https://phys.org/ en-us Phys.org internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. From schools of fish and flocks of birds to microscopic synthetic particles, many systems in nature and the laboratory consist of individual units or agents that move by consuming energy. These systems are known as active matter because their components continuously use energy to generate motion, either individually or through interactions with their environment. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-tiny-particles-defy-action-reaction.html General Physics Sun, 09 Aug 2026 12:40:01 EDT news705316928 Inside the cell nucleus, genes must be turned on and off with precision to regulate biological processes. The first models of gene regulation were developed in the 1960s, yet modern science continues to uncover new layers of control. A new study involving researchers from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), the Institut Pasteur and Princeton University, published in PNAS, suggests that genes obey an optimal switching principle—random at any given moment, yet precise on average. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-random-flickering-genes-energy-precision.html Cell & Microbiology Mon, 13 Jul 2026 10:00:10 EDT news703149643 When Jasmin Imran Alsous peered down her microscope lens, she expected to see chaos—a mishmash of tangled cells. She was viewing the inside of a male fruit fly's sperm storage organ, using a powerful microscope at the CCBScope Observatory, the experimental biology lab at the Center for Computational Biology (CCB) at the Simons Foundation's Flatiron Institute in New York City. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-thousands-nature-longest-sperm-tiny.html Evolution Mon, 22 Jun 2026 14:20:15 EDT news701353213 Materials engineers have developed the ability to manipulate structure and matter at the nanoscale for solid-state alloys called intermetallics, making it possible to alter their properties for improved performance. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-nanoscale-coal-gpa-strength-plastic.html Nanomaterials Sun, 21 Jun 2026 15:00:02 EDT news700932224 Superfluids are intriguing states of matter in which particles behave like a giant collective wave, allowing them to flow without any friction. When this fluid flows past a fixed obstacle at a velocity below a specific threshold, it moves around it without slowing down or exerting any drag. Above this critical velocity, however, the superfluid state starts to break down, and the energy from the flow dissipates in the form of ripples and vortices in the fluid. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-tiny-superfluid.html Soft Matter Fri, 19 Jun 2026 13:20:01 EDT news701088049 Inside cells, certain functions are carried out by locally adjusting molecular composition. This condensation of material results in the formation of dense droplets that can dynamically rearrange. Because of this, interactions between such dense regions determine the shaping of condensates. Scientists from the Department of Living Matter Physics at MPI-DS recently developed a model that can describe such phase separation dynamics based solely on attraction. The work is published in the journal Physical Review Letters. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-physicists-molecular-condensates.html General Physics Fri, 05 Jun 2026 18:00:01 EDT news699875073 For more than half a century, materials scientists have struggled with how to simulate the complexity of polymer materials. An individual chain can comprise tens of thousands of atoms, a melt or composite contains billions, and the properties engineers actually care about, such as how an adhesive grips a surface, how a self-assembling block copolymer locks into a nanostructure, or how a biopolymer film stretches without tearing, emerge only over length and time scales that forcible atomistic simulation cannot reach. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-thermodynamic-laws-ai-polymer.html Polymers Tue, 26 May 2026 19:20:07 EDT news699029450 Certain epigenetic modifications can directly control how genetic material is packed in the nucleus, RIKEN researchers have shown. This has important implications for our understanding of how genes are expressed in different cell types. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-uncovering-link-epigenetic-modifications-chromatin.html Cell & Microbiology Thu, 21 May 2026 13:00:05 EDT news698581861 Living cells are fundamentally nonequilibrium systems, meaning they constantly spend energy through seemingly one-way, irreversible processes, such as transcribing DNA into RNA, to keep life going. But how that irreversibility appears in the dynamics of individual genes has been difficult to measure. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-irreversibility-gene-transcription.html Cell & Microbiology Sun, 22 Mar 2026 19:30:01 EDT news693053061 Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have created a new and unusual state of matter—known as a supersolid—by engineering how light and matter interact inside a nanoscale device. The work, published in Nature Nanotechnology, demonstrates that this exotic quantum phase can exist at room temperature, overcoming a long-standing limitation in the field. