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Insights from the emerging field of branched flow are directing us towards a way of anticipating the effects of tsunamis. A framework linking bathymetric fluctuations to wave physics marks a promising step forward.
A milestone for quantum hydrodynamics may have been reached, with experiments on a black hole-like event horizon for sound waves providing strong evidence for a sonic analogue of Hawking radiation.
Going around an exceptional point in a full circle can be a non-adiabatic, asymmetric process. This surprising prediction is now confirmed by two separate experiments.
Dendritic cells use components of their cytoskeleton to both move and ingest pieces of infected cells. This competition for protein resources can give rise to a complex set of states that may be understood with an advection–diffusion model.
Due to their chirality, the massless fermions inside Weyl semimetals can take unusual paths that are governed by chiral dynamics, potentially providing a direct method to explore their topological nature.
Owing to the extreme sensitivity of a microscopic cantilever to optical forces, it is possible to uncover the fine structure of optical momenta and associated mechanical effects in evanescent fields.
Signatures of many-body localization have been observed in a one-dimensional chain of trapped ions, heralding new studies of the interplay between localization and long-range interactions.
The physical properties of ice are governed by its tetrahedral network of hydrogen bonds and the ice rules that determine the distribution of the protons. Deviations from the tetrahedral structure and violations of these rules can lead to surprising phenomena, such as the ferroelectric state now reported for thin films of epitaxial ice.
When it comes to star formation, dwarf galaxies perform very poorly. A possible explanation for this behaviour involves photoelectric electrons heating the star-forming gas.
Although Dirac fermions in graphene can tunnel through potential barriers without reflection, two experiments show how they can temporarily be trapped inside nanoscale graphene quantum dots.
Chiral symmetry breaking is imaged in graphene which, through a mechanism analogous to mass generation in quantum electrodynamics, could provide a means for making it semiconducting.
Rashba spin–orbit coupling has already provided fertile physics and applications in spintronics but real-space imaging shows how the strength of this interaction varies on the nanoscale.
The experimental observation of superconductivity that breaks spin-rotation symmetry in copper-doped Bi2Se3 provides a qualitatively distinct kind of unconventional superconducting behaviour — one that brings the importance of the spin–orbit interaction to the fore.
Jammed states in growing yeast populations share intriguing similarities with amorphous solids, despite being generated through self-replication. The impact this behaviour has on cell division highlights one way that physical forces regulate biological function.
The dynamics of a viscous liquid undergo a dramatic slowdown when it is cooled to form a solid glass. Recognizing the structural changes across such a transition remains a major challenge. Machine-learning methods, similar to those Facebook uses to recognize groups of friends, have now been applied to this problem.
Living systems are constantly being driven out of equilibrium by consuming energy. Studying fluctuations can tell us how they do so while maintaining order — and what this teaches us about non-equilibrium processes in general.
