Laser World of Photonics, the leading trade show for the laser and photonics industry, takes place in Munich from 24 to 27 June. Attracting visitors and exhibitors from around the world, the event features 11 exhibition areas covering the entire spectrum of photonic technologies – including illumination and energy, biophotonics, data transmission, integrated photonics, laser systems, optoelectronics, sensors and much more.

Running parallel and co-located with Laser World of Photonics is World of Quantum, the world’s largest trade fair for quantum technologies. Showcasing all aspects of quantum technologies – from quantum sensors and quantum computers to quantum communications and cryptography – the event provides a platform to present innovative quantum-based products and discuss potential applications.

Finally, the World of Photonics Congress (running from 22 to 27 June) features seven specialist conferences, over 3000 lectures and around 6700 experts from scientific and industrial research.

The event is expecting to attract around 40,000 visitors from 70 countries, with the trade shows incorporating 1300 exhibitors from 40 countries. Here are some of the companies and product innovations to look out for on the show floor.

HOLOEYE unveils compact 4K resolution spatial light modulator

HOLOEYE Photonics AG, a leading provider of spatial light modulator (SLM) devices, announces the release of the GAEA-C spatial light modulator, a compact version of the company’s high-resolution SLM series. The GAEA-C will be officially launched at Laser World of Photonics, showcasing its advanced capabilities and cost-effective design.

The GAEA-C is a phase-only SLM with a 4K resolution of 4094 x 2400 pixels, with an exceptionally small pixel pitch of 3.74 µm. This compact model is equipped with a newly developed driver solution that not only reduces costs but also enhances phase stability, making it ideal for a variety of applications requiring precise light modulation.

The GAEA-C SLM features a reflective liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) display (phase only). Other parameters include a fill factor of 90%, an input frame rate of 30 Hz and a maximum spatial resolution of 133.5 lp/mm.

The GAEA-C is available in three versions, each optimized for a different wavelength range: a VIS version (420–650 nm), a NIR version (650–1100 nm) and a version tailored for the telecommunications waveband around 1550 nm. This versatility ensures that the GAEA-C can meet the diverse needs of industries ranging from telecoms to scientific research.

HOLOEYE continues to lead the market with its innovative SLM solutions, providing unparalleled resolution and performance. The introduction of the GAEA-C underscores HOLOEYE’s commitment to delivering cutting-edge technology that meets the evolving demands of its customers.

• For more information about the GAEA-C and other SLM products, visit HOLOEYE at booth #225 in Hall A2.

Avantes launches NIR Enhanced spectrometers

At this year’s Laser World of Photonics, Avantes unveils its newest generation of spectrometers: the NEXOS NIR Enhanced and VARIUS NIR Enhanced. Both instruments mark a significant leap in near-infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, offering up to 2x improved sensitivity and unprecedented data quality for integration into both research and industry applications.

Compact, robust and highly modular, the NEXOS NIR Enhanced spectrometer redefines performance in a small form factor. It features enhanced NIR quantum efficiency in the 700–1100 nm range, with up to 2x increased sensitivity, fast data transfer and improved signal-to-noise ratio. The USB-powered spectrometer is designed with a minimal footprint of just 105 x 80 x 20 mm and built using AvaMation production for top-tier reproducibility and scalability. It also offers seamless integration with third-party software platforms.

The NEXOS NIR Enhanced is ideal for food sorting, Raman applications and VCSEL/laser system integration, providing research-grade performance in a compact housing. See the NEXOS NIR Enhanced product page for further information.

Designed for flexibility and demanding industrial environments, the VARIUS NIR Enhanced spectrometer introduces a patented optical bench for supreme accuracy, with replaceable slits for versatile configurations. The spectrometer offers a dual interface – USB 3.0 and Gigabit Ethernet – plus superior stray light suppression, high dynamic range and enhanced NIR sensitivity in the 700–1100 nm region.

With its rugged form factor (183 x 130 x 45.2 mm) and semi-automated production process, the VARIUS NIR is optimized for real-time applications, ensuring fast data throughput and exceptional reliability across industries. For further information, see the VARIUS NIR Enhanced product page.

Avantes invites visitors to experience both systems live at Laser World of Photonics 2025. Meet the team for hands-on demonstrations, product insights and expert consultations. Avantes offers free feasibility studies and tailored advice to help you identify the optimal solution for your spectroscopy challenges.

