Matter & Energy News

July 22, 2025

Top Headlines

Scientists Twist DNA Into Self-Building Nanostructures That Could Transform Technology

July 20, 2025 — Scientists have used DNA's self-assembling properties to engineer intricate moiré superlattices at the nanometer scale—structures that twist and layer like never before. With clever molecular ...

Lasers Just Unlocked a Hidden Side of Gold, Copper, and Aluminum

July 19, 2025 — Scientists have cracked a century-old physics mystery by detecting magnetic signals in non-magnetic metals using only light and a revamped laser technique. Previously undetectable, these faint magnetic “whispers” are now measurable, revealing ...

This Flat Chip Uses Twisted Light to Reveal Hidden Images

July 17, 2025 — Using advanced metasurfaces, researchers can now twist light to uncover hidden images and detect molecular handedness, potentially revolutionizing data encryption, biosensing, and drug ...

This Laser Implosion Just Created a Magnetic Field Like a Neutron Star

July 16, 2025 — A powerful new technique harnesses swirling plasma inside laser-blasted microtubes to produce record-breaking magnetic fields—rivaling those near neutron stars—all within a compact laboratory setup. This innovation promises to transform ...

This AI-Powered Lab Runs Itself—and Discovers New Materials 10x Faster

July 14, 2025 — A new leap in lab automation is shaking up how scientists discover materials. By switching from slow, traditional methods to real-time, dynamic chemical experiments, researchers have created a self-driving lab that collects 10 times more data, ...

New Nanotech Boosts Solar Cell Efficiency Over 10%

July 14, 2025 — Scientists in China have developed a precise method to grow titanium dioxide nanorod arrays with controllable spacing, independent of rod size. This innovation boosts solar cell efficiency by allowing light capture and charge movement to be ...

One Tiny Trick Just Broke Light’s Oldest Rule — and Changed Optics Forever

July 14, 2025 — Researchers have cracked a fundamental optical challenge: how to control both angle and wavelength of light independently—a problem that’s limited imaging and display technologies for years. By ...

First-of-Its-Kind Crystal Laser Could Power Safer Sensors and Smarter Tech

July 12, 2025 — Researchers at the University of Illinois have pulled off a laser first: they built a new kind of eye-safe laser that works at room temperature, using a buried layer of glass-like material instead of the usual air holes. This design not only boosts ...

A Simple Twist Unlocks Never-Before-Seen Quantum Behavior

July 11, 2025 — Scientists have discovered a revolutionary new method for creating quantum states by twisting materials at the M-point, revealing exotic phenomena previously out of reach. This new direction dramatically expands the moiré toolkit and may soon lead ...

This Magnetic Breakthrough Could Make AI 10x More Efficient

July 10, 2025 — A groundbreaking step in AI hardware efficiency comes from Germany, where scientists have engineered a vast spin waveguide network that processes information with far less energy. These spin waves quantum ripples in magnetic materials offer a ...

Forget 3D printing—DNA and Water Now Build Tiny Machines That Assemble Themselves

July 10, 2025 — Imagine if you could "print" a tiny skyscraper using DNA instead of steel. That’s what researchers at Columbia and Brookhaven are doing—constructing intricate 3D nanostructures by harnessing the ...

Lasers Capture the Invisible Dance of Wind and Waves

July 10, 2025 — A laser-equipped research platform has, for the first time, photographed airflow just millimeters above ocean waves, revealing two simultaneous wind–wave energy-transfer tricks—slow short waves steal power from the breeze, while long giants ...

Latest Headlines

updated 12:16pm EDT

Aluminium-20 Shatters Nuclear Norms With Explosive Triple-Proton Breakup

July 22, 2025 — Scientists have observed a brand-new and exotic atomic nucleus: aluminium-20. Unlike anything seen before, it decays through a stunning three-proton emission sequence, shedding light on nuclear ...

Goodbye Plastic? Scientists Create New Supermaterial That Outperforms Metals and Glass

July 22, 2025 — Scientists at Rice University and the University of Houston have created a powerful new material by guiding bacteria to grow cellulose in aligned ...

Cracking the Carbene Code: A 100x Faster Path to Life-Saving Drugs

July 21, 2025 — Using a clever combo of iron and radical chemistry, scientists have unlocked a safer, faster way to create carbenes molecular powerhouses key to modern medicine and materials. It s 100x more ...

Why Broken Crystals Are Stronger

July 17, 2025 — Crystals may seem flawless, but deep inside they contain tiny structural imperfections that dramatically influence their strength and behavior. Researchers from The University of Osaka have used the ...

Chirality Shock: Geneva Chemists Forge Millennia-Stable ‘mirror-Proof’ Drugs

July 15, 2025 — Chemists at the University of Geneva and University of Pisa have crafted a novel family of chiral molecules whose mirror-image “handedness” ...

This Algorithm Just Solved One of Physics’ Most Infamous Problems

July 14, 2025 — Using an advanced Monte Carlo method, Caltech researchers found a way to tame the infinite complexity of Feynman diagrams and solve the long-standing polaron problem, unlocking deeper understanding ...

Scientists Just Recreated a 1938 Experiment That Could Rewrite Fusion History

July 9, 2025 — A groundbreaking collaboration between Los Alamos scientists and Duke University has resurrected a nearly forgotten 1938 experiment that may have ...

Hidden DNA-Sized Crystals in Cosmic Ice Could Rewrite Water—and Life Itself

July 9, 2025 — Scientists from UCL and the University of Cambridge have revealed that "space ice"—long thought to be completely disordered—is actually sprinkled ...

They Glow Without Fusion—hidden Stars That May Finally Reveal Dark Matter

July 8, 2025 — Some of the faintest, coldest stars in the universe may be powered not by fusion—but by the annihilation of dark matter deep within them. These “dark dwarfs” could exist in regions like the ...