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-scientists-state-room-temperature-nanostructures.html Nanophysics Tue, 17 Mar 2026 19:20:03 EDT news692977022 An international research team led by Alexander Kuznetsov at the Paul Drude Institute for Solid State Electronics (PDI) in Berlin has demonstrated a fundamentally new way to control the condensation of hybrid light-matter particles. Using coherent acoustic driving to dynamically reshape the energy landscape of a semiconductor microcavity, the researchers achieved deterministic steering of a macroscopic quantum state into its lowest energy configuration. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-acoustic-enables-condensation-chip.html Condensed Matter Wed, 11 Mar 2026 12:40:01 EDT news692443561 "Glass" has a unique and distinct meaning in physics—one that refers not just to the transparent material we associate with window glass. Instead, it refers to any system that looks solid but is not in true equilibrium and continues to change extremely slowly over time. Examples include window glass, plastics, metallic glasses, spin glasses (i.e., magnetic systems), and even some biological and computational systems. https://phys.org/news/2026-03-scientists-unveil-universal-aging-mechanism.html Soft Matter Mon, 02 Mar 2026 16:20:11 EST news691690742 The types of glass that we encounter in everyday life, such as window glass or smartphone screens, are disordered solids. This means that they consist of particles locked in place, like those in solids, but arranged randomly, similarly to how they would be in a liquid. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-simulations-path-ideal-glass-crystal.html General Physics Sun, 01 Mar 2026 13:00:03 EST news691408346 Living cells are sustained by countless chemical reactions that must be carefully regulated to maintain internal order and function. Enzymes play a central role in this process, accelerating reactions that would otherwise proceed too slowly to support life. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-enzymes-maxwell-demon-memory-motion.html Biochemistry Tue, 24 Feb 2026 10:00:02 EST news691147859 In a new study published in Physical Review Letters, researchers used machine learning to discover multiple new classes of two-dimensional memories, systems that can reliably store information despite constant environmental noise. The findings indicate that robust information storage is considerably richer than previously understood. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-machine-reveals-hidden-landscape-robust.html General Physics Tue, 10 Feb 2026 10:00:05 EST news689936595 Modern technologies increasingly rely on light sources that can be reconfigured on demand. Think of microlasers that can quickly switch between different operating states—much like a car shifting gears—so that an optical chip can route signals, perform computations, or adapt to changing conditions in real time. The microlaser switching is not a smooth, leisurely process, but can be sudden and fast. Generally, nearly identical "candidate" lasing states compete with each other in a microcavity, and the laser may abruptly jump from one state to another when external conditions are tuned. https://phys.org/news/2026-02-fast-microlaser-modes-simple-reveals.html Optics & Photonics Mon, 09 Feb 2026 09:42:25 EST news689852521 Time-dependent driving has become a powerful tool for creating novel nonequilibrium phases such as discrete time crystals and Floquet topological phases, which do not exist in static systems. Breaking continuous time-translation symmetry typically leads to the outcome that driven quantum systems absorb energy and eventually heat up toward a featureless infinite-temperature state, where coherent structure is lost. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-random-qubit-processor-reveals-prethermal.html Quantum Physics Fri, 30 Jan 2026 09:46:55 EST news688988786 A major challenge in thermal-management and thermal-insulation technologies, across multiple industries, is the lack of materials that simultaneously offer low thermal conductivity, mechanical robustness, and scalable fabrication routes. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-principles-ultralow-thermal-chemical-disorder.html Condensed Matter Wed, 28 Jan 2026 15:18:20 EST news688835882 In inertial confinement fusion, a capsule of fuel begins at temperatures near zero and pressures close to vacuum. When lasers compress that fuel to trigger fusion, the material heats up to millions of degrees and reaches pressures similar to the core of the sun. That process happens within a miniscule amount of space and time. https://phys.org/news/2026-01-code-microscopic-insights-macroscopic-world.html General Physics Thu, 22 Jan 2026 16:38:26 EST news688322282 Researchers in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, have discovered that instead of manipulating every component or modifying interactions in a many-body system, occasionally resetting just a small fraction can reshape how the entire system behaves, including how it transitions from one phase to another. https://phys.org/news/2025-12-subsystem-resetting-route-phase-transitions.html General Physics Wed, 17 Dec 2025 10:13:19 EST news685188781 When describing collective properties of macroscopic physical systems, microscopic fluctuations are typically averaged out, leaving a description of the typical behavior of the systems. While this simplification has its advantages, it fails to capture the important role of fluctuations that can often influence the dynamics in dramatic manners, as the extreme examples of catastrophic events such as volcanic eruptions and financial market collapse reveal. https://phys.org/news/2025-11-randomness.html General Physics Fri, 28 Nov 2025 12:40:02 EST news683555841 In the right combinations and conditions, two-dimensional materials can host intriguing and potentially valuable quantum phases, like superconductivity and unique forms of magnetism. Why they occur, and how they can be controlled, is of considerable interest among physicists and engineers. Research published in Nature Physics reveals a previously hidden feature that could explain how and why enigmatic quantum phases emerge. