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For the first time, new theoretical models, published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, connect the magnetism at the surface of long-dead stellar remnants (white dwarfs) with recent evidence of magnetism at the cores of their dying progenitors (red giants). The team, led by astrophysicists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA), argues that these magnetic fields might originate early in the stars’ lives, and survive their entire evolution, emerging as “fossil fields” at the surfaces of older remnants. A better understanding of these processes can also help to better understand our own sun’s future.
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A study led by UC Riverside physicist Hai-Bo Yu suggests that a new type of dark matter could explain three astrophysical puzzles across vastly different environments. Published in Physical Review Letters, the study proposes that dense clumps of self-interacting dark matter (SIDM)—each about a million times the mass of the sun—can account for unusual gravitational effects observed in gravitational lenses, stellar streams, and satellite galaxies.
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A key factor for the performance of sensors is the speed at which the system returns to its initial state after a disturbance or measurement, similar to the taring of a balance. In the quantum sensor under investigation, this corresponds to the transition of electrons from an energetically excited state to the ground state. However, the electrons remain in a kind of metastable intermediate state for a short time. A team of physicists from Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg (JMU) has now directly measured this waiting time in a two-dimensional material: It lasts exactly 24 billionths of a second.
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At this point in NASA’s human spaceflight story, researchers have a substantial amount of material—documents, artifacts and images—with which to tell the stories of past flights to space. But with NASA’s Artemis II mission around the moon now in the books, we’re getting a refreshed look at space.
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The center of our galaxy is an extreme place. Surrounding the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*, stars are packed densely into a region where gravity, radiation, and dark matter all interact in complex ways. It is a natural laboratory for testing some of the deepest ideas about astrophysics.
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A new study by scientists in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) shows that when a pressure disturbance moves across an ultrasoft elastic material, such as a gel or a biological tissue, it generates a V-shaped wake that’s strikingly similar to the waves that travel behind a boat.
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Quantum computers stand to revolutionize research by helping investigators solve certain problems exponentially faster than with conventional computers. Current quantum computers encounter a challenge where they lose stored information in a process known as quantum scrambling. However, scientists at the University of California, Irvine have discovered a method to enable computers to preserve the data that would otherwise be lost during the scrambling process. The research is published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
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An international team of scientists, including researchers from Loughborough University, has developed a method to dramatically speed up the discovery and design of advanced materials. The study, published in Physical Review Letters, shows how the new approach can map complex phase diagrams in as little as a day—rather than weeks or months—and pinpoint where important structures, including crystals and quasicrystals, are likely to form.
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“This incident is a stark reminder of the dangers our deputies face during everyday tasks that most people might consider routine,” the Collier County Sheriff’s Office stated
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The moon is Earth’s only natural satellite, a rocky celestial body that orbits our planet at an average distance of about 384,000 kilometers. The most widely accepted scientific explanation for the moon’s origin is the “giant impact,” a high-energy collision between a Mars-sized proto-planet named Theia with the young “proto-Earth” about 4.5 billion years ago. As the newly formed moon cooled down from a hot magma ocean, layers with varying iron-content and mineral compositions crystallized to form the moon’s structure that we know today.
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Superconductors—materials that can conduct electricity without energy loss—are crucial for next-generation high-efficiency, ultrafast electronics. However, most superconductors share a critical limitation: they lose their superconducting properties in strong magnetic fields. In contrast, a class of superconductors containing heavy elements can sustain an unusual type of superconductivity in magnetic fields beyond the conventional limit. Now, new research has demonstrated that this limitation can be overcome by sandwiching atomically thin films of a lightweight element called gallium between two other materials to engineer quantum interactions at the interfaces between the layers.
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Researchers have discovered evidence that superconductivity can be controlled by influencing the surrounding environment, a finding that may lead to more efficient electronics down the road, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Physics.
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The most realistic picture yet of how galaxies formed and then evolved from the beginning of time has been revealed in a suite of new and unique audiovisual simulations. These data, accepted for publication in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, show that the standard cosmological model can successfully explain the observed growth of galaxies, from the first billion years after the Big Bang to the present day, when key physics is included.
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The simplicity of a hydrogen atom makes it an ideal model for studying atomic structure and interactions. Yet, despite the fact that its simplest form consists of only one proton and one electron, physicists have had a hard time pinning down the exact charge radius of the proton. But a new study, published in the journal Physical Review Letters, outlines a method of measurement that helps to resolve some past discrepancies.
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Since July 2025, the European Space Agency’s pair of Proba-3 satellites has already created 57 artificial solar eclipses. So far, the mission has collected more than 250 hours of high-resolution videos of the sun’s atmosphere, called the corona. That’s the same amount of observing time as about 5,000 total solar eclipse campaigns carried out on Earth.
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