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A breakthrough by researchers at The University of Manchester sheds light on one of nature's most elusive forces, with wide-reaching implications for medicine, energy, climate modelling and more. Researchers at The University of Manchester have developed a ground-breaking method to precisely measure the strength of hydrogen bonds in confined water systems, an advance that could transform our understanding of water's role in biology, materials science, and technology.

Physicists have made a landmark discovery, uncovering the first clear evidence that matter particles, known as baryons, behave differently from their antimatter counterparts. The finding, from CERN's LHCb experiment, which includes scientists at The University of Manchester, provides new understanding of the 'standard Model' of particle physics and a new piece in the puzzle to explain how and why matter ended up dominating over antimatter after the big Bang to form the Universe we see today.

Astronomers have identified a bright hydrogen emission from a galaxy in the very early Universe. The surprise finding is challenging researchers to explain how this light could have pierced the thick fog of neutral hydrogen that filled space at that time.

An international team co-led by UCL researchers has estimated the distribution of matter in the universe and found that it supports the standard model of cosmology - much to the team's surprise. The Kilo-Degree Survey (KiDS) observed large parts of the southern sky over eight years to gain insights into the distribution of matter in the universe.

Our scientists have played a leading role in creating the largest-ever 3D map of the universe, using data from 15 million galaxies and quasars. The map was produced by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), an international project involving over 900 researchers from 70 institutions worldwide.

Tiny, individual, flexible ribbons of crystalline phosphorus discovered by UCL researchers in 2019 exhibit magnetic and semiconducting properties at room temperature, opening new possibilities for next-generation electronics, finds a new study involving members of the same team. The findings, published in the journal Nature , confirm the one-atom-thick ribbons, known as phosphorene nanoribbons, as a unique class of material that could enable more energy-efficient computing and unlock new quantum technologies.

For the first time, scientists have 'photographed' a rare plasma instability, where high-energy electron beams form into spaghetti-like filaments. A new study, published in Physical Review Letters , outlines how a high-intensity infrared laser was used to generate a filamentation instability - a phenomenon that affects applications in plasma-based particle accelerators and fusion energy methods.

Experiments coupling light and sound reveal the surprising effect when 'nothing' is measured the vibrations of objects are cooled. Researchers at Imperial's Department of Physics shone light into a glass bead - only four times wider than a human hair - that traps both light and high-frequency sound waves by continually reflecting them around its circumference.

'Temperamental' stars that brighten and dim over a matter of hours or days may be distorting our view of thousands of distant planets, suggests a new study led by UCL researchers. Most of the information we have about planets beyond our solar system (exoplanets) comes from looking at dips in starlight as these planets pass in front of their host star.

The study of 'starquakes' (like earthquakes, but in stars) promises to give us important new insights into the properties of neutron stars. The study of 'starquakes' (like earthquakes, but in stars) promises to give us important new insights into the properties of neutron stars (the collapsed remnants of massive stars), according to new research led by the University of Bath.

An international team of engineers and physicists have found a way to use quantum light to improve the performance of cutting-edge spectroscopy. Their new technique enables measurements of infrared electric fields which are twice as sensitive as previous developments in a process called time-domain spectroscopy.

An international team of scientists have discovered that soap - just like the type we use to wash our hands - could be important to helping our understanding of complex systems in the human body, such as lungs, and improving therapies for conditions such as respiratory distress syndrome.

An international team of astrophysicists has imaged a large number of exocomet belts around nearby stars, and the tiny pebbles within them. The crystal-clear images show light being emitted from these millimetre-sized pebbles within the belts that orbit 74 nearby stars of a wide variety of ages - from those that are just emerging to those in more mature systems like our own Solar System.

Scientists from our top-rated Physics department have set a global milestone by achieving quantum entanglement of individual molecules using cutting-edge magic-wavelength optical tweezers. This achievement not only overcomes a fundamental challenge in quantum science but also opens up new possibilities in quantum computing, high-precision measurements, and physics research.

The size and spin of black holes can reveal important information about how and where they formed, according to new research. The study, led by scientists at Cardiff University, tests the idea that many of the black holes observed by astronomers have merged multiple times within densely populated environments containing millions of stars.

The missing ingredient for cooking up stars has been spotted for the first time by an international team led by astronomers at Imperial College. Much like a pressure cooker has a weight on top of its lid to keep the pressure in and get your festive dessert dense, moist and ready to eat, merging galaxies may need magnetic fields to create the ideal conditions for star formation.

Physicists are getting closer to controlling single-molecule chemical reactions - could this shape the future of pharmaceutical research? Controlling matter at the atomic level has taken a major step forward, thanks to groundbreaking nanotechnology research by an international team of scientists led by physicists at the University of Bath.

Scientists are calling for changes to chemistry textbooks after discovering a fundamental aspect of structural organic chemistry has been incorrectly described for almost 100 years. The team from Cardiff University's School of Chemistry, dispute the long-held belief that alkyl groups - a chemical group consisting of carbon and hydrogen atoms arranged in a chain - donate electrons to other parts of a molecule.

People with photosensitive epilepsy could benefit from a prototype pair of glasses with lenses that block out wavelengths that are known to cause seizures in some people. In a study published in Cell Reports Physical Science , researchers from the University of Glasgow and University of Birmingham have developed a prototype of a liquid crystal lens that they believe could help photosensitive epilepsy sufferers.

An elusive particle that first formed in the hot, dense early universe has puzzled physicists for decades. Following its discovery in 2003, scientists began observing a slew of other strange objects tied to the millionths of a second after the Big Bang. Appearing as 'bumps' in the data from high-energy experiments, these signals came to be known as short-lived 'XYZ states.' They defy the standard picture of particle behaviour and are a problem in contemporary physics, sparking several attempts to understand their mysterious nature.