Physics News

Mysterious Flashes in 1950s Skies Linked to Nuclear Tests and UAP Sightings: Study

The POSS I red image on July 19, 1952 at 8:52 (UT) containing the triple transient just above center. Image credit: Solano et al., doi: 10.1093/mnras/stad3422.
Apr 10, 2026 by Natali Anderson

A new statistical analysis of archival sky surveys from the early Cold War has found that mysterious, short-lived bursts of light in the night sky were more likely to appear around the time of above-ground nuclear weapons tests and to increase alongside reports of unexplained aerial phenomena (UAPs). Four exposures of the 3 x 3 arcmin region of sky centered on the triple transient identified in July 1952. Upper left: the POSS I red image on July 19,...

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Sekiya et al. found evidence for an exotic atomic nucleus state in an experiment at the GSI/FAIR research center in Germany. Image credit: J. Hosan, GSI/FAIR.

Physicists Detect Elusive Nuclear State

Apr 10, 2026 by News Staff

An experiment in Germany offers the first evidence of a long-predicted pairing between a nucleus of carbon-11 and η’ meson (eta prime meson), shedding...

Illustration of the predicted hexagonal carbon hydride compound under Neptune-like interior conditions. In this structure, carbon forms the outer spiral chains (yellow) and hydrogen forms the inner spiral chains (blue), consistent with the quasi-one-dimensional superionic behavior identified in first-principles simulations. Image credit: Cong Liu.

New Form of Matter May Lurk Deep Inside Uranus and Neptune

Apr 6, 2026 by News Staff

New computational simulations suggest ice-giant planets like Uranus and Neptune harbor a quasi-one-dimensional superionic state of carbon hydride that...

You et al. studied supercooled water at timescales before ice formation by heating high- and low-density amorphous ices using infrared ultrafast laser pulses, followed by X-ray scattering; they observed a rapid increase in the heat capacity indicating a critical divergence at 210 K coincident with enhanced density fluctuations. Image credit: POSTECH University.

Physicists Find First Experimental Evidence of Elusive Critical Point in Supercooled Water

Mar 30, 2026 by News Staff

By probing supercooled water with ultrafast lasers before it crystallizes, physicists at Stockholm University observed telltale signs of a long-theorized...

Morrell et al. observed a new type of time crystal -- one whose particles levitate on a cushion of sound while interacting with each other by exchanging sound waves. Image credit: David Song / NYU.

Physicists Create Levitating Form of Time Crystal

Mar 24, 2026 by News Staff

A team of scientists at New York University has created a version of the exotic phase of matter in which particles levitate acoustically and interact by...

An artist’s impression of the doubly charmed baryon Ξcc⁺, which contains two charm quarks and one down quark. Image credit: CERN.

CERN Physicists Discover Heavier Cousin of Proton

Mar 23, 2026 by News Staff

Physicists from the LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have discovered a new kind of heavy proton-like particle. Known as Ξcc⁺,...

Schematic of the expansion of the Universe from the Big Bang to the present day. Image credit: NASA / EFBrazil.

Astrophysicists Propose New Method to Measure Hubble Constant

Feb 25, 2026 by Enrico de Lazaro

Astrophysicists from the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago have developed an innovative method to measure the Hubble constant —...

The KM3NeT experiment has recently observed a neutrino with an energy around 100 PeV, and IceCube has detected five neutrinos with energies above 1 PeV; while there are no known astrophysical sources, exploding primordial black holes could have produced these high-energy neutrinos. Image credit: Gemini AI.

Ultra-High-Energy Neutrino May Signal First Glimpse of Primordial Black Hole Explosion

Feb 4, 2026 by News Staff

Physicists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst argue that an ultra-high-energy neutrino detected by the KM3NeT experiment could be the signature...

Hun Rho et al. introduce plasmonic colloidal supraballs -- solution-processable assemblies of gold nanospheres -- as a robust and versatile platform for broadband solar energy harvesting. Image credit: Hun Rho et al., doi: 10.1021/acsami.5c23149.

New Nanomaterial Design Could Help Solar Tech Harness More Sunlight

Feb 2, 2026 by News Staff

By using gold nanospheres engineered to capture light across the solar spectrum, researchers at Korea University took a step toward lowering barriers to...

