore a novel mechanism for the formation of dark matter through so-called stochastic gravitational waves. https://phys.org/news/2026-04-gravitational-candidates-dark.html General Physics Wed, 01 Apr 2026 12:40:02 EDT news694258335 In case of an emergency, the Federal Aviation Administration requires aircraft to be able to evacuate within 90 seconds. However, as the median age of the global population increases, the growing number of elderly airline passengers poses new challenges during emergency situations. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-planes-evacuate-seconds-simulations-safest.html General Physics Tue, 31 Mar 2026 11:00:01 EDT news694079435 Quantum physicists at ANU have observed atoms entangled in motion. "It's really weird for us to think that this is how the universe works," says Dr. Sean Hodgman from the ANU Research School of Physics. "You can read about it in a textbook, but it's really weird to think that a particle can be in two places at once." https://phys.org/news/2026-03-pairs-atoms.html General Physics Mon, 30 Mar 2026 15:20:01 EDT news694090561 Physicists have developed a new theoretical framework which unifies a wide array of seemingly unrelated "Mpemba effects": counterintuitive cases where systems driven further from equilibrium relax faster than those closer to it. Reporting their results in Physical Review X, researchers led by John Goold at Trinity College Dublin show that both classical and quantum versions of the effect can be understood using the same underlying logic—resolving a long-standing conceptual puzzle. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-framework-classical-quantum-mpemba-effects.html General Physics Mon, 30 Mar 2026 12:00:04 EDT news694084297 CERN scientists on Tuesday pulled off the unprecedented feat of transporting antiprotons by road, successfully test-driving the world's first antimatter delivery system, with an eye to one day supplying research labs across Europe. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-world-antimatter-cern.html General Physics Sun, 29 Mar 2026 16:30:04 EDT news693582667 Waterloo scientists have developed a new way to understand how the universe began, and it could change what we know about the Big Bang and the earliest moments of cosmic history. Their work suggests that the universe's rapid early expansion could have arisen naturally from a deeper, more complete theory of quantum gravity. The paper, "Ultraviolet completion of the Big Bang in quadratic gravity," appears in Physical Review Letters. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-quadratic-gravity-theory-reshapes-quantum.html General Physics Sun, 29 Mar 2026 09:00:12 EDT news693745058 When an invisible entity making up 85% of the universe's mass stumps the greatest scientific minds of our time, awe is an understandable response. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-wrangling-dark-scientists-torah-krishna.html General Physics Sun, 29 Mar 2026 08:20:01 EDT news693990379 A recent study published in Physical Review Letters reveals that many widely used signatures of criticality in brain data may be statistical artifacts. They propose a more robust framework that, when applied to whole-brain fMRI data, confirms the brain operates near, but not exactly at, a critical point. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-human-brain-critical.html General Physics Sat, 28 Mar 2026 14:50:02 EDT news693652558 With a new lab-based experiment, researchers in the UK and France have recreated the characteristic cascades of energy and angular momentum that underpin key features of Earth's atmosphere. Reporting in Physical Review Letters, a team led by Peter Read at the University of Oxford has gained fresh insights into how energy fluctuations in turbulent flows are linked to their size, while also uncovering behaviors that current atmospheric models can't yet explain. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-lab-based-mini-atmosphere-reveals.html General Physics Sat, 28 Mar 2026 13:10:01 EDT news693564715 Dark matter, a type of matter that does not emit, reflect or absorb light, is predicted to account for most of the matter in the universe. As it eludes common experimental techniques for studying ordinary matter, understanding the nature and composition of dark matter has so far proved very challenging. One hypothesis is that it is made up of hypothetical particles known as quantum chromodynamics (QCD) axions. These are theoretical elementary particles that would interact very weakly with ordinary matter and are predicted to be extremely light, highly stable and electrically neutral. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-piezoelectric-materials-enable-approach-axions.html General Physics Fri, 27 Mar 2026 08:00:01 EDT news693760593 Particle accelerators reveal the heart of nuclear matter by smashing together atoms at close to the speed of light. The high-energy collisions produce a shower of subatomic fragments that scientists can then study to reconstruct the core building blocks of matter. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-particle-illuminate-physics.html General Physics Thu, 26 Mar 2026 16:00:05 EDT news693748981 Using X-ray lasers, researchers at Stockholm University have been able to determine the existence of a critical point in supercooled water at around -63 °C and 1,000 atmospheres. Ordinary water at higher temperatures and lower pressures is strongly affected by the presence of this critical point, causing the origin of its strange properties. The findings are published in the journal Science. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-ray-lasers-enable-discovery-critical.html General Physics Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:00:14 EDT news693735481 A new independent measurement by the CMS experiment at the LHC is consistent with the existence of the most massive composite particle ever observed, the momentary union of a top quark and its antiquark https://phys.org/news/2026-03-independent-case-toponium.html General Physics Thu, 26 Mar 2026 12:20:02 EDT news693745800 For the first time, a team of physicists in Austria has carried out an experiment that appears to verify the principle of indefinite causal order: an idea that suggests that timelines of events can exist in multiple orders at the same time. Led by Carla Richter at the Vienna Center for Quantum Science and Technology, the researchers hope their result could finally allow physicists to verify a key prediction of quantum theory. The results have been published in PRX Quantum. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-quantum-events.html General Physics Thu, 26 Mar 2026 11:20:01 EDT news693734676 Their mass is extremely low, but how light are neutrinos really? A collaboration comprising German and international research groups has optimized its experiments to determine the mass of these "ghost particles." In doing so, they succeeded in further adjusting downward the upper limit on the neutrino mass scale that had previously been determined in similar experiments. The study is published in the journal Physical Review Letters. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-cool-detectors-neutrino-mass-upper.html General Physics Wed, 25 Mar 2026 18:40:03 EDT news693671521 For decades, it has been widely believed that electrons move most efficiently in materials that are clean and highly ordered. Much like water flowing more easily through a smooth pipe, conventional wisdom has held that electrical transport improves as a material's internal structure becomes more perfectly arranged. However, a recent study shows that the opposite can also be true. A research team at POSTECH in South Korea has discovered that engineered disorder can actually enhance electron transport. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-disorder-mechanism-amplifies-transverse-electron.html General Physics Wed, 25 Mar 2026 16:00:06 EDT news693661981 A fascination with fish gills has led researchers at Cornell to develop a bio-inspired approach to mixing heat and molecules in fluids—findings that could inform future biomedical devices, heat exchangers and soft robotics. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-fish-gill-panels-reveal-path.html General Physics Tue, 24 Mar 2026 12:20:03 EDT news693570121