Science

In 2012, theorists predicted a new class of quantum material: the topological crystalline insulator (TCI), in which the protection of conducting edge states comes not from time-reversal symmetry — as in conventional topological insulators — but from the symmetry of the crystal lattice itself. The prediction opened a tantalising possibility: atomically thin sheets of certain […]

In 1971, the British physicist Roger Penrose proposed that energy could be extracted from a spinning black hole. A particle entering the ergosphere, the region where spacetime is dragged along by the black hole’s rotation, could split in two, with one fragment falling in with negative energy and the other escaping with more energy than […]

Quantum entanglement is usually the domain of exquisitely controlled experiments: a few trapped ions, a handful of photons, a small array of superconducting qubits. The idea that entanglement can exist in ordinary solid matter, a crystal you can hold in your hand, has been theoretically expected but extraordinarily difficult to prove. Now researchers at the […]

The internet runs on light at 1.55 micrometers. This specific infrared wavelength, in the so-called C-band of optical fiber communications, is the lowest-loss transmission window of standard silica fibers — the channel that carries data across continents and under oceans. Generating light efficiently at this wavelength is therefore one of the most important challenges in […]

A large, hairy-legged spider that is a common, and often welcome, resident of Queensland homes has been crowned the fastest spider on the planet. The brown huntsman (Heteropoda cervina/jugulans, the species-level taxonomy remains unresolved) was clocked at a peak speed of 3.59 meters per second (12.9 kilometers per hour, or approximately 8 miles per hour), […]

For decades, ecologists assumed that tall trees face an inherent disadvantage during drought. The logic seemed straightforward: gravity adds roughly 0.1 megapascals of tension to the water column for every 10 meters of height, and longer pathways create more resistance to water flow. Taller trees, the thinking went, should be closer to hydraulic failure, air […]

One of the most fundamental concepts in modern physics is spontaneous symmetry breaking. When a system undergoes a phase transition into an ordered state, it must choose, apparently at random, a specific configuration from an infinite set of equivalent possibilities. A ferromagnet picks a direction of magnetization. A crystal picks a position for its lattice. […]

For decades, the protein tau has been cast as a villain in the story of Alzheimer’s disease. It forms the neurofibrillary tangles that are a hallmark of the condition; its abnormal hyperphosphorylation is a defining pathological feature; and anti-tau therapies are among the most actively pursued strategies for treating dementia. But a new study from […]

Conventional wisdom holds that the human brain cannot truly multitask. What feels like doing two things at once is, in reality, rapid task-switching, the prefrontal cortex can consciously attend to only one demanding task at a time. This limit, known as the “frontal bottleneck,” is a fundamental constraint on human cognition. But a new study […]

Prion diseases are among the most devastating and intractable in medicine. Sporadic Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (sCJD), the most common human prion disorder, progresses from first symptoms to death in a median of just four to six months. There are no treatments. The fundamental problem is not a lack of candidate drugs but a lack of tools […]