• For more information, visit www.avantes.com or meet Avantes at booth #218 in Hall A3.

HydraHarp 500: a new era in time-correlated single-photon counting

Laser World of Photonics sees PicoQuant introduce its newest generation of event timer and time-correlated single-photon counting (TCSPC) unit – the HydraHarp 500. Setting a new standard in speed, precision and flexibility, the TCSPC unit is freely scalable with up to 16 independent channels and a common sync channel, which can also serve as an additional detection channel if no sync is required.

At the core of the HydraHarp 500 is its outstanding timing precision and accuracy, enabling precise photon timing measurements at exceptionally high data rates, even in demanding applications.

In addition to the scalable channel configuration, the HydraHarp 500 offers flexible trigger options to support a wide range of detectors, from single-photon avalanche diodes to superconducting nanowire single-photon detectors. Seamless integration is ensured through versatile interfaces such as USB 3.0 or an external FPGA interface for data transfer, while White Rabbit synchronization allows precise cross-device coordination for distributed setups.

The HydraHarp 500 is engineered for high-throughput applications, making it ideal for rapid, large-volume data acquisition. It offers 16+1 fully independent channels for true simultaneous multi-channel data recording and efficient data transfer via USB or the dedicated FPGA interface. Additionally, the HydraHarp 500 boasts industry-leading, extremely low dead-time per channel and no dead-time across channels, ensuring comprehensive datasets for precise statistical analysis.

The HydraHarp 500 is fully compatible with UniHarp, a sleek, powerful and intuitive graphical user interface. UniHarp revolutionizes the interaction with PicoQuant’s TCSPC and time tagging electronics, offering seamless access to advanced measurement modes like time trace, histogram, unfold, raw and correlation (including FCS and g²).

Step into the future of photonics and quantum research with the HydraHarp 500. Whether it’s achieving precise photon correlation measurements, ensuring reproducible results or integrating advanced setups, the HydraHarp 500 redefines what’s possible – offering precision, flexibility and efficiency combined with reliability and seamless integration to achieve breakthrough results.

For more information, visit www.picoquant.com or contact us at info@picoquant.com.

• Meet PicoQuant at booth #216 in Hall B2.

SmarAct showcases integrated, high-precision technologies

With a strong focus on turnkey, application-specific solutions, SmarAct offers nanometre-precise motion systems, measurement equipment and scalable micro-assembly platforms for photonics, quantum technologies, semiconductor manufacturing and materials research – whether in research laboratories or high-throughput production environments.

At Laser World of Photonics, SmarAct presents a new modular multi-axis positioning system for quantum computing applications and photonic integrated circuit (PIC) testing. The compact system is made entirely from titanium and features a central XY stage with integrated rotation, flanked by two XYZ modules – one equipped with a tip-tilt goniometer.

For cryogenic applications, the system can be equipped with cold plates and copper braids to provide a highly stable temperature environment, even at millikelvin levels. Thanks to its modularity, the platform can be reconfigured for tasks such as low-temperature scanning or NV centre characterization. When combined with SmarAct’s interferometric sensors, the system delivers unmatched accuracy and long-term stability under extreme conditions.

Also debuting is the SGF series of flexure-based goniometers – compact, zero-backlash rotation stages developed in collaboration with the University of Twente. Constructed entirely from non-ferromagnetic materials, the goniometers are ideal for quantum optics, electron and ion beam systems. Their precision has been validated in a research paper presented at EUSPEN 2023.

Targeting the evolving semiconductor and photonics markets, SmarAct’s optical assembly platforms enable nanometre-accurate alignment and integration of optical components. At their core is a modular high-performance toolkit for application-specific configurations, with the new SmarAct robot control software serving as the digital backbone. Key components include SMARPOD parallel kinematic platforms, long-travel SMARSHIFT electromagnetic linear stages and ultraprecise microgrippers – all seamlessly integrated to perform complex optical alignment tasks with maximum efficiency.

