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. A research team led by Haruki Watanabe, a professor in the Department of Physics and the Jockey Club Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), in collaboration with professor Yukitoshi Motome and graduate student Sena Watanabe from the University of Tokyo, has developed a unified theory that predicts when two states of matter are genuinely distinct and when they are actually the same. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-framework-links-magnetic-phase-boundaries.html Condensed Matter Wed, 14 Oct 2026 16:20:08 EDT news711201361 Until now, the alien white-hot worlds of exoplanets have been depicted as circular, but new research has revealed the true shape of their atmospheres to be a deformed sphere rather than a perfect circle. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-trailblazing-technique-uncovers-real-hot.html Planetary Sciences Wed, 14 Oct 2026 05:00:18 EDT news711126122 Recent research shows that gravity and quantum information are deeply connected and that the shape of spacetime can be traced back to the way information is stored in quantum fields. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-gravity-quantum-linked-derivation-einstein.html General Physics Mon, 12 Oct 2026 19:20:01 EDT news711039286 Primordial black holes (PBHs) don't exist as far as we know. But if they did, these hypothetical objects would have formed in the early universe rather than from dying stars, and they may even make up dark matter. That's not the end of the weirdness. Their formation could have been even stranger if it occurred in a universe with a dark dimension, which is another theoretical construct. It posits that our space includes a hidden extra spatial dimension. https://phys.org/news/2026-10-tiny-ancient-black-holes-dimensional.html Astronomy Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:40:16 EDT news710412892 Strike a bell, and it rings with a pitch and a fading that tell you about the bell: its size, its shape, the metal it is made of. Black holes ring too. When two merge, the newborn black hole shivers and sheds gravitational waves in a brief, dying chord, and since 2015, gravitational-wave detectors have been listening. The notes of that chord, which physicists call quasinormal modes, depend only on the black hole's mass and spin and on the law of gravity itself. Change the law, and the chord changes. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-higher-dimensional-black-holes-exact.html General Physics Thu, 24 Sep 2026 17:20:04 EDT news709463984 Behind every secure online transaction or encrypted message lies a string of completely unpredictable numbers. A team of physicists has now proposed a theoretical way around a long-standing roadblock, opening the door to next-generation security chips that protect everyday data without slowing performance. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-physicists-material-blueprint-generation-microchip.html General Physics Thu, 24 Sep 2026 15:10:01 EDT news709479661 Unlike electric charge, as far as we know all mass is positive, and positive masses attract one another. Could negative mass exist, and if so, what would be the ramifications? https://phys.org/news/2026-09-negative-mass.html General Physics Wed, 23 Sep 2026 09:20:12 EDT news709372229 Physicists at UC Santa Barbara have extended the search for evidence of microscopic black holes produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The formation of these tiny, fleeting objects at the LHC represents one way theorists have sought to resolve anomalies in our understanding of the basic structure of spacetime, while the method used to look for them demonstrates a new way of searching for new particles. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-physicists-quantum-black-holes-lhc.html General Physics Fri, 18 Sep 2026 14:20:07 EDT news708954181 Somewhere between the microscopic realm of elementary particles and the macroscopic world of human beings, something strange happens: The rules of quantum physics, which work so exquisitely for tiny atoms, seem to lose their grip as objects grow larger. Pondering where and how this shift from small-scale quantum fuzziness to everyday sharp certainty happens gives rise to thought-experiment oddities like Schrödinger's famous dead-and-alive cat. The process by which quantum phenomena like superposition—the paradoxical affliction of Schrödinger's cat—fade into the classical reality we experience is known as decoherence. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-schrdinger-cat-underground-gravity-quantum.html General Physics Thu, 17 Sep 2026 15:00:11 EDT news708864241 Artificial intelligence programs used to classify images could be trained much more cheaply using a surprisingly simple method inspired by the childhood game of 20 Questions, according to new research posted to the arXiv preprint server by a team from the University of Bristol. