news 2018

The past 12 months have provided many eye-grabbing headlines from the Imperial community, from world-leading research to incredible innovations. Before 2019 is upon us, we take a quick look back at the most popular articles on our award-winning news site (ranked by the number of page views). Here are our top 10 stories of 2018.

Researchers from the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations have announced gravitational wave observations of four new binary black holes and released their first catalogue of gravitational wave events. Since the detectors first started operation in September 2015 , the LIGO and Virgo Collaborations, which include researchers from the University of Birmingham, have completed two observation runs.

A scientist involved in expanding quantum communication to a network of users, is continuing his work at the University of Bristol. The enhanced cyber security offered by quantum communication has been historically limited to two partner exchanges, now for the first-time scientists have connected multiple users simultaneously on a quantum encrypted network without using trusted nodes.

How atoms arrange themselves at the smallest scale was thought to follow a 'drum-skin' rule, but mathematicians have now found a simpler solution. Atomic arrangements in different materials can provide a lot of information about the properties of materials, and what the potential is for altering what they can be used for.

Using electrical impulses, the 'tweezers' can extract single DNA, proteins and organelles from living cells without destroying them. We are continuously expanding our knowledge on how cells function, but many unanswered questions remain. This is especially true for individual cells that are of the same type, such as brain, muscle or fat cells, but have very different compositions at the single-molecule level.

University of Glasgow physicists are closing out 2018 with the publication of a wealth of new gravitational wave data collected during the first two observing runs of the LIGO and Virgo detectors. video In a new paper just published online, scientists from the LIGO and Virgo research collaborations present data from a total of 10 stellar-mass binary black hole mergers and one merger of neutron stars.

CERN experiment sees hints of rare kaon decay: University of Birmingham physicists play leading role in design and build of the detector, and in data analysis What if the odds of an event occurring were about one in ten billion? This is the case for the decay of a positively charged particle known as a kaon into another positively charged particle called a pion and a neutrino-antineutrino pair.

A mission to Mars which carries instruments co-designed by Oxford scientists, has successfully landed and will soon begin the first study of the heart of the planet. The NASA InSight mission landed shortly after 19:50 GMT on Monday, 26 November. InSight will study the inside of Mars to learn how planets, moons and meteorites with rocky surfaces, including the Earth and its Moon, formed.

New research has revealed that non-equilibrium quantum systems do obey universal laws, a discovery that can bring us closer to revealing the secrets of the Big Bang. Researchers from the University of Nottingham joined teams at the Technical University of Vienna and the University Heidenberg to undertake It shows that when quantum particles whirl around they obey universal laws, meaning what is true for one quantum system is also true for others.

A close study of auroras has revealed new ways of understanding the physics of explosive energy releases in space, according to new UCL-led research. Auroras are an incredible light show caused by electrically charged particles in near-Earth space spiralling down Earth's magnetic field and colliding with gases in the atmosphere, causing them to glow.

HORIBA Scientific has developed for QuantIC, the UK Quantum Technology Hub in Quantum Enhanced Imaging, Time-Correlated Single-Photon Counting (TCSPC), electronics to support its research into real-time computational 3D imaging and Light Detection And Ranging (LiDAR). This research has the potential to result in faster, better quality and lower-cost 3D imaging for applications that include autonomous vehicles, machine learning, security and surveying.

How a comet's dust tail forms bands stretching millions of kilometres across the sky has been observed for the first time by UCL scientists. The study, published today in Icarus, reveals the charged nature of the dust particles and the important role of the Sun in forming the characteristic patterns.

A scientist involved in creating the ultra-sensitive detectors needed to glimpse gravitational waves for the very first time has been awarded a prestigious Philip Leverhulme Prize. Dr Katherine Dooley, from Cardiff University's School of Physics and Astronomy, has picked up the £100,000 prize for scientific work 'that has had a significant international impact'.

A new sensing device can provide early warning of potential failure of breast reconstruction surgery, making it easier to take effective action. An international team led by Imperial College London and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) have developed the wireless 'bio-patch' as part of the Smart Sensing for Surgery project.

Researchers have set a new efficiency record for LEDs based on perovskite semiconductors, rivalling that of the best organic LEDs (OLEDs). Compared to OLEDs, which are widely used in high-end consumer electronics, the perovskite-based LEDs, developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, can be made at much lower costs, and can be tuned to emit light across the visible and near-infrared spectra with high colour purity.

Breast cancer cells hit blood vessel walls with up to 200 times the mechanical force exerted by normal healthy cells, finds a new UCL study. Using a novel instrument, which mimics blood vessel walls, researchers have gained new insights into the physical aspects of cancer migration and have revealed how cancer cells are able to coordinate their invasion to different parts of the body.

Scientists discover the first high-temperature single-molecule magnet. This could be relevant for molecule-based magnetic information storage materials. The research group reports a new single-molecule magnet (SMM) - a type of material that retains magnetic information up to a characteristic blocking temperature.

Researchers from the Cambridge Graphene Centre, together with industrial and academic collaborators within the European Graphene Flagship project, showed that integrated graphene-based photonic devices offer a solution for the next generation of optical communications. The researchers have demonstrated how properties of graphene - a two-dimensional form of carbon - enable ultra-wide bandwidth communications and low power consumption to radically change the way data is transmitted across the optical communications systems.

Solar panels could be improved by arranging their molecules in a certain pattern, according to new research led by Imperial and UCL. Renewable solar power can be harnessed using solar cells, which are made of materials called semiconductors. In a solar cell, electrons are generated when photons, or packets of light, are absorbed by semiconductors and released as high energy electrons.