Quantum Physics News

January 21, 2026

Top Headlines

Inside the Mysterious Collapse of Dark Matter Halos

Jan. 19, 2026 Physicists have unveiled a new way to simulate a mysterious form of dark matter that can collide with itself but not with normal matter. This self-interacting dark matter may trigger a dramatic collapse inside dark matter halos, heating and ...

Engineers Just Created a “Phonon Laser” That Could Shrink Your Next Smartphone

Jan. 17, 2026 Engineers have created a device that generates incredibly tiny, earthquake-like vibrations on a microchip—and it could transform future electronics. Using a new kind of “phonon laser,” the team ...

Scientists Are Closing in on the Universe’s Biggest Mystery

Jan. 8, 2026 Nearly everything in the universe is made of mysterious dark matter and dark energy, yet we can’t see either of them directly. Scientists are developing detectors so sensitive they can spot particle interactions that might occur once in years or ...

Quantum Structured Light Could Transform Secure Communication and Computing

Jan. 6, 2026 Scientists are learning to engineer light in rich, multidimensional ways that dramatically increase how much information a single photon can carry. This leap could make quantum communication more secure, quantum computers more efficient, and sensors ...

Tiny 3D-printed Light Cages Could Unlock the Quantum Internet

Jan. 6, 2026 A new chip-based quantum memory uses nanoprinted “light cages” to trap light inside atomic vapor, enabling fast, reliable storage of quantum information. The structures can be fabricated with extreme precision and filled with atoms in days ...

How Manipulating Gravitational Waves Could Reveal Gravity’s Quantum Secrets

Jan. 2, 2026 A physicist has proposed a bold experiment that could allow gravitational waves to be manipulated using laser light. By transferring minute amounts of energy between light and gravity, the ...

Gravitational Waves May Reveal Hidden Dark Matter Around Black Holes

Dec. 19, 2025 Gravitational waves from black holes may soon reveal where dark matter is hiding. A new model shows how dark matter surrounding massive black holes leaves detectable fingerprints in the waves recorded by future space ...

New Quantum Antenna Reveals a Hidden Terahertz World

Dec. 13, 2025 Researchers at the University of Warsaw have unveiled a breakthrough method for detecting and precisely calibrating terahertz frequency combs using a quantum antenna made from Rydberg atoms. By combining atomic electrometry with a powerful ...

Scientists Are Turning Earth Into a Giant Detector for Hidden Forces Shaping Our Universe

Dec. 6, 2025 SQUIRE aims to detect exotic spin-dependent interactions using quantum sensors deployed in space, where speed and environmental conditions vastly improve sensitivity. Orbiting sensors tap into ...

Scientists Just Teleported Information Using Light

Nov. 29, 2025 Quantum communication is edging closer to reality thanks to a breakthrough in teleporting information between photons from different quantum dots—one of the biggest challenges in building a quantum internet. By creating nearly identical ...

Quantum Computers Just Simulated Physics Too Complex for Supercomputers

Nov. 19, 2025 Researchers created scalable quantum circuits capable of simulating fundamental nuclear physics on more than 100 qubits. These circuits efficiently prepare complex initial states that classical computers cannot handle. The achievement demonstrates a ...

This Tiny Quantum Clock Packs a Billion-fold Energy Mystery

Nov. 17, 2025 Scientists built a tiny clock from single-electron jumps to probe the true energy cost of quantum timekeeping. They discovered that reading the clock’s output requires vastly more energy than the clock uses to function. This measurement process ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:20am EST

Electrons Stop Acting Like Particles—and Physics Still Works

Jan. 15, 2026 Physicists have long relied on the idea that electrons behave like tiny particles zipping through materials, even though quantum physics says their exact position is fundamentally uncertain. Now, ...

New Research Challenges the Cold Dark Matter Assumption

Jan. 15, 2026 Dark matter, one of the Universe’s greatest mysteries, may have been born blazing hot instead of cold and sluggish as scientists long believed. New research shows that dark matter particles could ...

Physicists Thought This Mystery Particle Could Explain Everything. See What Happened

Jan. 12, 2026 Scientists at Fermilab’s MicroBooNE experiment have ruled out the existence of the elusive sterile neutrino, a particle proposed for decades to ...

A New Theory of Gravity Could Explain Cosmic Acceleration Without Dark Energy

Jan. 11, 2026 The accelerating expansion of the universe is usually explained by an invisible force known as dark energy. But a new study suggests this mysterious ...

Scientists Tried to Break Einstein’s Speed of Light Rule

Jan. 8, 2026 Einstein’s claim that the speed of light is constant has survived more than a century of scrutiny—but scientists are still daring to test it. Some theories of quantum gravity suggest light might ...

Physicists Found Hidden Order in Violent Proton Collisions

Jan. 5, 2026 Inside high-energy proton collisions, quarks and gluons briefly form a dense, boiling state before cooling into ordinary particles. Researchers expected this transition to change how disordered the ...

Physicists Close in on the Elusive Sterile Neutrino

Dec. 30, 2025 Neutrinos may be nearly invisible, but they play a starring role in the Universe. Long-standing anomalies had hinted at a mysterious fourth “sterile” neutrino, potentially rewriting the laws of ...

Fusion Reactors May Create Dark Matter Particles

Dec. 28, 2025 Researchers say fusion reactors might do more than generate clean energy—they could also create particles linked to dark matter. A new theoretical study shows how neutrons inside future fusion ...

Large Hadron Collider Finally Explains How Fragile Matter Forms

Dec. 27, 2025 In collisions at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, hotter than the Sun’s core by a staggering margin, scientists have finally solved a long-standing mystery: how delicate particles like deuterons and ...

