Generative AI and robotics are moving us ever closer to the day when we can ask for an object and have it created within a few minutes. In fact, MIT researchers have developed a speech-to-reality system, an AI-driven workflow that allows them to provide input to a robotic arm and “speak objects into existence,” creating things like furniture in as little as five minutes.

With the speech-to-reality system, a robotic arm mounted on a table is able to receive spoken input from a human, such as “I want a simple stool,” and then construct the objects out of modular components...

Knotted structures once imagined by Lord Kelvin may actually have shaped the universe’s earliest moments, according to new research showing how two powerful symmetries could have created stable “cosmic knots” after the Big Bang. These exotic objects may have briefly dominated the young cosmos, unraveled through quantum tunneling, and produced heavy right-handed neutrinos whose decays tipped the balance toward matter over antimatter.

In 1867, Lord Kelvin pictured atoms as tiny knots in an invisible medium called the ether...

Colibactin is a powerful toxin produced by Escherichia coli and other bacteria living in the human gut. This highly unstable bacterial product causes mutations in DNA that have been linked to colorectal cancer. Because it breaks down quickly, isolating and studying it has been difficult, but now scientists in the U.S. have discovered exactly how colibactin attacks DNA.

Using advanced tools such as mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, the team studied the toxin at the atomic level, as reported in a paper published in the journal Science...

Astronomers have captured images of two stellar explosions—known as novae—within days of their eruption and in unprecedented detail. The breakthrough provides direct evidence that these explosions are more complex than previously thought, with multiple outflows of material and, in some cases, dramatic delays in the ejection process.

The international study, published in the journal Nature Astronomy, used a cutting-edge technique called interferometry at the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA Array) in California. This approach allowed scientists to combine the light from multiple telescopes, achieving the sharp resolution needed to directly image the rapidly evolving explosions.

“The images give us a close-up view of how material is ejected away from the sta...