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Cooperative motion by atoms protects glass from fracturing

We’ve all experienced the moment of panic when a glass slips from our hands, shattering into pieces upon hitting the ground. What if this common mishap could become a thing of the past?

Now, a new discovery by researchers at Tohoku University has offered insights into how resists breakage, potentially paving the way for highly durable, break-resistant materials. The breakthrough has wide ranging implications for glass-related industries.

Details of their findings are published in the journal Acta Materialia.

Revealing Hidden Worlds: Monochromatic Light Unveils the Secrets of Crystalline Drops

A new technique employing monochromatic light improves the study of internal structures in materials affected by light scattering, enabling detailed observation of particle concentrations.

When driving through a bank of fog, car headlights are only moderately helpful since the light is scattered by the water particles suspended in the air. A similar situation occurs when trying to observe the inside of a drop of milk in water or the internal structure of an opal gem with white light. In these cases, multiple light scattering effects prevent examination of the interior.

Now, a team of researchers at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) has overcome this challenge and developed a new method to study the interior of a crystalline drop.

The Coldest Place in the Universe Is Unlocking Antimatter Mysteries

In a chilling Italian lab, scientists utilize extreme cold and ancient materials to challenge existing physics laws.

Their research, aiming to detect phenomena like neutrinoless double beta decay, could redefine understanding of matter and antimatter in the universe, involving students in groundbreaking experiments.

Exploring the universe’s mysteries: the italian lab.

China develops new stealth coating to blind anti-stealth radars

The Chinese military claims it has developed a new radar-defeating coating that can hide targets from anti-stealth radar.


According to the Chinese researchers, their new technology provides exceptional ultra-wideband low-frequency stealth capabilities without relying on heavy and costly magnetic materials.

This makes the material economical and scalable for use on various military equipment. According to Cui and his team, this new metamaterial technology may become “the key for China to win future wars.”

How can electrons split into fractions of themselves?

MIT physicists have taken a key step toward solving the puzzle of what leads electrons to split into fractions of themselves. Their solution sheds light on the conditions that give rise to exotic electronic states in graphene and other two-dimensional systems.

The new work is an effort to make sense of a discovery that was reported earlier this year by a different group of physicists at MIT, led by Assistant Professor Long Ju. Ju’s team found that electrons appear to exhibit “fractional charge” in pentalayer graphene — a configuration of five graphene layers that are stacked atop a similarly structured sheet of boron nitride.

Ju discovered that when he sent an electric current through the pentalayer structure, the electrons seemed to pass through as fractions of their total charge, even in the absence of a magnetic field. Scientists had already shown that electrons can split into fractions under a very strong magnetic field, in what is known as the fractional quantum Hall effect. Ju’s work was the first to find that this effect was possible in graphene without a magnetic field — which until recently was not expected to exhibit such an effect.