Physics
What Makes Transmon Qubit Performance Vary Between Identical Chips
A blinded Fermilab-led study of 22 superconducting qubits links up to twofold swings in transmon qubit performance to oxide, trenches and sidewalls.
Ten Minutes After the Flash: Einstein Probe Finds an X-ray Tail on a Neutron Star Merger
The Einstein Probe caught a short gamma-ray burst followed by roughly 560 seconds of soft X-rays. What EP250704a says about magnetar remnants…
Claim Check: Did Quantinuum’s Anyons Just Make Topological Quantum Computing Universal?
A Nature paper reports universal gates from braided anyons on Quantinuum's H2. Here is what it shows, what the headlines overstate, and…
Bethe Strings Found in Cold Cesium Gas: A 1931 Prediction Meets a One-Dimensional Experiment
Innsbruck physicists probed Bethe strings, bound states predicted in 1931, in a one-dimensional cesium gas. How the experiment worked, with the binding…
A Levitated Diamond Moved by Electron Spin Force
OIST physicists used NV-center electron spin to shake a 128 mg levitated diamond resonator by over 100 nm. The numbers, and what…
Quark Wakes in the Quark-Gluon Plasma: How CMS Used Z Bosons as a Clean Reference
CMS tagged Z bosons in lead-lead collisions to look for the wake a fast quark leaves in quark-gluon plasma. How the measurement…
The Ghost Particle Hunter: How a Cute Idea Buried in Antarctic Ice Won the 2026 Physics Nobel
Francis Halzen won the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics for IceCube, a detector buried in Antarctic ice. Here is how a cute…
Octupolar Magnetism and the Phonon Splitting Proposed to Reveal It
A Toronto theory paper proposes that octupolar magnetism splits a Raman-active phonon by about 1.5 meV. What the prediction says and what…
How Cosmic-Ray Muons Measure Ocean Tides From Inside a Tunnel
A Korean team used cosmic-ray muons to follow the tide above an undersea tunnel, resolving about a meter of seawater. How it…
The LHC Is Coming Apart on Purpose: A Teardown of the High-Luminosity Upgrade, Part by Part
CERN has begun dismantling the LHC for the High-Luminosity upgrade. A part-by-part look at the schedule, the 30-tonne absorbers, and the magnets…