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-simple-game-ai-future.html Mathematics Thu, 17 Sep 2026 13:40:01 EDT news708858636 In 1931, physicist Hans Bethe predicted that, in certain one-dimensional quantum systems, particles can bind together to form multi-particle states known as Bethe strings. Unlike ordinary molecules, which are held together by chemical bonds, Bethe strings arise purely from interactions between particles and exist only in one dimension. For decades, Bethe strings remained primarily a theoretical concept. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-ultracold-cesium-atoms-reveal-bethe.html Quantum Physics Mon, 14 Sep 2026 08:40:08 EDT news708593282 Superconductors are materials that carry electricity with zero resistance below specific temperatures. Many of these materials become superconducting at very low temperatures, yet some enter superconducting phases at higher temperatures. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-spinons-electrons-pair-stripes-superconductors.html Superconductivity Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:00:11 EDT news708080486 The universe is known to be expanding at an accelerating rate. Physicists typically attribute this acceleration to dark energy, a mysterious component of the universe that exerts negative pressure, causing space to expand faster. Dark energy is thought to have become the predominant influence on the universe's evolution around 3–4 billion years ago, at the beginning of what is known as the dark energy era. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-limits-phase-transitions-dark-energy.html Astronomy Tue, 25 Aug 2026 07:00:04 EDT news706783751 In Goethe's ballad "Erlkönig," immortalized in Schubert's fevered 1815 setting, a dying boy riding through the night sees a spectral king beckoning from the darkness. His father calms him: "Mein Sohn, es ist ein Nebelstreif"—my son, it is only a wisp of fog. In the poem, the father's reassurance proves tragically wrong. In the quantum world, however, his words acquire an uncanny new meaning. https://phys.org/news/2026-08-mirror-world-particles-wisps-fog.html General Physics Fri, 07 Aug 2026 16:40:02 EDT news705324723 Since 2016, an ordinary-looking F-type star called KIC 8462852, nicknamed Tabby's star, has behaved anything but ordinarily. In a new study published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on July 6, researchers revisited this star to find out what is really causing its irregular dimming. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-hour-dip-tabby-star-decade.html Astronomy Mon, 03 Aug 2026 08:00:05 EDT news704472236 In mathematics and getting dressed, some processes are commutative, while others are noncommutative. Commutative means the order doesn't matter (3 + 2 is the same as 2 + 3, and it doesn't matter which sock goes on first). Noncommutative means the order does matter. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-explored-quantum-code-powerful-stable.html Quantum Physics Fri, 31 Jul 2026 10:00:04 EDT news704709901 A new study in Nature Communications has established a link between the Riemann Hypothesis and dynamical phase transitions in engineered quantum systems, demonstrating the effect on a quantum processor. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-physicists-link-riemann-hypothesis-phase.html General Physics Thu, 30 Jul 2026 12:20:05 EDT news704628909 As millions of people were coming down from the excitement of the FIFA World Cup final at the start of this week, a different kind of excitement was building within the mathematical community. Levent Alpöge, a mathematician who works at the artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic, casually announced on X ('hello there the jacobian conjecture is false thanx') that he had found a counterexample to the Jacobian conjecture, a very old and well-known problem in a field of mathematics called algebraic geometry. He had done this using Anthropic's large language model Claude Fable 5, released to the general public only a few weeks ago. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-tiny-social-media-mathematicians-rethinking.html Mathematics Wed, 22 Jul 2026 07:40:03 EDT news703918802 One of the deepest ambitions in modern physics is understanding how the fabric of space and time could emerge from fundamental quantum degrees of freedom to establish a quantum theory of gravity. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-quantum-error-emergent-gravity-probing.html General Physics Tue, 21 Jul 2026 11:10:02 EDT news703850636 Imagine shining a flashlight across a dark room. You can predict exactly what the light will do: travel in a straight line from one point to another. That seems obvious because, in the world we see around us, light appears to follow a single, clear path. