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Soft Matter news
Tiny droplets navigate mazes using 'chemical echolocation,' without sensors or computers
A recent study by a team of researchers led by TU Darmstadt has found that tiny amounts of liquid can navigate their way through unknown environments like living cells—without sensors, computers or external control. The ...
General Physics
Feb 3, 2026
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Using complex networks to tame combustion instability
Engineers have long battled a problem that can cause loud, damaging oscillations inside gas turbines and aircraft engines: combustion instability. These unwanted pressure fluctuations create vibrations so intense that they ...
General Physics
Jan 31, 2026
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Superfluids are supposed to flow indefinitely. Physicists just watched one stop moving
Ordinary matter, when cooled, transitions from a gas into a liquid. Cool it further still, and it freezes into a solid. Quantum matter, however, can behave very differently. In the early 20th century, researchers discovered ...
Soft Matter
Jan 28, 2026
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Swimming in a shared medium makes particles synchronize without touching
Several years ago, scientists discovered that a single microscopic particle could rock back and forth on its own under a steady electric field. The result was curious, but lonely. Now, Northwestern University engineers have ...
Soft Matter
Jan 26, 2026
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Sloshing liquefied natural gas in cargo tanks causes higher impact forces than expected
What happens if liquefied natural gas (LNG) hits the wall of the cargo tanks in a ship? New research from the team of physicist Devaraj van der Meer from the University of Twente, published in the Proceedings of the National ...
Soft Matter
Jan 26, 2026
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A new optical centrifuge is helping physicists probe the mysteries of superfluids
Physicists have used a new optical centrifuge to control the rotation of molecules suspended in liquid helium nano-droplets, bringing them a step closer to demystifying the behavior of exotic, frictionless superfluids.
Optics & Photonics
Jan 22, 2026
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Bridging theories across physics helps reconcile controversy about thin liquid layer on icy surfaces
The ice in a domestic freezer is remarkably different from the single crystals that form in snow clouds, or even those formed on a frozen pond. As temperatures drop, ice crystals can grow in a variety of shapes: from stocky ...
General Physics
Jan 20, 2026
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Physics of foam strangely resembles AI training
Foams are everywhere: soap suds, shaving cream, whipped toppings and food emulsions like mayonnaise. For decades, scientists believed that foams behave like glass, their microscopic components trapped in static, disordered ...
Soft Matter
Jan 14, 2026
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A dry surface thanks to fluid physics: Contact-free method gently remove liquids from delicate microstructures
Researchers at the University of Konstanz have developed a gentle, contact-free method to collect liquids and remove them from microscopic surface structures. The method uses vapor condensation to generate surface currents ...
Soft Matter
Jan 13, 2026
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Fluid gears rotate without teeth, offering new mechanical flexibility
A team of New York University scientists has created a gear mechanism that relies on fluids to generate rotation. The invention holds potential for a new generation of mechanical devices that offer greater flexibility and ...
General Physics
Jan 13, 2026
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How does glass 'shake' and why does it start flowing when pushed hard enough?
Glassy materials are everywhere, with applications far exceeding windowpanes and drinking glasses. They range from bioactive glasses for bone repair and amorphous pharmaceuticals that boost drug solubility to ultra-pure silica ...
Condensed Matter
Jan 9, 2026
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New model showcases microbubble behavior in viscoelastic fluid under ultrasound forcing
Encapsulated microbubbles (EMBs), tiny gas-filled bubbles coated in lipid or protein shells, play a central role in biomedical ultrasound. When exposed to ultrasound waves, EMBs contract, resulting in oscillations that enhance ...
Soft Matter
Dec 29, 2025
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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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Friendly bacteria can unlock hidden metabolic pathways in plant cell cultures
Terahertz microscope reveals the motion of superconducting electrons
Light-driven thermal barriers control fluid flow in three dimensions
Evidence of a spin-liquid state emerges in pressurized oxygen
Engineered antibody targets bacteria-specific sugar, clears lethal drug-resistant infection in mice
