https://phys.org/physics-news/physics/ en-us The latest news on physics, materials, nanotech, science and technology. By remotely accessing an IBM quantum computer, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has successfully simulated a key process in particle physics: hadronization. Although based on a simplified model of quantum mechanics, the project lays the groundwork for how physicists can leverage the power of quantum computers to make large scientific calculations beyond the capabilities of classical supercomputers. The research is published in the journal Physical Review D. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-quantum-simulates-hadronization-qubits.html General Physics Tue, 30 Jun 2026 18:40:01 EDT news702058201 Plutonium is one of the most complex elements in the periodic table. First synthesized and isolated in 1940 by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, plutonium has been studied closely for more than eight decades. It's most often associated with its role in nuclear security, but it's also vital to nuclear power, where it is produced in reactors and can be recycled as fuel. Despite plutonium's importance, some of its most fundamental behaviors remain a mystery. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-plutonium-compound-rare-topological-quantum.html General Physics Mon, 29 Jun 2026 19:30:01 EDT news701969521 The world's most powerful particle accelerator will shutter operations Monday for four years of renovations to dramatically boost its collision capacity and the potential for unlocking one of the greatest mysteries of the universe: dark matter. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-world-largest-particle-smasher-halts.html General Physics Sat, 27 Jun 2026 15:29:47 EDT news701792967 In quantum mechanics, the geometry of quantum states has emerged as a powerful framework for understanding phenomena ranging from electrical conductivity to superconductivity. One research direction aims to extend these geometric concepts to non-Hermitian quantum mechanics—where systems can exchange energy with their environment—including the generalization of the Berry phase, a key geometric quantity, to the non-Hermitian case. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-hermitian-geometry-reveals-quantum-amplification.html General Physics Sat, 27 Jun 2026 11:00:02 EDT news701439389 Scientists at Delft University of Technology, in collaboration with Waymo, have developed a new model that predicts with high accuracy how human drivers respond to dangerous traffic situations. For the first time, different types of collision avoidance behavior are combined into a single model. The results will be published on 10 June in Nature Communications. Waymo is already using the model to compare the performance of its autonomous vehicles with that of human drivers. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-humanlike-accuracy.html General Physics Sat, 27 Jun 2026 08:30:01 EDT news700414030 Controlling and trapping molecules, units of a substance consisting of two or more chemically bound atoms, with laser light is significantly more challenging than trapping individual atoms. This is because molecules exhibit more complex vibrational and rotational dynamics that make them more difficult to cool and trap. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-metal-hydride-molecule-laser-path.html General Physics Fri, 26 Jun 2026 07:40:01 EDT news701522897 A study published in Nature Physics provides new molecular-level evidence from simulations that liquid water is not a single uniform substance, but a constantly shifting mixture of two distinct microscopic structures. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-scientists-molecular-evidence-liquid.html General Physics Thu, 25 Jun 2026 14:20:03 EDT news701609342 When the desert horned lizard (Phrynosoma platyrhinos) is thirsty, it cannot just lap up water or scoop it up like a bird because it lives in environments where water is extremely scarce. Typically, it's found in damp soil or, even more rarely, in drops of rain. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-thirsty-lizards-harvesting.html General Physics Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:10:01 EDT news701599639 Gravity, the force that attracts objects toward each other, is currently framed by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. This framework describes gravity as the curvature of spacetime, the invisible four-dimensional fabric of the universe. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-thermodynamic-approach-gravity-cosmic-dark.html General Physics Thu, 25 Jun 2026 08:20:01 EDT news701522878 Sound waves, light waves and other types of waves, generally spread freely through space and over time. In 1958, physicist Philip W. Anderson first described a phenomenon via which irregularities or other sources of disorder in materials would prevent waves from propagating freely, which is now known as Anderson localization. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-quantum-reveal-sided-motion-elusive.html General Physics Thu, 25 Jun 2026 06:40:01 EDT news701429151 Deep inside gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, hydrogen and helium coexist under pressures millions of times greater than Earth's atmosphere. Under those conditions, helium may separate from hydrogen and influence a planet's internal heat flow, structure and magnetic field. Understanding these processes and how these materials behave under extreme conditions is essential to building accurate models of planetary evolution. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-laser-helium-pressures.html General Physics Wed, 24 Jun 2026 19:50:01 EDT news701539261 Over the past decade, Professor L. Mahadevan's Soft Math Lab at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has helped establish how the ancient Japanese paper arts of folding or cutting can be used to inversely design structures that transform dramatically in shape and function. Now, the researchers have created a new class of shape-changing matter, based not on folds or cuts, but linkages—networks of interconnected scissor mechanisms that collapse into lines and deploy into curved surfaces. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-collapsible-scissored-surfaces-trilogy-metamaterial.html General Physics Wed, 24 Jun 2026 15:20:03 EDT news701524441 Diamonds have long been coveted for their beauty. Their dazzling color and clarity make them perfect candidates for luxury jewelry. However, it's their other unique characteristics, including their hardness, thermal conductivity and chemical resistance, that make diamonds suitable for various applications in industry and advanced technologies. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-diamond-high-quantum-materials.html General Physics Wed, 24 Jun 2026 11:00:01 EDT news701516613 From detecting the ripples of colliding black holes to imaging individual chemical bonds, mechanical transducers have repeatedly transformed our understanding of the universe. So far, however, the sensitivity of these devices has been intrinsically limited by the laws of quantum mechanics itself. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-quantum-sidesteps-limits-mechanical-transducers.html General Physics Wed, 24 Jun 2026 10:40:02 EDT news701516322 When a physics student asked baristas at the Warsaw Coffee Conference what their biggest question for scientists was, the baristas said they wanted to know how to stop channeling during brewing. