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JWST has discovered a mysterious object in the early universe called "MoM-BH*-1," which turned out to be a "black hole star"—shining like a giant star while harboring a black hole 100,000 times the mass of the Sun at its center. It serves as direct evidence for how supermassive black holes achieved rapid growth in the immediate aftermath of the universe's birth.
An MIT research team has developed a method to selectively recover magnesium from seawater without chemical additives, using a pH-swing reaction at bismuth electrodes. The estimated cost is $107 per ton, far below conventional methods. The technology has the potential to reshape a magnesium supply chain currently dominated by China.
The strongest solar particle event on record, from 1956, could raise radiation levels at airliner cruising altitude to 1,000 times normal. Based on this quantitative assessment, a research team at the Surrey Space Centre has proposed a six-level "Atmospheric Radiation scale" tailored specifically to aviation operations. It aims to resolve the structural problem of current space weather alerts producing false alarms more than nine times out of ten, and to offer, for the first time, a clear criterion for deciding when to halt flight operations.
ORNL cut separation time from highly acidic Cf-252 solutions from about two weeks to about one week. Boosting supply of this rare neutron source will also require expanding target irradiation at HFIR.
By exploiting the extreme fragility of the "correlated insulator" state formed in magic-angle twisted bilayer graphene, researchers have demonstrated a new photodetection principle in which mere irradiation with faint terahertz waves or far-infrared light drives the material from an insulating to a metallic state.
A Cornell University team has shown that download counts within the first 30 days after publication can predict citation counts five years later with an AUC of 0.80, based on an analysis of 2.3 million papers on arXiv. A new problem formulation called "lead-lag forecasting" and a large-scale benchmark dataset open the door to compressing the timeline of scientific evaluation.
Two UCLA-led studies show that high charge-discharge efficiency alone cannot predict rest-induced degradation in metal anodes, reporting suppression strategies through Mg's reversible interface and Zn's multi-component electrolyte.
Cornell University's IonNet screened roughly 5 million candidates using only chemical composition—no crystal structure data required—and identified approximately 63,000 candidates for fast ion conductors used in solid-state batteries. This approach, which cuts search costs by orders of magnitude, could accelerate materials development for solid-state batteries, though experimental verification has only just begun.
Thomas Burger of Grenoble Alpes University has systematically classified, in the journal Patterns, ten pathways through which generative AI can produce "nonexistent biological discoveries" in omics research. He clarifies the difference in risk between hypothesis generation and data generation, and proposes mechanisms and countermeasures for how hallucinations become mixed into scientific evidence.
When titanium dioxide—used in sunscreen and pigments—is thinned to 3 nm or less, a ferroelectric phase emerges. This discovery, which exploits an 'inverse size effect' in which polarization strengthens as the film gets thinner, is highly compatible with semiconductor manufacturing and could open a path toward low-power memory.