Highlights at Laser World of Photonics include a gantry-based assembly system developed for the active alignment of beam splitters and ferrules, and a compact, fully automated fibre array assembly system designed for multicore and polarization-maintaining fibres. Also on display are modular probing systems for fast, accurate and reliable alignment of fibres and optical elements – providing the positioning precision required for chip- and wafer-level testing of PICs prior to packaging. Finally, the microassembly platform P50 from SmarAct Automation offers a turnkey solution for automating critical micro-assembly tasks such as handling, alignment and joining of tiny components.

Whether you’re working on photonic chip packaging, quantum instrumentation, miniaturized medical systems or advanced semiconductor metrology, SmarAct invites researchers, engineers and decision-makers to experience next-generation positioning, automation and metrology solutions live in Munich.

• Visit SmarAct at booth #107 in Hall B2.

 

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Thanks to new experiments using the DIPOLE 100-X high-performance laser at the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL), an international collaboration of physicists has obtained the first detailed view of the microstructure of carbon in its liquid state. The work will help refine models of liquid carbon, enabling important insights into the role that it plays in the interior of ice giant planets like Uranus and Neptune, where liquid carbon exists in abundance. It could also inform the choice of ablator materials in future technologies such as nuclear fusion.

Carbon is the one of the most abundant elements on Earth and indeed the universe, but we still know very little about how it behaves in its liquid state. This is because producing liquid carbon is extremely difficult: at ambient pressures it sublimes rather than melts; and the liquid phase requires pressures of at least several hundred atmospheres to form. What is more, carbon boasts the highest melting temperature (of roughly 4500 °C) of all known materials under these high-pressure conditions, which means that there is no substance that can contain it for long enough to be studied and characterized.

In situ probing laser compression technique

There is an alternative, though, which involves using X-ray free electron laser pulses – such as those produced at the European XFEL – to transform solid carbon into a liquid for a few nanoseconds. The next challenge is to make measurements during this very short period of time. But this is exactly what a team led by Dominik Kraus of the University of Rostock and the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has succeeded in doing.

In their work, Kraus and colleagues transiently created liquid carbon by driving strong compression waves into solid carbon samples using the pulsed high-energy laser DIPOLE 100-X, which is a new experimental platform at the European XFEL. In this way, the researchers were able to achieve pressures exceeding one million atmospheres, with the compression waves simultaneously heating the samples to around 7000 K to form liquid carbon. They then obtained in situ snapshots of the structure using ultrabright X-ray pulses at the European XFEL that lasted just 25 fs – that is, about 100,000 times shorter than the already very short lifetime of the liquid carbon samples.

Relevance to planetary interiors and inertial fusion

Studying liquid carbon is important for modelling the interior of planets such as the ice giants Neptune and Uranus, as well as the atmosphere of white dwarfs, in which it also exists, explains Kraus. The insights gleaned from the team’s experiments will help to clarify the role that liquid carbon plays in the ice giants and perhaps even comparable carbon-rich exoplanets.

Liquid carbon also forms as a transient state during some technical processes, like in the synthesis of carbon-based materials such as carbon nanotubes, nanodiamonds or “Q-carbon”, and may be key for the synthesis of new carbon materials, such as the long sought after (but still only predicted) “BC-8” structure. The team’s findings could also help inform the choice of materials for inertial fusion implosions aiming for clean and reliable energy production, where carbon is used as an ablator material.

“Because of its relevance in these areas, I had already tried to study liquid carbon during my doctoral work more than 10 years ago,” Kraus says. “Without an XFEL for characterization, I could only obtain a tiny hint of the liquid structure of carbon (and with large error bars) and was barely able to refine any existing models.”

Until now, however, this work was considered as being the best attempt to characterize the structure of liquid carbon at Mbar pressures, he tells Physics World. “Using the XFEL as a characterization tool and the subsequent analysis was incredibly simple in comparison to all the previous work and, in the end, the most important challenge was to get the European XFEL facility ready – something that I had already discussed more than 10 years ago too when the first plans were being made for studying matter under extreme conditions at such an installation.”

The results of the new study, which is detailed in Nature, prove that simple models cannot describe the liquid state of carbon very well, and that sophisticated atomistic simulations are required for predicting processes involving this material, he says.

Looking forward, the Rostock University and HZDR researchers now plan to extend their methodology to the liquid states of various other materials. “In particular, we will study mixtures of light elements that may exist in planetary interiors and the resulting chemistry at extreme conditions,” reveals Kraus. “This work may also be interesting for forming doped nanodiamonds or other phases with potential technological applications.”

