Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
Planets are assembled from the ground up, beginning with millimetre-sized interstellar dust grains. Microgravity experiments suggest that centimetre-sized dust aggregates form from these smaller grains via collisional charging.
High-magnetic-field experiments on the recently discovered unconventional superconductor UTe2 are consistent with p-wave pairing arising while time-reversal symmetry is broken. In turn, this suggests that this material is a candidate for a chiral superconductor that may be exploited for topological quantum computing.
Qubits cannot exist without nonlinearity, but nonlinear elements in superconducting circuits lead to losses. A superconducting qubit has now been realized by nonlinearly coupling two microwave resonators, offering the promise of long coherence times.
Finding ground states of given Hamiltonians is crucial for quantum simulation — a promising application of quantum computers. An algorithm now finds these states using minimal resources, making it implementable in near-term noisy devices.
The ferromagnetism of iron has been known for millennia. Now a rotational form of spontaneous crystallographic ordering has been discovered. This touches upon fundamental questions about the relation between symmetry, structure and order in matter.
Physical forces have a profound influence on bacterial cell function and physiology. The new tools of nanophysics are bringing to light a tight connection between biomolecular mechanisms and mechanical forces in bacterial cell division.
It is generally difficult to know in advance if a sheet of paper can be folded into an origami shape, but for quadrilateral crease patterns a tiling approach can identify all possible ways of folding them.
Non-Hermitian systems with gain and loss give rise to exceptional points with exceptional properties. An experiment with superconducting qubits now offers a first step towards studying these singularities in the quantum domain.
An unusual flavour of critical phenomena with a stable quantum critical phase of matter is observed in a strongly correlated material and linked to the underlying lattice structure.
Two independent cold-atom experiments have demonstrated the building blocks for the quantum simulation of dynamical gauge fields — an advance that holds promise for our understanding of computationally intractable problems in high-energy physics.
A model fluid comprising rotating magnetic particles behaves according to the equations of hydrodynamics, but for a few key differences due to broken mirror symmetry. The resulting active chiral fluid is characterized by parity-odd Hall viscosity.
The demonstration of high-resolution spectroscopy of Sr2 molecules trapped in an optical lattice at the ‘magic’ wavelength opens the way to precision control of molecular excitations.
Whether a cell divides symmetrically or asymmetrically during early development determines the fate of its progeny. Now cell size has emerged as a key player in making this decision.
A statistical analysis of data from ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions has uncovered the specific viscosities of the quark–gluon plasma — suggesting that the hottest matter in the current Universe behaves like a near-perfect fluid.
Synchronization can induce both order and disorder, betraying a multistability that is rife in living systems. Evidence now suggests that the circadian clock synchronizes with the cell cycle, and that this behaviour is common to different species.
The visible mass in the Universe emerged when hadrons — the building blocks of atomic nuclei — formed from a hot fireball made of quarks and gluons. This mechanism has now been investigated in baryon-rich matter at relatively low temperatures.
Two-level quantum systems are routinely excited by resonant pump beams. Experiments now show resonant excitation through dichromatic, detuned pumps — providing a coherent control technique that will also aid single-photon emission from solid-state devices.
Floquet engineering harnesses alternating fields to create a topological band structure in an otherwise ordinary material. These fields drive plasmons that can spontaneously split into chiral circulating modes and induce magnetization.
