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"<strong>Shifting eastward<\/strong>(left) A map of Japan showing the epicentres of the main shock (Mw 9.0) and two strongest aftershocks (Mw 7.7 and 7.4) in the Tohoku-Oki earthquake. Each black dot represents a GNSS station. (right) The observed eastward components of ground motion at each of the GNSS sites from northeast (top) to southwest (bottom) of Japan are shown in black traces, with the shaded areas representing ground motion corresponding to the main shock and the aftershoc

Astronomers have created a spectacular composite image of a dying star’s remains in the act of being recycled. The image shows the Helix Nebula, a bright ring of gas that is located 650 light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. Resembling a giant human eye, its familiar ring formed from material expelled by a star near the end of its life. The remnant of that star, a white dwarf, lies at the nebula’s centre. Astronomers trained the Modular Optical Telephoto Hyperspectral Robotic Arra

Credibility is a cornerstone of modern science and concepts such as reproducibility and peer review have evolved to ensure that the knowledge produced by scientists is high quality. However, for science to thrive and benefit everyone, scientists themselves must be seen as credible to the general public. This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features Shumaila Bhatti and Dara Wald who are social scientists at Virginia Tech in the US. They have done a comprehensive study that reveals th

"Come together: Kinetic electronics module A, which integrates an electrical circuit and an actuator, deforms in response to an electrical input and connects mechanically and electrically to thin-film circuit module B via the docking mechanism. Before connection (left image), the two modules are separate; after connection (right image), module A holds and lifts module B, and by supplying power through the connection point, it can independently drive module B to deform. (Courtesy: Fumihiro Sassa\

How did you get on? 12 words Warming up nicely 16 words Getting hot, hot, hot 20 words Top dog! Fancy some more? Check out our puzzles page. The post Word flower puzzle no. 7 appeared first on Physics World.

Researchers in the US have proposed a new metric to determine the economic viability of future fusion power plants. The measure is similar to one used by fusion researchers to ascertain the output of fusion reactions, which is known as the Q factor. Nuclear fusion, which powers the stars, involves two light nuclei binding to form a heavier nucleus, releasing huge amounts of energy in the process. Harnessing fusion on Earth using the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium could lead to an enviro

The quantum tunnelling of hydrogen atoms plays a central role in many physical, chemical and biological process, but a practical means of controlling it has proved elusive. Researchers from the University of Tokyo, Japan have now demonstrated that the way hydrogen permeates through a material depends on the degree of symmetry in the material’s crystal structure. By controlling this symmetry, scientists could therefore gain control over hydrogen’s ability to tunnel, potentially leading to safer a

"(Courtesy: Shutterstock\/svekloid\n)"(Courtesy: Shutterstock/svekloid) All scientific inquiry involves some kind of uncertainty, but the uncertainties in cosmology are particularly daunting. As well as being complex and difficult to describe, the systems cosmologists investigate are almost by definition out of reach. In these conditions of uncertainty, how confident can we be in the models we’ve built? How can we come to know how galaxies form, how the universe began or how much dark matter it

The event horizons of black holes that are far from equilibrium can now be described by the first and second laws of thermodynamics thanks to new work by theoretical physicists at Pennsylvania State University in the US. The result augments the work of the late Stephen Hawking and others who showed in the 1970s that these classical concepts have applications in idealized, static black holes. Black holes are objects so dense that their gravitational pull prevents anything – even light – from esca

A system will generally move towards equilibrium when a change is made to it in a process called relaxation. To predict the state of the system after some period of time, we only need to know its current state and the external conditions. However, some polymers have memory behaviours where the evolution of the system is not only dependent on the current state, but also on previous states. This is known as the Kovacs effect. In this work, the researchers investigated the Kovacs effect in a system

Topological materials have been receiving a lot of attention in recent years because of their potential applications in future electronic and quantum technologies. These are a type of material whose electrons have properties that stay stable even when the material has small defects, impurities, or imperfections. They often have surface or edge behaviour that is very different from the interior, because of the structure of the material’s quantum states. Researchers use quantities such as Berry cu

Tissue engineering offers a means to restore, maintain or replace biological tissues. But it is difficult to grow blood vessels using conventional fabrication techniques like 3D printing, as they are typically not precise enough to print fine capillaries and veins. A team of engineers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has now developed a new approach to do just that, by using mechanical forces. Their blood-vessel-on-a-chip could be the first step in the scalable production of

NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) mission has notched up its first discovery of an exoplanet via a method known as microlensing. The planet is a “super Jupiter” known as Gaia23bra b, and TESS observed it when the planet and its host star acted as a gravitational lens, magnifying the light from a second, more distant background star. Astronomers have several ways of finding planets beyond our solar system. The most successful of these by far – and the one that TESS was designed

Black hole collisions, merging neutron stars, exploding supernovae – these massive cosmic events are all observed by interferometer-based gravitational-wave observatories such as LIGO. Detection of the ripples in space-time caused by these phenomena is dependent on the careful control of the mirrors used in these observatories. Led by Jonathan Richardson at University of California, Riverside, a research team has demonstrated a new wavefront actuator that can correct deformations in the surface

Heat flows from hot objects to cold objects – or does it? Although unidirectional heat flow is a natural consequence of the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy must either increase or stay the same, an international team has experimentally demonstrated that a quantum mechanism can reverse this flow of heat while remaining consistent with the laws of thermodynamics. The team then used the same mechanism to design a quantum engine that acts as a refrigerator while simultaneousl

Physics faces a persistent and uncomfortable paradox. While we repeatedly assert that scientific excellence depends on creativity, rigour, resilience and collaborative problem-solving, the way we select the next generation of researchers still relies heavily on institutional prestige, grades and prior access to opportunity. Although easy to use, these criteria are deeply entangled with structural advantage resulting in a system that is efficient to operate and familiar – yet systematically exclu

A radio signal has been amplified by scattering it from a stationary coin-sized electronic circuit that behaves as though it is rotating at an enormous rate. Conceived by a team at the City University of New York, the experiment is said to provide the first observation of rotational super-radiance involving electromagnetic waves. This wave-amplification effect is inspired by rotating black holes and was predicted more than half a century ago. Andrea Alù and colleagues found that only radio waves

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Two theoretical physicists – including a Nobel laureate – have solved a mathematical problem that flummoxed them for 10 years with help from Claude, the large language model (LLM) developed by the US-based firm Anthropic. In addition to its importance for fundamental physics, the result is significant because it offers further evidence that artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the nature of research in some fields. The problem that kept Francesco Zamponi and Giorgio Parisi awake at night or