Explore the latest scientific discoveries, science news, breakthroughs and developments from around the world.
Predicting a system's final outcome from its initial state is the ultimate goal for many physicists. In certain complex systems, however, this goal is thwarted by chaos, where even the subtlest tweaks to the initial state can lead to completely different fates, making the system almost impossible to predict.
Molecules can be placed in a wide variety of quantum states. How can these states be distinguished in measurements when theoretical models are unreliable? Which excitation process lies behind which measurement signal?
Unethical behavior inside organizations is often less sudden than companies assume. New research from ESMT Berlin shows how employees can collectively drift into misconduct as groups gradually reshape what they perceive as ethical or acceptable.
What happens at the nanoscale when information is written to memory? Researchers at KAIST have shown how tiny regions with a new polarization direction form while previously formed regions continue to expand in a promising ferroelectric material. By linking these nanoscale changes to electrical measurements, the team developed a model that captures both processes, offering a basis for designing faster and more stable memory.
A substantial loss of plant diversity could mean that grasslands worldwide, including meadows and pastures, would absorb around 15% less CO₂ through photosynthesis by midcentury compared with a scenario in which diversity is maintained.
An international research effort has examined how children develop the ability to express what story characters think, feel and perceive. Research groups from around the world collected 5,507 picture-based stories from 2,763 typically developing monolingual and bilingual children ages 3 to 13. The children came from 32 countries and spoke 44 languages.
A new technology promises to enable more comprehensive investigations into how individual genes determine the appearance and behavior of cells. Researchers led by professor Veit Hornung at LMU's Gene Center and professor Matthias Mann at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, together with professor Fabian Theis at Helmholtz Munich, have developed SPARCS, a technology that combines artificial intelligence with microscopy and genetic screening.
Sharing a finite resource across generations requires a balance between today's needs and the claims of those yet to be born. Research by Prof. Thomas A. Weber, presented at the 2026 European Control Conference in Reykjavík, proposes a fair allocation rule that gives every generation the same fraction of its best attainable welfare. The approach preserves access for all future generations and provides a performance guarantee without requiring agreement on a single social objective.
Quantum technologies are considered key technologies of the future. However, research in this field requires not only scientific expertise but sometimes also highly specialized laboratory conditions. Bose–Einstein condensates are a remarkable example, in which atoms move in lockstep, making quantum-mechanical effects visible not only at the level of individual atoms but also on a macroscopic scale. The first Bose–Einstein condensates were observed in ultracold atomic gases at temperatures close to absolute zero. The cooling required to achieve this was technically demanding, costly and restricted to specialized laboratories.
Scientists have called out several math and computer science results as the most significant in the company’s overwhelming new deluge of achievements
The “slop drop” contains a number of groundbreaking proofs, but how it was generated remains unclear and contentious
Detected by the MeerKAT array, this “fast radio burst” comes from three billion years after the big bang and could help map the universe’s otherwise-invisible intergalactic matter