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-2d-devices-hidden-cavities-electronic.html Condensed Matter Mon, 20 Oct 2025 05:00:11 EDT news679923998 For decades, it's been known that subtle chemical patterns exist in metal alloys, but researchers thought they were too minor to matter—or that they got erased during manufacturing. However, recent studies have shown that in laboratory settings, these patterns can change a metal's properties, including its mechanical strength, durability, heat capacity, radiation tolerance, and more. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-hidden-atomic-persists-metals-extreme.html Condensed Matter Wed, 08 Oct 2025 10:09:05 EDT news679136942 A supercritical fluid refers to a state in which the temperature and pressure of a substance exceed its critical point, where no distinction exists between liquid and gas phases. Traditionally, it has been regarded as a single, uniform phase. However, a research team at POSTECH (Pohang University of Science and Technology) experimentally demonstrated nonequilibrium phase separation within supercritical fluids by observing nanometer-sized "liquid clusters" that persist for up to one hour. https://phys.org/news/2025-10-supercritical-fluids-thought-uniform-liquid.html General Physics Thu, 02 Oct 2025 10:00:17 EDT news678617595 Phases of matter are the basic states that matter can take—like water that can occur in a liquid or ice phase. Traditionally, these phases are defined under equilibrium conditions, where the system is stable over time. But nature allows for stranger possibilities: new phases that emerge only when a system is driven out of equilibrium. In a new study published in Nature, a research team shows that quantum computers offer an unparalleled way to explore those exotic states of matter. https://phys.org/news/2025-09-exotic-phase-quantum-processor.html Quantum Physics Wed, 10 Sep 2025 11:00:04 EDT news676638961 Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD), in collaboration with international partners, have developed momentum-resolved Floquet optical selection rules. They show how these symmetry-based rules determine the spectral weight distributions of photon-dressed sidebands in time- and angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (TrARPES) experiments across different pump-probe configurations. This fundamental work has now been published in Science Advances. https://phys.org/news/2025-08-symmetry-based-floquet-optical-sidebands.html Condensed Matter Thu, 21 Aug 2025 16:12:03 EDT news675011521 We rarely think about how liquids flow—why honey is thick, water is thin or how molten plastic moves through machines. But for scientists and engineers, understanding and predicting the viscosity of materials, especially polymers, is essential. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-atomistic-route-viscosity-glass-transition.html Condensed Matter Tue, 24 Jun 2025 10:20:03 EDT news669979001 Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter (MPSD) have theoretically demonstrated that photons trapped inside an optical cavity carry detailed information about a material placed within it. By measuring the properties of the photons leaking out of the cavity, researchers can probe how an optical cavity modifies the properties of the embedded materials. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-vacuum-fluctuations-optical-cavities-reveal.html Condensed Matter Mon, 23 Jun 2025 09:05:04 EDT news669888301 Gao Peng's research group at the International Center for Quantum Materials, School of Physics, Peking University, has developed a breakthrough method for visualizing interfacial phonon transport with sub-nanometer resolution. Leveraging fast electron inelastic scattering in electron microscopy, the team directly measured temperature fields and thermal resistance across interfaces, unveiling the microscopic mechanism of phonon-mediated heat transport at the nanoscale. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-phonon-materials-visualized-atomic.html Condensed Matter Fri, 20 Jun 2025 10:46:49 EDT news669635206 Using the now-decommissioned Summit supercomputer, researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory ran the largest and most accurate molecular dynamics simulations yet of the interface between water and air during a chemical reaction. The simulations have uncovered how water controls such chemical reactions by dynamically coupling with the molecules involved in the process. https://phys.org/news/2025-06-supercomputer-simulations-chemical-reaction-air.html Analytical Chemistry Wed, 18 Jun 2025 12:00:46 EDT news669466843