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A SpaceX Starship upper stage being prepared for the company’s next flight exploded June 19 during preparations for a static-fire test.

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A new solid-state laser can make a vast number of precise optical measurements each second, while sweeping across a broad range of optical wavelengths. Created by a team led by Qiang Lin at the University of Rochester in the US, the device can be fully integrated onto a single chip.

Optical metrology is a highly versatile technique that uses light to gather information about the physical properties of target objects. It involves illuminating a sample and measuring the results with great precision – using techniques such as interferometry and spectroscopy. In the 1960s, the introduction of lasers and the coherent light they emit boosted the technique to an unprecedented level of precision. This paved the way for advances ranging from optical clocks, to the detection of gravitational waves.

Yet despite the indispensable role they have played so far, lasers have also created a difficult challenge. To ensure the best possible precision, experimentalists much achieve very tight control over the wavelength, phase, polarization and other properties of the laser light. This is very difficult to do within the tiny solid-state laser diodes that are very useful in metrology.

Currently, the light from laser diodes is improved externally using optical modules. This added infrastructure is inherently bulky and it remains difficult to integrate the entire setup onto chip-scale components – which limits the development of small, fast lasers for metrology.

Two innovations

Lin and colleagues addressed this challenge by designing a new laser with two key components. One is a laser cavity that comprises a thin film of lithium niobate. Thanks to the Pockels effect, this material’s refractive index can vary depending on the strength of an applied electric field. This provides control over the wavelength of the light amplified by the cavity.

The other component is a distributed Bragg reflector (DBR), which is a structure containing periodic grooves that create alternating regions of refractive index. With the right spacing of these grooves, a DBR can strongly reflect light at a single, narrow linewidth, while scattering all other wavelengths. In previous studies, lasers were created by etching a DBR directly onto a lithium niobate film – but due to the material’s optical properties, this resulted in a broad linewidth.

“Instead, we developed an ‘extended DBR’ structure, where the Bragg grating is defined in a silica cladding,” explains team member Mingxiao Li at the University of California Santa Barbara. “This allowed for flexible control over the grating strength, via the thickness and etch depth of the cladding. It also leverages silica’s superior etchability to achieve low scattering strength, which is essential for narrow linewidth operation.”

Using a system of integrated electrodes, Lin’s team can adjust the strength of the electric field they applied to the lithium niobate film. This allows them to rapidly tune the wavelengths amplified by the cavity via the Pockels effect. In addition, they used a specially designed waveguide to control the phase of light passing into the cavity. This design enabled them to tune their laser over a broad range of wavelengths, without needing external correction modules to achieve narrow linewidths.

Narrowband performance

Altogether, the laser demonstrated an outstanding performance on a single chip – producing a clean, single wavelength with very little noise. Most importantly, the light had a linewidth of just 167 Hz – the smallest range achieved to date for a single-chip lithium niobate laser. This exceptional performance enabled the laser to rapidly sweep across a bandwidth of over 10 GHz – equivalent to scanning quintillions of points per second.

“These capabilities translated directly into successful applications,” Li describes. “The laser served as the core light source in a high-speed LIDAR system, measuring the velocity of a target 0.4 m away with better than 2 cm distance resolution. The system supports a velocity measurement as high as Earth’s orbital velocity – around 7.91 km/s – at 1 m.” Furthermore, Lin’s team were able to lock their laser’s frequency with a reference gas cell, integrated directly onto the same chip.

By eliminating the need for bulky control modules, the team’s design could now pave the way for the full miniaturization of optical metrology – with immediate benefits for technologies including optical clocks, quantum computers, self-driving vehicles, and many others.

“Beyond these, the laser’s core advantages – exceptional coherence, multifunctional control, and scalable fabrication – position it as a versatile platform for transformative advances in high-speed communications, ultra-precise frequency generation, and microwave photonics,” Lin says.

The new laser is described in Light: Science & Applications.

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Astronomers at the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) have created a thousand colour image of the nearby Sculptor Galaxy.

First discovered by Carloine Herschel in 1783 the spiral galaxy lies 11 million light-years away and is one of the brightest galaxies in the sky.