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-espresso-pucks-pressures.html General Physics Tue, 23 Jun 2026 11:00:08 EDT news701347039 Modern physics theories highlight the key role of horizons—boundaries beyond which information cannot reach an observer—in a variety of cosmological and gravitational phenomena. Two renowned examples of these boundaries are event horizons in black holes and the cosmological horizon of the de Sitter spacetime, a model of an expanding universe with a positive vacuum energy. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-horizon-edge-states-gain-finite.html General Physics Tue, 23 Jun 2026 08:20:01 EDT news701343470 Ask a child to draw some poo, and the shape will invariably be the same: a coil, broad at the base and pointy at the top, similar to a spiral swirl of soft-serve ice cream. In fact, the often-used poo emoji has this exact shape, as do most actual mounds of feces found in nature. Exceptions occur, though, particularly in the feces of some worms that extrude their excrement "upside down" from the ground. As it turns out, there is remarkable physics behind these differences in poo shapes. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-poo-emoji-earthworm-pasta-obey.html General Physics Mon, 22 Jun 2026 11:40:02 EDT news701344983 The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory has reached a key early milestone in developing radiofrequency control systems for the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC)—a next-generation research facility that will collide electrons with ions to reveal how the building blocks of matter are held together. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-electron-ion-collider-radiofrequency-real.html General Physics Mon, 22 Jun 2026 08:00:01 EDT news701333761 A researcher at Kyushu University and his collaborators have shown that continuous parameters in quantum gravity may not be freely adjustable "dials" from outside the theory, but rather arise from operators within the theory itself, supporting the century-old claim by Albert Einstein about the fundamental laws of nature. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-quantum-gravity-links-parameters-local.html General Physics Sat, 20 Jun 2026 15:00:01 EDT news700921138 Belgian scientist Francois Englert, a particle physics specialist who won the Nobel Prize in 2013 for his work on the Higgs boson, has died at 93. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-belgian-nobel-laureate-francois-englert.html General Physics Sat, 20 Jun 2026 03:10:01 EDT news701143025 Physicists in China have observed five phases in localization physics within a single quantum system. Using an advanced photonic platform, the team, led by Yucheng Wang and Jingyun Fan at the Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, has demonstrated that localization physics is likely far richer than physicists anticipated. Their results have been published in Physical Review Letters. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-phases-localization-physics-quantum.html General Physics Fri, 19 Jun 2026 07:00:12 EDT news700992908 Physicists at UC Santa Cruz and other institutes across California and New Mexico have developed a detection system that will allow next-generation particle accelerators to better reveal fundamental biological and chemical processes, as well as advance critical areas such as materials science and energy research. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-diamond-based-particle-detector-captures.html General Physics Thu, 18 Jun 2026 19:00:02 EDT news701015641 Scientists studying particle collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) usually capture what happens when atomic nuclei smash into one another at nearly the speed of light. But even when the nuclei don't collide, interesting things can happen. In a new paper just published in Physical Review Letters, members of RHIC's STAR collaboration describe a new way to use near-miss collisions at RHIC to study what's going on inside the nucleus. The approach advances the reach of RHIC, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science user facility at DOE's Brookhaven National Laboratory, into the next frontier in nuclear physics—a journey into the inner workings of the building blocks of matter. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-flipped-quantum-clearer-gluon-nuclear.html General Physics Wed, 17 Jun 2026 18:20:01 EDT news700920181 A prototype quantum sensor developed by researchers at Imperial has demonstrated for the first time that a key principle behind next-generation quantum detectors can work under realistic conditions. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-quantum-sensor-major-obstacle-dark.html General Physics Wed, 17 Jun 2026 11:00:07 EDT news700820402 Experimental atomic physicists have discovered there is a maximum amount of electrical resistance, or resistivity, that can result from collisions between electrons. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-physicists-upper-limit-resistivity-pure.html General Physics Tue, 16 Jun 2026 16:30:01 EDT news700842361 A University of Melbourne researcher has placed the strongest constraints yet on certain rare decays of subatomic particles, narrowing the window for where new "hidden" particles could be lurking. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-rare-meson-decays-tighten-hidden.html General Physics Tue, 16 Jun 2026 15:40:04 EDT news700829881 Trinity's Prof. Stefan Sint, along with collaborators from Germany, Spain and Italy, has published the most precise determination to date of the strong coupling constant. This parameter governs the interactions between quarks and gluons, the fundamental components of nuclear matter. The new result halves the error of all previous experimental measurements combined, setting a new benchmark for the Standard Model, which summarizes our current knowledge of elementary particle physics. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-precise-nuclear.html General Physics Mon, 15 Jun 2026 12:20:05 EDT news700736867 When a star dies, it generates an explosion of elemental nuclei and hurls them into space. Those elements, called cosmic rays, travel at nearly the speed of light, and eventually some of them encounter manmade detectors. Recording how many of each of these elements show up helps scientists better understand cosmic processes—but despite incredible research advances over the last century, uncertainty around how these elements transform as they travel across the light-years has left fundamental questions about our galaxy's composition unanswered. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-unique-chromium-cosmic-ray-galactic.html General Physics Sat, 13 Jun 2026 23:20:01 EDT news700547811 In the next few decades, many physicists are hopeful that nuclear fusion could become a realistic source of practically limitless energy. But before this can happen, it will be critical to ensure that reactors cannot be covertly misused to produce materials for nuclear weapons. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-fusion-reactors-covert-plutonium-production.html General Physics Sat, 13 Jun 2026 13:00:03 EDT news700233543 A team of researchers has leveraged a supercomputer at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory to reveal the internal structure of a pion in unprecedented detail. The findings are published in the Journal of High Energy Physics. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-supercomputer-illuminates-subatomic-particle.html General Physics Sat, 13 Jun 2026 13:00:02 EDT news700477961