Dark photons are hypothetical dark sector particles proposed as a force carrier similar to the photon of electromagnetism but potentially connected to dark matter. Image credit: University of Adelaide.

Physicists Challenge Long-Held Assumptions about Nature of Dark Matter

Jan 19, 2026 by News Staff

Dark matter may not have been ‘cold’ in the earliest moments after the Big Bang, as long believed; instead, new research from the University of Minnesota...

Operating principle and implementation of MASI. Image credit: Wang et al., doi: 10.1038/s41467-025-65661-8.

New Sensor Rewrites Rules of Optical Imaging

Jan 19, 2026 by News Staff

Inspired by a technique that allowed astronomers to image a black hole, scientists at the University of Connecticut developed a lens-free image sensor...

Signatures of single gravitons from gravitational waves can be detected in near-future experiments. Image credit: I. Pikovski.

Physicists Begin Building First-Ever Graviton Detector

Jan 19, 2026 by News Staff

Stevens Institute of Technology physicist Igor Pikovski and colleagues are developing the first experiment designed to capture individual gravitons —...

This artist’s impression shows the evolution of the Universe beginning with the Big Bang on the left followed by the appearance of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The formation of the first stars ends the cosmic dark ages, followed by the formation of galaxies. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

New Solution to Cosmic Acceleration Challenges Dark Energy Paradigm

Jan 12, 2026 by News Staff

Physicists from the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity at the University of Bremen and the Transylvanian University of Brașov have unveiled...

Google’s quantum computer. Image credit: Google.

Breakthrough in Quantum Computing: First Secure Method to Back Up Quantum Information

Jan 7, 2026 by News Staff

Scientists at the University of Waterloo and Kyushu University have developed the first method to create redundant, encrypted copies of qubits —...

Using data from the MicroBooNE detector, physicists report one of the first searches for a sterile neutrino using two accelerator neutrino beams. Image credit: Gemini AI.

Physicists Rule Out Existence of Sterile Neutrino

Dec 10, 2025 by News Staff

Physicists with the MicroBooNE (Micro Booster Neutrino) Collaboration have ruled out the existence of a single sterile neutrino with 95% certainty. Using...

Time is an example of psychological projection. Image credit: Gemini AI.

Time is Psychological Projection, Philosopher Suggests

Nov 18, 2025 by The Conversation

In his new book ‘A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time,’ Wake Forest University’s Professor Adrian Bardon proposes that our sense of the passage...

An artist’s impression of the Solar System. Image credit: NASA / JPL.

Our Solar System is Moving More Than Three Times Faster than Expected

Nov 17, 2025 by News Staff

To determine the motion of the Solar System, Bielefeld University astrophysicist Lukas Böhme and his colleagues analyzed the distribution of radio galaxies. An...

This artist’s impression shows the evolution of the Universe beginning with the Big Bang on the left followed by the appearance of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The formation of the first stars ends the cosmic dark ages, followed by the formation of galaxies. Image credit: M. Weiss / Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

Our Universe Has Already Entered Decelerating Phase, Study Suggests

Nov 6, 2025 by News Staff

New research from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea, casts doubt on the long-standing theory that dark energy is driving distant galaxies away increasingly...

Faizal et al. show that the fundamental nature of reality operates in a way that no computer could ever simulate. Image credit: Gemini AI.

Universe Is Not a Computer Simulation, New Study Says

Oct 30, 2025 by News Staff

A team of physicists from Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and Italy has mathematically shown that our Universe is built on a type of understanding...

The world’s first neutrino observation in a hydrogen bubble chamber. It was found November 13, 1970, on this photograph from the Zero Gradient Synchrotron’s 12-foot bubble chamber. The invisible neutrino strikes a proton where three particle tracks originate (lower right). The neutrino turns into a mu-meson, the long center track (extending up and left). The short track is the proton. The third track (extending down and left) is a pi-meson created by the collision. Image credit: Argonne National Laboratory.

NOvA and T2K Experiments Zero In on Unusual Properties of Neutrinos

Oct 28, 2025 by News Staff

In both NOvA (NuMI Off-axis νe Appearance experiment) and T2K experiments, neutrinos are fired from particle accelerators and detected after traveling...

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