Scientists at Ames National Laboratory developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) tool that accelerates discovery of materials needed for next-generation fusion energy systems. The tool, DuctGPT, combines advanced AI with physics-based modeling to help researchers predict materials with the appropriate properties to function in the extreme conditions inside of fusion reactors.

MIT researchers discovered a paradoxical phenomenon in optical physics that could enable a new bioimaging method that’s faster and higher-resolution than existing technology. They discovered that, under the right conditions, a chaotic mess of laser light can spontaneously self-organize into a highly focused “pencil beam.”

A detector buried deep in Antarctic ice has captured the first experimental evidence of a predicted but never-before-seen phenomenon: radio pulses generated when high-energy cosmic rays slam into the ice sheet and trigger particle cascades inside it. Through results published in Physical Review Letters, astronomers of the Askaryan Radio Array (ARA) Collaboration have validated a key technique, which they hope will eventually allow them to detect some of the rarest and most energetic particles in the universe.