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Soft Matter news
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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Paradox of rotating turbulence finally tamed with 'hurricane-in-a-lab'
From stirring milk in your coffee to fearsome typhoon gales, rotating turbulent flows are everywhere. Yet, these spinning currents are as scientifically complex as they are banal. Describing, modeling, and predicting turbulent ...
General Physics
Nov 5, 2025
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Calculating the spreading of fluids in porous materials to understand saltwater in soil
A solution to a tricky groundwater riddle from Australia: Researchers at TU Wien have developed numerical models to simulate the movement of fluids in porous materials.
Soft Matter
Nov 4, 2025
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Researcher improves century-old equation to predict movement of dangerous air pollutants
A new method developed at the University of Warwick offers the first simple and predictive way to calculate how irregularly shaped nanoparticles—a dangerous class of airborne pollutant—move through the air.
General Physics
Oct 29, 2025
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Bacterial motility helps uncover how self-propelled particles distribute in active matter systems
A collaborative team of physicists and microbiologists from UNIST and Stanford University has, for the first time, uncovered the fundamental laws governing the distribution of self-propelled particles, such as bacteria.
General Physics
Oct 24, 2025
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Microscopic 'ocean' on a chip reveals new nonlinear wave behavior
University of Queensland researchers have created a microscopic "ocean" on a silicon chip to miniaturize the study of wave dynamics. The device, made at UQ's School of Mathematics and Physics, uses a layer of superfluid helium ...
Soft Matter
Oct 23, 2025
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Mathematical model reveals why cracks sharpen during rapid rubber fracture
A research group from the University of Osaka, Zen University, and the University of Tokyo has mathematically uncovered the mechanism that causes crack tips to sharpen during the rapid fracture of rubber.
General Physics
Oct 21, 2025
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Exotic roto-crystals can break into individual fragments then reassemble themselves
It sounds bizarre, but they exist: crystals made of rotating objects. Physicists from Aachen, Düsseldorf, Mainz and Wayne State (Detroit, U.S.) have jointly studied these exotic objects and their properties. They easily ...
General Physics
Oct 21, 2025
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Tiny droplets that bounce for minutes without bursting might be able to do so indefinitely
EPFL researchers have discovered that a droplet of liquid can bounce for several minutes—and perhaps indefinitely—over a vibrating solid surface. The seemingly simple observation has big implications for physics and chemistry.
General Physics
Oct 20, 2025
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Taking the shock out of predicting shock wave behavior with precise computational modeling
Shock waves should not be shocking—engineers across scientific fields need to be able to precisely predict how the instant and strong pressure changes initiate and dissipate to prevent damage. Now, thanks to a team from ...
General Physics
Oct 17, 2025
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Ice XXI: Scientists use X-ray laser to identify new room-temperature phase
Ice cream comes in many different flavors. But even pure ice, which consists only of water molecules, has been discovered to exist in more than 20 different solid forms or phases that differ in the arrangement of the molecules. ...
Condensed Matter
Oct 10, 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
Why the foam on Belgian beers lasts so long
How a superfluid simultaneously becomes a solid
Other news
Earth's atmosphere may help support human life on the moon
Polar bears may be adapting to survive warmer climates, says study
Tiny optical modulator could enable giant future quantum computers
Researchers discover new protein-RNA interaction with potential to treat tissue scarring
All-optical modulation in silicon achieved via an electron avalanche process
Tracing a path through photosynthesis to food security
Hidden turbulence discovered in polymer fluids
Falling water forms beautiful fluted films
Enhancing machine-learning interatomic potentials for advanced materials modeling
