Science & Research
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Engineered Bacteria Turn 'Living Plastic' Into a Self-Destruct Timer, Fully Degrading a Polymer in Six Days
Researchers embedded engineered Bacillus subtilis spores in polycaprolactone plastic that, once activated, breaks the material down to its building blocks in six days without forming microplastics.
ETH Zurich Simulations Find Wide Rift Flanks Signal Venus Is Still Tectonically Active
New 3D simulations matched against 1990s Magellan imagery suggest some Venusian rift valleys are widening 3 to 10 centimeters a year, indicating recent tectonic activity.
UCL and Imperial Researchers Find Chytrid-Fungus Survivor Toads Develop Antimicrobial Defenses While Still Tadpoles
A Nature Chemical Biology study of Pyrenees toads finds fungus-outbreak survivors mature skin defenses earlier, as tadpoles, ahead of the disease's attack on adult skin.
TU Wien Physicists Detect Record-Deep Quantum Entanglement in a Centimeter-Sized Strange-Metal Crystal
Neutron-scattering measurements at ILL Grenoble found signs that at least nine particles are quantum-entangled at once inside a centimeter-sized strange-metal crystal, the deepest entanglement reported in any quantum material.
NYU-Led Team Cracks Feynman's Reverse Sprinkler Problem, Ruling Out Rival Theories With Custom 'Silly Sprinklers'
A PNAS study using custom-built 'silly sprinklers' confirms momentum flux drives reverse-sprinkler rotation, ruling out theories from Ernst Mach and Richard Feynman.
Hubble and Webb Find Omega Centauri's First Stellar-Mass Black Hole, One of an Estimated 10,000 Missing From the Cluster
oMEGACat BH-2, a 4.46-solar-mass black hole orbited by a main-sequence star once every 94 years, is the first stellar-mass black hole detected in the globular cluster Omega Centauri.
Oak Ridge Team Triples Heat Flow Through Ceramic Relaxor Ferroelectrics With a Simple Electric Field
ORNL, Ohio State, and Amphenol researchers show an electric field can boost heat conduction in a relaxor ferroelectric ceramic by close to 300 percent, far beyond prior 5-10 percent gains.
Hubble Uncovers Four Hidden White Dwarfs Lurking Beside Nearby Red Dwarf Stars
Ultraviolet spectroscopy from Hubble confirmed four white dwarfs hiding behind red dwarf companions within 65 light-years of Earth, one first suspected 27 years ago.
Machine Learning Predicts Two New Kagome-Lattice Superconductors, YRu3B2 and LuRu3B2, Before Either Was Synthesized
A machine-learning screening pipeline predicted two new superconductors, YRu3B2 and LuRu3B2, which Rice University then synthesized and confirmed.
Astronomers Catch a Nearby Black Hole in a Years-Long Radio Outburst Never Seen Before, Offering a Window Into the Early Universe
A low-mass black hole in a spiral galaxy 1.8 billion light-years away has stayed radio-bright for at least eight years, a transition astronomers say has never been observed before.
Finnish Physicists Realize a Two-Dimensional Topological Crystalline Insulator Predicted More Than a Decade Ago
Jyväskylä and Aalto researchers grew strained bilayer tin telluride on niobium diselenide, producing protected conducting edge states in a band gap over 0.2 eV.
Osaka Team Breaks Thermal Reciprocity Rule With a Reconfigurable, Power-Free Heat-Radiation Metagrating
Osaka Metropolitan University researchers built a magneto-optical, phase-change metagrating that decouples heat absorption from emission and retains its state without power.