Science & Research
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HKU Researchers Uncover Piezoelectric Effect in Diamond Membranes, Upending a Century of Materials Science Consensus
University of Hong Kong team shows ultrathin polycrystalline diamond membranes generate voltage when bent, overturning the century-old classification of diamond as non-piezoelectric.
Researchers Fuse Silk Into Transparent, Lightweight Material Stronger Than Metal Alloys With 6G Potential
Teams at Imperial College London, University of Michigan, and Tufts University transformed natural silk threads into plastic-like materials that outperform metal alloys, resist punctures like carbon-fiber composites, and polarize terahertz light for potential 6G telecommunications use.
JWST Detects Methane in Atmosphere of TOI-199b, the First Temperate Giant Exoplanet to Have Its Chemistry Mapped
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has characterized the atmosphere of TOI-199b, a Saturn-sized world 330 light-years away—the first temperate giant exoplanet studied in detail.
Rice and Weizmann Physicists Identify the Electronic Agents Behind Strange Metallicity in a Flat-Band Kagome Metal
Using atomic-resolution spectroscopy on Ni3In, researchers from Rice and Weizmann experimentally confirmed compact molecular orbitals as the drivers of flat-band quantum criticality.
Pressure Unlocks a Quantum Spin Liquid State in Kagome Material Y-Kapellasite, Ruling Out Disorder as Its Origin
A European team used muon spin spectroscopy under hydrostatic pressure to show that squeezing Y-kapellasite suppresses its magnetic order without any structural change, producing a clean quantum spin liquid state driven purely by geometric frustration.
Synthetic Biology Yields Protein Fibers That Dissolve and Reform, Offering a Recyclable Alternative to Synthetic Textiles
WashU engineers used synthetic biology to create SAM — a protein fiber combining mussel, spider silk, and amyloid sequences — that dissolves in formic acid within seconds and can be remade into equally strong fibers across multiple recycling cycles.
JWST Shows Neptune's Moon Nereid Is an Original Survivor, Not a Kuiper Belt Capture — Rewriting the Planet's Violent History
A Science Advances study using Webb data finds Nereid's icy composition rules out a Kuiper Belt origin, making it the sole intact remnant of Neptune's primordial moon system.
JWST Catches Two Post-Quasar Galaxies With Overmassive Black Holes 800 Million Years After the Big Bang
NIRSpec spectroscopy of COLA1 and NEPLA4 reveals black holes 400-800 times overmassive for their host galaxies, offering the first detailed look at the aftermath of early-universe quasar activity.
Penn Physicists Create Hybrid Light-Matter Particles That Switch Optical Signals at 4 Femtojoules, Pointing Toward All-Optical Computing
University of Pennsylvania researchers demonstrated strongly nonlinear exciton-polaritons that switch optical signals at 4 femtojoules—a record low for 2D polariton systems—using a MoSe₂ monolayer inside a photonic crystal nanocavity.
Hubble's Dracula's Chivito Is the Largest Planet-Forming Disk Ever Observed, Spanning 40 Times the Solar System and 10 to 30 Jupiter Masses
NASA's Hubble has imaged IRAS 23077+6707, a protoplanetary disk nicknamed Dracula's Chivito that spans nearly 400 billion miles and shows asymmetric filaments unlike any disk seen before.
Bicharracosaurus dionidei, a 20-Meter Patagonian Sauropod, Could Be the First Late Jurassic Brachiosaurid From South America
A German-Argentine team has described a 155-million-year-old long-necked dinosaur from Chubut, mixing brachiosaurid and diplodocid traits.
JWST's COSMOS-Web Survey Maps 164,000 Galaxies Into the Most Detailed Cosmic Web Yet, Stretching Back to When the Universe Was a Billion Years Old
A UC Riverside-led team used the largest JWST observing program to trace galaxies along the cosmic web from today out to redshift z ~ 7, and released the full pipeline and catalog publicly.