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Soft Matter news
Journey to the center of a quantized vortex: How microscopic mutual friction governs superfluid dissipation
Step inside the strange world of a superfluid, a liquid that can flow endlessly without friction, defying the common-sense rules we experience every day, where water pours, syrup sticks and coffee swirls and slows under the ...
Soft Matter
Dec 23, 2025
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Machine learning and microscopy solve 170-year-old mystery of premelting ice
Through a novel combination of machine learning and atomic force microscopy, researchers in China have unveiled the molecular surface structure of "premelted" ice, resolving a long-standing mystery surrounding the liquid-like ...
'Ouzo effect' reveals how oil droplets can resist flow and form stable patterns in liquids
Whether it's Greek ouzo, French pastis or Turkish raki, when these spirits are diluted with water, the mixture becomes cloudy. The reason for this is that the aniseed oils contained in the spirit dissolve well in alcohol ...
Soft Matter
Dec 17, 2025
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A 3D-printed Christmas tree made entirely of ice
A team of physicists from the University of Amsterdam's Institute of Physics has 3D-printed a Christmas tree made entirely of ice. Researchers Menno Demmenie, Stefan Kooij and Daniel Bonn used no freezing technology or refrigeration ...
Soft Matter
Dec 17, 2025
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Embrace chaos to get lifelike movement from synthetic materials, researchers say
When people think of high-powered machines, they'd likely think of muscle cars before their own muscles. But muscles and other living tissues can do energetic things very quickly—they twitch, snap and beat—which is how ...
General Physics
Dec 16, 2025
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The hidden physics of knot formation in fluids
Knots are everywhere—from tangled headphones to DNA strands packed inside viruses—but how an isolated filament can knot itself without collisions or external agitation has remained a longstanding puzzle in soft-matter ...
General Physics
Dec 15, 2025
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Making lighter work of calculating fluid and heat flow
Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have re-engineered the popular Lattice-Boltzmann Method (LBM) for simulating the flow of fluids and heat, making it lighter and more stable than the state-of-the-art.
General Physics
Dec 15, 2025
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Ultrashort laser pulses catch a snapshot of a 'molecular handshake'
Liquids and solutions are complex environments—think, for example, of sugar dissolving in water, where each sugar molecule becomes surrounded by a restless crowd of water molecules. Inside living cells, the picture is even ...
Optics & Photonics
Dec 14, 2025
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Long-hypothesized dynamic transition seen in deeply supercooled water for the first time
In a new study published in Nature Physics, researchers have achieved the first experimental observation of a fragile-to-strong transition in deeply supercooled water, resolving a scientific puzzle that has persisted for ...
Water's enigmatic surface: X-ray snapshots reveal atoms and molecules at work
Water is all around us, yet its surface layer—home to chemical reactions that shape life on Earth—is surprisingly hard to study. Experiments at SLAC's X-ray laser are bringing it into focus.
Optics & Photonics
Dec 12, 2025
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Using soccer balls to refine computational fluid dynamics research methods
If you're a soccer fan, you're familiar with this common sight: A penalty kick is in place, with a "wall" of defenders lined up in front of the goal, ready to leap to try to block the ball if it sails overhead.
General Physics
Dec 10, 2025
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The rhythm of swarms: Tunable particles synchronize movement like living organisms
A collaboration between the University of Konstanz and Forschungszentrum Jülich has achieved the first fully tunable experimental realization of a long predicted "swarmalator" system. The study, published in Nature Communications, ...
General Physics
Dec 10, 2025
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New model describes how reaction-diffusion networks develop 'foams'
For numerous fundamental processes of life, the formation of certain protein patterns is essential. Protein pattern formation controlled by molecular switches is—like many processes in nature—far removed from a state ...
Soft Matter
Dec 8, 2025
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Why your faucet drips: Water jet breakup traced to angstrom-scale thermal capillary waves
Some phenomena in our daily lives are so commonplace that we don't realize there could be some very interesting physics behind them. Take a dripping faucet: why does the continuous stream of water from a faucet eventually ...
Soft Matter
Dec 1, 2025
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Dislocations without crystals: Burgers vectors discovered in glass
For nearly a century, scientists have understood how crystalline materials—such as metals and semiconductors—bend without breaking. Their secret lies in tiny, line-like defects called dislocations, which move through ...
Explainable AI and turbulence: A fresh look at an unsolved physics problem
While atmospheric turbulence is a familiar culprit of rough flights, the chaotic movement of turbulent flows remains an unsolved problem in physics. To gain insight into the system, a team of researchers used explainable ...
General Physics
Nov 20, 2025
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When superfluids collide, physicists find a mix of old and new behavior
Physics is often about recognizing patterns, sometimes repeated across vastly different scales. For instance, moons orbit planets in the same way planets orbit stars, which in turn orbit the center of a galaxy.
Soft Matter
Nov 19, 2025
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Sharper MRI scans may be on horizon thanks to new physics-based model
Researchers at Rice University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory have unveiled a physics-based model of magnetic resonance relaxation that bridges molecular-scale dynamics with macroscopic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) ...
Soft Matter
Nov 18, 2025
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A century-old mixing puzzle: AI helps predict and understand viscous fingering
Viscous fingering occurs when a thinner fluid pushes a thicker, more viscous fluid in a porous medium, like underground rock, creating unpredictable, finger-like patterns. For decades, this intricate dance between fluids ...
Soft Matter
Nov 11, 2025
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Chasing and splashing molecules create resilient order from apparent chaos, study shows
In nature, ordered structures are essential to maintain both stability and functionality in living systems, as observed in repeating structures or the formation of complex molecules. Yet, the creation of this order is based ...
General Physics
Nov 5, 2025
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More news
Light-driven thermal barriers control fluid flow in three dimensions
Evidence of a spin-liquid state emerges in pressurized oxygen
Why tiny droplets stick or bounce: The physics of speed and size
Other news
Ultracold atoms observed climbing a quantum staircase
The gut bacteria that put the brakes on weight gain in mice
New image sensor breaks optical limits
Mechanism for twisted growth of plant organs discovered
Scientists boost mitochondria to burn more calories
An AI-based blueprint for designing catalysts across materials
Why the foam on Belgian beers lasts so long
How a superfluid simultaneously becomes a solid
