Category Physics

Modern smartphones are packed with incredible technology, from high-resolution cameras and advanced graphics chips to AI processors. In premium models, this hardware includes LiDAR (light detection and ranging), which helps power augmented reality features and improve depth sensing.

Seeing around corners
And that capability could soon be in for a seriously impressive upgrade. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed an algorithm that lets a phone’s LiDAR sensor detect objects hidden around corners. Details are in a paper published in the journal Nature.

Typically, this type of non-line-of-sight (NLOS) capability is found in labs and relies on bulky, expensive resear...

2D nanocavity exciton polaritons. (a) Schematic of the coupled TMD-PhC nanocavity. (b) Schematic of the gate-tunable TMD stack. (c) Scanning electron microscope image of the suspended Si₃N₄ nanobeam cavity, with the inset showing the simulated cavity mode profile. The dark area is suspended from the SiO₂ substrate. Scale bar, 500 nm. Credit: Physical Review Letters (2026). DOI: 10...

Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory incorporated gallium nitride semiconductors to create a high-efficiency power converter that is more compact, affordable, and efficient.

A power converter is a type of device that manages semiconductor switching and transforms current or voltage, so electricity flows smoothly and safely among equipment, power sources, and users.

Silicon semiconductors are the fundamental building blocks of conventional converters...

A research team at Google co-led by Michael Brenner, Catalyst Professor of Applied Mathematics and Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Google research scientist, has produced a new artificial intelligence system that can automatically write scientific software programs that surpass the performance of human-written programs. The paper is published in the journal Nature.

How the ERA system came together
The system is called Empirical Research Assistance (ERA), and the project was co-led by Brenner and Shibl Mourad from Google DeepMind. Harvard Ph.D. students Qian-Ze Zhu, Ryan Krueger, and Sarah Martinson contributed as Google student researchers while working in Brenner’s group...