news

Breakthrough discovery provides new clues about how these celestial bodies - that push the known laws of physics to their limits - find each other. Scientists have uncovered the first robust evidence of a black hole and neutron star crashing together but orbiting in an oval path rather than a perfect circle just before they merged.

Scientists at the University of Manchester have discovered that placing magnetic films on atomically thin molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) fundamentally changes how they lose energy, a finding that could bring 2D-material spintronics a step closer to real devices. The team found that growing a widely used magnetic alloy, permalloy, on ultra-thin MoS2 alters the film's internal crystal structure, changing how and where energy is lost as magnetic spins move.

Scientists reveal that even small differences in solar magnetic activity produce detectable changes inside the Sun. Scientists have analysed more than 40 years of astronomical data to uncover evidence that the Sun's internal structure subtly changes from one solar cycle minimum to the next. Publishing their findings in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , researchers from the University of Birmingham and Yale University reveal that even small differences in solar magnetic activity produce detectable changes inside the Sun.

Flexible electronics are often sold on a simple promise: bendable screens, lightweight solar cells or wearable devices that can bend and flex without breaking. But what does that 'flexibility' actually look like at the molecular scale, and how does it affect performance? Researchers led by the University of Cambridge say they have taken a first step towards answering this question.

Scientists using data from the James Webb Space Telescope have made one of the most detailed high-resolution maps of dark matter ever produced. It shows how the invisible, ghostly material overlaps and intertwines with 'regular' matter, the stuff that makes up stars, galaxies, and everything we can see.

A mysterious bar-shaped cloud of iron has been discovered inside the iconic Ring Nebula by a European team of astronomers. The cloud of iron atoms, described for the first time in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , just fits inside the inner layer of the elliptically shaped nebula - a colourful shell of gas thrown off by a star as it ends the nuclear fuel-burning phase of its life.

FIG. 1. (a) Cut-away rendering of the 229ThO2 target mount. Arrows denote front aperture, window, target, and pyroelectric detector. (b) Rendering of the spectroscopy chamber. (Magenta arrow) Direction of VUV laser propagation. (Yellow arrows) IC electron trajectories from target to detection MCP.

Astronomers have identified one of the largest rotating structures ever reported: a "razor-thin" string of galaxies embedded in a giant spinning cosmic filament, 140 million light-years away. Their findings, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , could offer valuable new insights into how galaxies formed in the early Universe.

Scientists have taken a major step toward solving a long-standing mystery in particle physics, by finding no sign of the particle many hoped would explain it. An international collaboration of scientists, including from The University of Manchester, working on the MicroBooNE experiment at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced that they have found no evidence for a fourth type of neutrino , known as a sterile neutrino.

The earliest evidence of an internal 'GPS' system in an animal has been identified by researchers, which could help explain how some modern birds and fish evolved the ability to use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate long distances. The tiny magnetic fossils - dating from 97 million years ago - were buried in ancient seafloor sediments, left behind by a mysterious, unidentified organism.

An international team involving UCL astronomers has observed the first clear signal of a giant stellar eruption from a star beyond our solar system. The stellar eruption is analogous to a coronal mass ejection (CME) seen on our Sun, and implies a devastating impact for any planet unlucky enough to orbit the star.

Researchers have achieved a new level of control over the atomic structure of a family of materials known as halide perovskites, creating a finely tuned 'energy sandwich' that could transform how solar cells, LEDs and lasers are made. Due to their remarkable ability to absorb and emit light, and because they are cheaper and can be configured to convert more of the solar spectrum into energy than silicon, perovskites have long been touted as a potential replacement for silicon in solar cells, LEDs and quantum technologies.

UCL researchers are investigating how a UK-led team could design and build one of the core instruments on a flagship NASA mission, the Habitable Worlds Observatory, which will search for signs of life on distant planets. The mission is expected to launch in the early 2040s and is currently in an early preparatory phase.

New research shows water's dramatic electrical transformation when squeezed to just a few molecular layers thick. Researchers at The University of Manchester have made an unexpected discovery about one of the world's most familiar substances - water. When confined to spaces a few atoms thick, water transforms into something completely unfamiliar, exhibiting properties more commonly associated with advanced materials like ferroelectrics and superionic liquids.

An international research collaboration has harnessed supercomputing power to better understand how massive slabs of ancient ocean floors are shaped as they sink hundreds of kilometres below the Earth's surface. Sophisticated computer models developed by researchers in the UK, Switzerland and the USA has cast new light on the complex physical interactions which govern the sliding and sinking of the ancient ocean floor also referred to as subducted slabs through the Earth's mantle, a process known as subduction.

Ten years after detecting the first gravitational wave, scientists found a ripple in spacetime offering fresh insights into black holes and the laws of physics. Scientists have confirmed two long-standing theories relating to black holes - thanks to the detection of the most clearly recorded gravitational wave signal to date.

A record-breaking development in laser technology could help support the development of smaller, cheaper, more easily-fabricated optical and quantum technologies, its inventors say. Researchers from the University of Glasgow have designed and built a narrow-linewidth laser on a single, fully integrated microchip that achieves the best performance ever recorded in semiconductor lasers of its type.

A synthetic cell that can be activated by a magnetic field to release a medicine whilst deep in the body has been created by chemists at UCL and the University of Oxford. The new technique, published in Nature Chemistry , could be used to precisely target medicines for cancers or bacterial infections, simultaneously increasing their effectiveness and reducing side effects.

When the remnants of some of the Universe's largest stars collide they create ripples which travel through the geometry of space and time which are detected by the LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA gravitational-wave observatories. First detected in 2015, measuring these ripples - gravitational-waves - require the most sensitive instruments ever created.

Researchers at Durham and collaborators in the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) mission have proposed a bold new theory that black holes could be converting matter into dark energy. The international team of researchers have combined DESI data with observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to provide a new way of understanding the components of our universe.