Interactions & forces, as a research area, focuses on the quantitative description and theoretical understanding of how physical entities influence one another via fundamental interactions and emergent effective forces. It encompasses studies of gravitational, electromagnetic, strong, and weak interactions, along with interatomic, intermolecular, and many-body forces in condensed matter, soft matter, and plasma systems. Research typically integrates field theories, potential models, and numerical simulations to characterize force laws, energy landscapes, and response functions across scales, from subatomic particles to macroscopic structures, enabling predictive models of structure, dynamics, and phase behavior in diverse physical and engineered systems.
A team of scientists from Skoltech and MIPT has investigated how the Casimir effect can be used to precisely control the angular orientation of nanostructures. The results of the study have been published in the journal Physical ...
Nanophysics
May 6, 2026
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9
Researchers at the University of Oxford have demonstrated a new type of quantum interaction using a single trapped ion. By creating and controlling increasingly complex forms of "squeezing" – including a fourth-order effect ...
General Physics
May 1, 2026
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155
In tissue engineering, the tiniest bit of improper force can harm a living culture. Spheroids—3D clumps of cells—can be used to model complex human tissues, because they can re-create specific cell-to-cell and cell-to-matrix ...
Cell & Microbiology
Apr 28, 2026
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11
Light does more than illuminate the world—it can also push and twist matter. It was back in the 1870s that James Clerk Maxwell first predicted that light carries momentum and can exert pressure on objects. Nearly a century ...
Optics & Photonics
Apr 20, 2026
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48
2D materials are widely seen as a promising path toward better computer chips. Researchers at TU Wien have now shown that some of these materials are unsuitable due to an underestimated effect. But there are alternatives.
Nanophysics
Apr 20, 2026
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87
Have you ever wished to drive microscopic matter along an arbitrarily tailored trajectory instead of just a circle? That's exactly what we set out to achieve.
Although the fundamental constitutive laws for steel and concrete were established more than a century ago, weak layers in snow remain a mystery. There are currently two theories about how they fail. A study published in ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 15, 2026
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5
When tectonic plates move, they rarely do so smoothly. Sometimes they slide almost imperceptibly; at other times, stress is suddenly released—resulting in an earthquake. What exactly governs this behavior remains one of the ...
Earth Sciences
Apr 9, 2026
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13
Researchers at the National University of Singapore (NUS) have built a molecular "leash" to pull directly on a force-sensing protein called Piezo1, and discovered it switches on at about 15 piconewtons, proving that it can ...
Biotechnology
Apr 7, 2026
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7
Plants need water, light, and air to thrive. But when they transport water from the soil up to their leaves, they defy gravity. Scientists describe this astonishing phenomenon as "negative water potential," a form of negative ...
Molecular & Computational biology
Mar 23, 2026
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