Physics
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Tech
Feather-inspired airplane flaps could boost flight performance
Rows of flaps inspired by bird wing feathers improve airfoil performance by boosting lift, reducing drag and mitigating stall.
- Space
A near-Earth asteroid offers clues to one dark matter theory
Data from the OSIRIS-REx mission to Bennu place a ceiling on the strength of a hypothetical fifth force that could explain dark matter’s origins.
- Tech
Tech companies want small nuclear reactors. Here’s how they’d work
To fuel AI’s insatiable energy appetite, tech companies are going big on small nuclear reactors.
- Physics
Radioactive beams give a real-time view of cancer treatment in mice
This first successful treatment of tumors with radioactive ion beams could one day lead to treating human patients’ tumors with millimeter precision.
- Health & Medicine
New electrical stitches use muscle movement to speed up healing
In rats, the sutures hastened recovery and reduced the risk of infection.
- Artificial Intelligence
The discovery of tools key to machine learning wins the 2024 physics Nobel
John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton used tools from physics to develop data analysis methods that underlie machine learning.
- Physics
Thunderstorms churn up a ‘boiling pot’ of gamma rays
A thunderstorm seen in gamma-ray vision is a complex, frenetic lightshow when viewed from above the clouds.
- Particle Physics
Physicists just discovered the rarest particle decay ever
The “golden channel” decay of subatomic particles called kaons could break or confirm the standard model of particle physics.
- Physics
X-rays from nuclear blasts could defend Earth from asteroids
The X-ray pulses could deflect asteroids up to 4 kilometers wide, a new study suggests.
- Cosmology
How did dark matter shape the universe? This physicist has ideas
Theoretical physicist Tracy Slatyer proposes new scenarios for dark matter and helped discover the Fermi bubbles.
- Computing
This engineer’s light-based computers take inspiration from the brain
Physicist and engineer Bhavin Shastri is working to create the first photonic computer modeled after the human brain.
- Quantum Physics
Why this physicist is bringing thermodynamics to the quantum age
Like a steampunk fantasy-world, which pairs high-tech with an old-timey setting, Nicole Yunger Halpern melds old and new science.
