In 1911, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes cooled mercury to a few degrees above absolute zero and watched its electrical resistance vanish. Lead soon joined the list of superconductors, losing its resistance below about 7.2 kelvin. A full explanation arrived in 1957: electrons bind into Cooper pairs that move together as one collective state below a critical […]
When light or sound bounces around inside an oddly shaped room, its reflections can quickly become difficult to predict. But new research led by scientists at the Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center (CUNY ASRC) shows that waves can behave very differently when they travel through a special class of materials. The […]
26 April 2026 will always be remembered as the day an apparently impossible barrier was finally broken. At the London Marathon, Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe and Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha became the first men to officially run the 42.195 km distance in under two hours, finishing in 1:59:30 and 1:59:41 respectively. Reaching this landmark was not the […]
Author: Aysha Asif Riaz, Research Fellow in Roadmapping Neuromorphic Computing Hardware, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, UCL Right now, your brain is recognising the shapes of these letters, analysing their meaning, and holding a stream of thought together – all on about 20 watts of power. That’s roughly what it takes to run a […]
Condensed matter • DIPC Advanced materials • Materials • Quantum physics
Nickel disulfide, NiS₂, is an unusual material. Its interior behaves as an electrical insulator, blocking the flow of current, while certain parts of its surface conduct electricity freely. This contradiction has puzzled physicists for decades, and a recent study offers a detailed explanation. The conduction, it turns out, is confined to tiny one-dimensional steps on […]
Researchers at Nagoya University have built a graphene nanoribbon that can switch which way it twists using a natural solvent. Graphene nanoribbons are thin ribbon-shaped structures made of fused carbon rings. Twisted or helical versions of these ribbons show promise for advanced light and electronic devices. However, no graphene nanoribbon could switch that twist on […]
Arsenic contamination in drinking water poses a critical global public health hazard. Prolonged exposure to inorganic arsenic—predominantly present in groundwater as arsenate, where arsenic exists in its +5 oxidation state—can lead to severe dermatological lesions, cardiovascular diseases, and cancers. To mitigate these health risks, the World Health Organization has established a strict provisional safety guideline […]
The kind of technology that can deliver sound to a single listener—like something out of a spy film—may soon become a reality. Researchers at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) have developed a speaker system that can direct speech to a specific person. Light and sound behave differently. Light from a flashlight or laser […]
Author: Richard de Grijs, Professor of Astrophysics, Macquarie University How do you explore a place where the Sun never shines? China’s space programme will soon embark on one of the most innovative lunar exploration missions in recent years. We’ve known for nearly two decades that some form of water exists on the Moon. What we […]
Artificial Intelligence • Mathematics • Philosophy of science
Author: Melissa Lee, Senior Lecturer, School of Mathematics, Monash University Some weeks ago, artificial intelligence company OpenAI announced ten advances in mathematics and computer science made with their as-yet unreleased model Astra. The discoveries cover a wide range of mathematical fields, including geometry, cryptography and coding theory. These ten are just the latest in a […]