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.
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.
For achieving proper safety and efficiency of future fusion power plants, low-activation materials able to withstand the extreme fusion conditions are needed. Here, the irradiation physics at play and fusion materials research is reviewed.
One way of realizing controlled nuclear fusion reactions for the production of energy involves confining a hot plasma in a magnetic field. Here, the physics of magnetic-confinement fusion is reviewed, focusing on the tokamak and stellarator concepts.
The quest for energy production from controlled nuclear fusion reactions has been ongoing for many decades. Here, the inertial confinement fusion approach, based on heating and compressing a fuel pellet with intense lasers, is reviewed.
Simulating magnetically confined fusion plasmas is crucial to understand and control them. Here, the state of the art and the multi-physics involved are discussed: electromagnetism and hydrodynamics combined over vast spatiotemporal ranges.
The topological degeneracy associated with Majorana edge states has been measured in a spin-1/2 chain of cobalt atoms, thereby opening new avenues in low-dimensional quantum magnetism.
The detection of a discrete knot of particle emission from the active galaxy M81* reveals that black hole accretion is self-similar with regard to mass, producing the same knotty jets irrespective of black hole mass and accretion rate.
A movie of ultrafast electron dynamics driven by lightwaves shows that wide-bandgap semiconductors could form the building blocks of petahertz electronic devices.
The first results from the NOvA experiment confirm what we already know about neutrino oscillations. As data collection continues we are getting closer to finding the remaining unknown parameters.
Disentangling the physics of the pseudogap phase from the other electronic phases of high-temperature superconductors has long been a frustrating problem. A recent high-field experiment has isolated it completely — thus raising hopes that its origin can finally be understood.
The quality and quantity of current and forthcoming cosmological datasets call for both analytical and numerical modelling of the dynamics of nonlinear gravitational matter based on general relativity.
