When a crystal is just one atom thick, melting gets weird — and scientists have finally caught it on camera.
When materials become just one atom thick, melting no longer follows the familiar rules. Instead of jumping straight from solid to liquid, an unusual in-between state emerges, where atomic positions loosen like a liquid but still keep some solid-like order. Scientists at the University of Vienna have now captured this elusive “hexatic” phase in real time by filming an ultra-thin silver iodide crystal as it melted inside a protective graphene sandwich.

When ice t...

Jupiter’s swirling storms have concealed its true makeup for centuries, but a new model is finally peeling back the clouds. Researchers found the planet likely holds significantly more oxygen than the Sun, a key clue to how Jupiter—and the rest of the solar system—came together. The study also reveals that gases move through Jupiter’s atmosphere much more slowly than scientists once thought. Together, the findings reshape our understanding of the solar system’s largest planet.

Towering clou...

A team led by researchers at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, has succeeded in identifying biomarkers for Parkinson’s disease in its earliest stages, before extensive brain damage has occurred...

Physical systems become inherently more complicated and difficult to produce in a lab as the number of dimensions they exist in increases—even more so in quantum systems. While discrete time crystals (DTCs) had been previously demonstrated in one dimension, two-dimensional DTCs were known to exist only theoretically. But now, a new study, published in Nature Communications, has demonstrated the existence of a DTC in a two-dimensional system using a 144-qubit quantum processor.

What is a discrete time crystal?
Like regular crystalline materials, DTCs exhibit a kind of periodicity...