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-quantum-physicist-basics-einstein-spooky.html Quantum Physics Wed, 15 Jul 2026 17:00:01 EDT news703345934 Quantum computers still face limits when it comes to storing information. Researchers at ETH Zurich are now turning to mechanical vibrations rather than electromagnetic memory. Their new vibrating memory can store significantly more information in a smaller volume. Combined with a suitable computer architecture, it also enables the efficient solution of complex computational problems. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-mechanical-vibrations-magnetic-memory-quantum.html General Physics Thu, 09 Jul 2026 10:40:17 EDT news702807933 Electrons, negatively charged particles, sometimes coordinate their movements in ways that produce certain collective excitations referred to as quasiparticles. One case in which this occurs is the quantum Hall effect, a phenomenon that emerges when electrons are confined to a very thin layer, cooled to temperatures around 0 kelvin and exposed to a very strong magnetic field. https://phys.org/news/2026-07-evidence-elusive-high-energy-gravitons.html Condensed Matter Tue, 07 Jul 2026 10:00:08 EDT news702543513 Do the world's religions and contemplative traditions send people to the same place—compassion, bliss, awe, a sense of God, awareness or the universe? https://phys.org/news/2026-07-meditation-tongues-similarities-spiritual.html Social Sciences Wed, 01 Jul 2026 13:40:08 EDT news702131521 By remotely accessing an IBM quantum computer, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has successfully simulated a key process in particle physics: hadronization. Although based on a simplified model of quantum mechanics, the project lays the groundwork for how physicists can leverage the power of quantum computers to make large scientific calculations beyond the capabilities of classical supercomputers. The research is published in the journal Physical Review D. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-quantum-simulates-hadronization-qubits.html General Physics Tue, 30 Jun 2026 18:40:01 EDT news702058201 Modern physics theories highlight the key role of horizons—boundaries beyond which information cannot reach an observer—in a variety of cosmological and gravitational phenomena. Two renowned examples of these boundaries are event horizons in black holes and the cosmological horizon of the de Sitter spacetime, a model of an expanding universe with a positive vacuum energy. https://phys.org/news/2026-06-horizon-edge-states-gain-finite.html General Physics Tue, 23 Jun 2026 08:20:01 EDT news701343470 An international team of scientists has developed a new analysis of how sound waves behave, revealing surprising effects that have largely been overlooked for decades. In the new paper in Scientific Reports, which was led by researchers from City St George's, University of London, the team explored how sound waves move through air and how those movements might be perceived visually. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-visualizing-scientists-reveal-hidden-behaviors.html General Physics Tue, 19 May 2026 15:40:02 EDT news698415841 If you could take an apple and break it into smaller and smaller parts, you would find molecules, then atoms, followed by subatomic particles like protons and the quarks and gluons that make them up. You might think you hit the bottom, but, according to string theorists, if you keep going to even smaller scales—about a billion billion times smaller than a proton—you will find more: tiny vibrating strings. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-theory-uniquely-derived-basic-assumptions.html General Physics Thu, 14 May 2026 12:26:29 EDT news697980361 Researchers have developed a technique to analyze how black holes "ring" when they collide and merge: one of the universe's most dramatic events. When black holes merge, the collision produces a new, larger black hole that "rings" like a plucked guitar string or a bell while it settles into its final, stable shape. But instead of sound waves, the new black hole rings with gravitational waves: ripples in spacetime first predicted by Albert Einstein. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-statistical-technique-uncover-secrets-black.html Astronomy Wed, 13 May 2026 16:07:01 EDT news697907161 The largest-ever survey of physicists from around the world—released today—shows a distinct lack of consensus across many of physics's most important questions, from the nature of black holes and dark matter, to the still-incomplete unification of Einstein's theory of gravity with quantum mechanics. https://phys.org/news/2026-05-largest-survey-physicists-standard-cosmology.html General Physics Tue, 12 May 2026 19:20:06 EDT news697817041 Theories of quantum mechanics predict that some particles can exist in superpositions, which essentially means that they can be in more than one state at once. When a particle's state is measured, however, this superposition appears to "collapse" into a single outcome; a phenomenon often referred to as the "measurement problem." https://phys.org/news/2026-05-quantum-collapse-theory-xenonnt-dark.html General Physics Thu, 07 May 2026 08:00:06 EDT news697277569