Breakthrough Battery Lets Physicists Reverse Entanglement—and Rewrite Quantum Law

July 7, 2025 — Scientists have finally uncovered a quantum counterpart to Carnot’s famed second law, showing that entanglement—once thought stubbornly ...

Can One Vanishing Particle Shatter String Theory — and Explain Dark Matter?

July 5, 2025 — Scientists are on the trail of a mysterious five-particle structure that could challenge one of the biggest theories in physics: string theory. This rare particle—never seen before and predicted ...

A Shocking New Way to Make Ammonia, No Fossil Fuels Needed

July 5, 2025 — Australian scientists have discovered a method to produce ammonia—an essential component in fertilizers—using only air and electricity. By mimicking lightning and channeling that energy through a ...

Scientists Just Mapped Platinum Atoms — and It Could Transform Catalysis Forever

July 3, 2025 — A precious metal used everywhere from car exhaust systems to fuel cells, platinum is an incredibly efficient catalyst—but it's costly and carbon-intensive. Now, a serendipitous collaboration ...

Defying Physics: This Rare Crystal Cools Itself Using Pure Magnetism

July 6, 2025 — Deep in Chile’s Atacama Desert, scientists studied a green crystal called atacamite—and discovered it can cool itself dramatically when placed in a magnetic field. Unlike a regular fridge, this ...

Scientists Capture Real-Time Birth of Ultrafast Laser Pulses

July 6, 2025 — Scientists have captured the moment a laser "comes to life"—and what they found challenges long-held beliefs. Using a special technique to film laser light in real time, researchers ...

This Breakthrough Turns Old Tech Into Pure Gold — No Mercury, No Cyanide, Just Light and Salt

June 27, 2025 — At Flinders University, scientists have cracked a cleaner and greener way to extract gold—not just from ore, but also from our mounting piles of e-waste. By using a compound normally found in pool ...

Self-Lighting Chip Uses Quantum Tunneling to Spot a Trillionth of a Gram

June 27, 2025 — Imagine detecting a single trillionth of a gram of a molecule—like an amino acid—using just electricity and a chip smaller than your fingernail. That’s the power of a new quantum-enabled ...

One Shot, Game Changed: How RAVEN Captured a Petawatt Laser and Supercharged Fusion Research

June 27, 2025 — Scientists have developed a groundbreaking technique called RAVEN that can capture the full complexity of an ultra-intense laser pulse in a single shot—something previously thought nearly ...

Graphene Just Unlocked “impossible” Quantum Currents Without Magnets

June 27, 2025 — Researchers have achieved a major breakthrough by generating quantum spin currents in graphene—without relying on bulky magnetic fields. By pairing graphene with a magnetic material, they unlocked ...

This Triple-Layer Sunlight Catalyst Supercharges Green Hydrogen by 800%

June 23, 2025 — Researchers in Sweden have developed a powerful new material that dramatically boosts the ability to create hydrogen fuel from water using sunlight, making the process eight times more effective than ...

Breakthrough Magnet Design Could Transform MRI and Magnetic Levitation

June 22, 2025 — Two German physicists have reimagined how to create powerful and uniform magnetic fields using compact permanent magnets. By overcoming the limitations of the well-known Halbach array, which works ...

Photon-Powered Alchemy: How Light Is Rewriting Fossil Fuel Chemistry

June 20, 2025 — Researchers at Colorado State University have developed a new photoredox catalysis system that uses visible light mimicking photosynthesis to drive energy-intensive chemical reactions at room ...

Invisible Quantum Waves Forge Shape-Shifting Super-Materials in Real Time

June 19, 2025 — Scientists have, for the first time, directly observed phonon wave dynamics within self-assembling nanomaterials unlocking the potential for customizable, reconfigurable metamaterials with ...

You Hear the Beep, but Can’t Find the Car: The Hidden Flaw in Electric Vehicle Safety

June 18, 2025 — As electric vehicles grow more popular, their warning sounds may not be doing enough to protect pedestrians. A Swedish study shows that these signals are hard to locate, especially when multiple ...

Saving Energy: New Method Guides Magnetism Without Magnets

June 17, 2025 — In a leap toward greener tech, researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute have discovered a way to control magnetic textures using electric fields no bulky magnets needed. Their star material? A ...

Cozmic’s Milky Way Clones Are Cracking the Universe’s Dark Code

June 17, 2025 — Scientists have built detailed Milky Way simulations under strange new physical laws to probe dark matter, revealing how different versions of the universe might behave and helping us get closer to ...

Scientists Just Solved a 40-Year-Old Mystery About Quasicrystals

June 14, 2025 — Scientists at the University of Michigan have unlocked a long-standing mystery about quasicrystals exotic materials that straddle the line between the orderly structure of crystals and the chaos of ...

Rice University Breakthrough Keeps CO₂ Electrolyzers Running 50x Longer

June 22, 2025 — A Rice University team discovered that bubbling CO₂ through a mild acid dramatically improves the lifespan and efficiency of electrochemical devices that convert CO₂ into useful fuels. This ...

Hydrogen Fuel at Half the Cost? Scientists Reveal a Game-Changing Catalyst

June 20, 2025 — Researchers in South Korea have developed a powerful and affordable new material for producing hydrogen, a clean energy source key to fighting climate change. By fine-tuning boron-doping and ...

Guest Molecules Ride Perfect Waves in Dna droplets—A Breakthrough for Synthetic Biology

June 13, 2025 — Scientists have uncovered a previously unknown type of molecular motion inside DNA-based droplets: instead of spreading randomly, guest molecules advance in an organized wave. This surprising ...