Image: Astris infographic

Menlo Park CA (SPX) Jan 08, 2026
Researchers hoped to clarify the boundaries between different types of superionic water - the hot, black ice believed to exist at the core of giant ice planets. Instead, they found multiple atomic stacking patterns coexisting in overlapping configurations never seen before in this phase of water. Superionic water - the hot, black and strangely conductive form of ice that exists in the cent

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jan 09, 2026
Neutrinos, often called ghost particles, are elementary particles that are electrically neutral, extremely light, and interact only rarely with other matter. Trillions pass through Earth and the human body every second without leaving a trace, which makes them difficult to detect but valuable as probes of regions of the universe that are otherwise hidden. Researchers at the University of C

Los Angeles CA (SPX) Jan 09, 2026
Astronomers at the University of California, Irvine have identified the largest-known stream of super-heated gas in the universe flowing out of a nearby disk galaxy called VV 340a, with their findings reported in Science. The gas, traced using data from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, emerges from both sides of the galaxy as two elongated nebulae powered by an active supermassive black hole a

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jan 09, 2026
Plans to obtain the first precision measurements of some of the rarest and most unstable atomic nuclei are set to advance understanding of nuclear structure and the way chemical elements form during extreme cosmic events such as supernovae, neutron star mergers and X-ray bursts. The University of Surrey is partnering with researchers in Japan to develop instruments that can measure previou

Berlin, Germany (SPX) Jan 09, 2026
Researchers at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Munchen have demonstrated a quantum interferometric method that can register extremely small tilts and displacements of a laser beam. The approach is based on weak value amplification, a concept from quantum mechanics that enhances the response of an interferometer when internal beam parameters change only slightly. In many experiments and tech