“Purifying” Photons: Scientists Found a Way to Clean Light Itself

Dec. 23, 2025 A new discovery shows that messy, stray light can be used to clean up quantum systems instead of disrupting them. University of Iowa researchers found that unwanted photons produced by lasers can be ...

Physicists Made Atoms Behave Like a Quantum Circuit

Dec. 23, 2025 Using ultracold atoms and laser light, researchers recreated the behavior of a Josephson junction—an essential component of quantum computers and voltage standards. The appearance of Shapiro steps ...

Ghost Particles Slip Through Earth and Spark a Hidden Atomic Reaction

Dec. 12, 2025 Scientists have managed to observe solar neutrinos carrying out a rare atomic transformation deep underground, converting carbon-13 into nitrogen-13 inside the SNO+ detector. By tracking two faint ...

Scientists Spent 10 Years Chasing a Particle That Wasn’t There

Dec. 18, 2025 After a decade of painstaking measurements, scientists have delivered a major plot twist in particle physics: a long-hypothesized “mystery particle” likely doesn’t exist. Using the MicroBooNE ...

This Simulation Reveals What Really Happens Near Black Holes

Dec. 22, 2025 Black holes are among the most extreme objects in the universe, and now scientists can model them more accurately than ever before. By combining Einstein’s gravity with realistic behavior of light ...

Scientists May Have Found Dark Matter After 100 Years of Searching

Nov. 29, 2025 Nearly a century after astronomers first proposed dark matter to explain the strange motions of galaxies, scientists may finally be catching a glimpse of it. A University of Tokyo researcher ...

X-Ray Movies Reveal How Intense Lasers Tear a Buckyball Apart

Nov. 28, 2025 Using intense X-rays, researchers captured a buckyball as it expanded, split and shed electrons under strong laser fields. Detailed scattering measurements showed how the molecule behaves at low, ...

This Glowing Particle in a Laser Trap May Reveal How Lightning Begins

Nov. 24, 2025 Using a precisely aligned pair of laser beams, scientists can now hold a single aerosol particle in place and monitor how it charges up. The particle’s glow signals each step in its changing ...

Our Solar System Is Racing Through Space 3x Faster Than We Thought

Nov. 22, 2025 New measurements of radio galaxies reveal that the solar system is racing through the universe at over three times the speed predicted by standard cosmology. Using highly sensitive data from multiple ...

Nanoscale Trick Makes “dark Excitons” Glow 300,000 Times Stronger

Nov. 19, 2025 Researchers have found a way to make “dark excitons”—normally invisible quantum states of light—shine dramatically brighter by trapping them inside a tiny gold-nanotube optical cavity. This ...

Hidden Dimensions Could Explain Where Mass Comes from

Dec. 15, 2025 A new theory proposes that the universe’s fundamental forces and particle properties may arise from the geometry of hidden extra dimensions. These dimensions could twist and evolve over time, ...

Physicists Reveal a New Quantum State Where Electrons Run Wild

Nov. 16, 2025 Electrons can freeze into strange geometric crystals and then melt back into liquid-like motion under the right quantum conditions. Researchers identified how to tune these transitions and even ...

Einstein Might Have Been Wrong About Black Holes

Nov. 8, 2025 Researchers are using black hole shadows to challenge Einstein’s theory of relativity. With new simulations and future ultra-sharp telescope images, they may uncover signs that his famous equations ...

Dark Matter Acts Surprisingly Normal in a New Cosmic Test

Nov. 16, 2025 Dark matter may be invisible, but scientists are getting closer to understanding whether it follows the same rules as everything we can see. By comparing how galaxies move through cosmic gravity ...

CERN Creates Cosmic “fireballs” That Could Reveal the Universe’s Hidden Magnetism

Nov. 7, 2025 Using CERN’s Super Proton Synchrotron, researchers generated plasma fireballs to simulate blazar jets. The beams stayed stable, suggesting plasma instabilities aren’t responsible for missing ...

Breakthrough Links Magnetism and Electricity for Faster Tech

Nov. 5, 2025 Engineers at the University of Delaware have uncovered a way to bridge magnetism and electricity through magnons—tiny waves that carry information without electrical current. These magnetic waves ...

Physicists Prove the Universe Isn’t a Simulation After All

Nov. 10, 2025 New research from UBC Okanagan mathematically demonstrates that the universe cannot be simulated. Using Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, scientists found that reality requires “non-algorithmic ...

Hidden Clues in Ghostly Particles Could Explain Why We Exist

Oct. 30, 2025 In a rare global collaboration, scientists from Japan and the United States joined forces to explore one of the universe’s deepest mysteries — why anything exists at all. By combining years of ...

Twin Black Hole Collisions Put Einstein’s General Relativity to Its Most Extreme Test

Oct. 30, 2025 Two recently observed black hole mergers, occurring just weeks apart in late 2024, have opened an extraordinary new window into the universe’s most extreme events. These collisions not only ...

Stanford Discovers an Extraordinary Crystal That Could Transform Quantum Tech

Nov. 9, 2025 Stanford scientists found that strontium titanate improves its performance when frozen to near absolute zero, showing extraordinary optical and mechanical behavior. Its nonlinear and piezoelectric ...

MIT Physicists Just Found a Way to See Inside Atoms

Oct. 26, 2025 MIT researchers have devised a new molecular technique that lets electrons probe inside atomic nuclei, replacing massive particle accelerators with a tabletop setup. By studying radium monofluoride, ...