While conventional images contain only a handful of colours, this new map contains thousands, which helps astronomers to understand the age, composition and motion of the stars, gas and dust within it.

To create the image, researchers observed the galaxy for over 50 hours with the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on the VLT, which is based at the Paranal Observatory in Chile’s Atacama Desert.

The team then stitched together over 100 exposures to cover an area of the galaxy about 65 000 light-years wide.

The image revealed around 500 planetary nebulae – regions of gas and dust cast off from dying Sun-like stars – that can be used as distance markers to their host galaxies.

“Galaxies are incredibly complex systems that we are still struggling to understand,” notes astronomer Enrico Congiu, lead author of the study. “The Sculptor Galaxy is in a sweet spot – it is close enough that we can resolve its internal structure and study its building blocks with incredible detail, but at the same time, big enough that we can still see it as a whole system.”

Future work will involve understanding how gas flows, changes its composition, and forms stars in the galaxy.  “How such small processes can have such a big impact on a galaxy whose entire size is thousands of times bigger is still a mystery,” adds Congiu.

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The Shape of Wonder: How Scientists Think, Work and Live
By Alan Lightman and Martin Rees

In their delightful new book, cosmologist Martin Rees and physicist and science writer Alan Lightman seek to provide “an honest picture of scientists as people and how they work and think”. The Shape of Wonder does this by exploring the nature of science, examining the role of critical thinking, and looking at how scientific theories are created and revised as new evidence emerges. It also includes profiles of individual scientists, ranging from historical Nobel-prize winners such as physicist Werner Heisenberg and biologist Barbara McClintock, to rising stars like CERN theorist Dorota Grabowska. Matin Durrani

• 2025 Pantheon Books

Our Accidental Universe: Stories of Discovery from Asteroids to Aliens
By Chris Lintott

TV presenter and physics professor Chris Lintott brings all his charm and wit to his new book Our Accidental Universe. He looks at astronomy through the lens of the human errors and accidents that lead to new knowledge. It’s a loose theme that allows him to skip from the search for alien life to pulsars and the Hubble Space Telescope. Lintott has visited many of the facilities he discusses, and spoken to many people working in these areas, adding a personal touch to his stated aim of elucidating how science really gets done. Kate Gardner

• 2024 Penguin

Science is Lit: Awesome Electricity and Mad Magnets
By Big Manny (Emanuel Wallace)

Want to feed your child’s curiosity about how things work (and don’t mind creating a mini lab in your house)? Take a look at Awesome Electricity and Mad Magnets, the second in the Science is Lit series by Emanuel Wallace – aka TikTok star “Big Manny”. Wallace introduces four key concepts of physics – force, sound, light and electricity – in an enthusiastic and fun way that’s accessible for 8–12 year olds. With instructions for experiments kids can do at home, and a clear explanation of the scientific process, your child can really experience what it’s like to be a scientist. Sarah Tesh

• 2025 Puffin

Space Posters & Paintings: Art About NASA
By Bill Schwartz

Astronomy is the most visually gifted of all the sciences, with endless stunning photographs of our cosmos. But perhaps what sets NASA apart from other space agencies is its art programme, which has existed since 1962. In Space Posters and Paintings: Art about NASA, documentary filmmaker Bill Schwartz has curated a striking collection of nostalgic artworks that paint the history of NASA and its various missions across the solar system and beyond. Particularly captivating are pioneering artist Robert McCall’s paintings of the Gemini and Apollo missions. This large-format coffee book is a perfect purchase for any astronomy buff. Tushna Commissariat

• 2024 ACC Art Books

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The administration of US president Donald Trump has proposed drastic cuts to science that would have severe consequence for physics and astronomy if passed by the US Congress. The proposal could involve the cancellation of one of the twin US-based gravitational-wave detectors as well as the axing of a proposed next-generation ground-based telescope and a suite of planned NASA mission. Scientific societies, groups of scientists and individuals have expressed their shock over the scale of the reductions.

In the budget request, which represents the start of the budgeting procedure for the year from 1 October, the National Science Foundation (NSF) would see its funding plummet from $9bn to just  $3.9bn – imperilling several significant projects. While the NSF had hoped to support both next-generation ground-based tele­scopes planned by the agency – the Giant Magellan Tele­scope (GMT) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) – the new budget would only allow one to be supported.

On 12 June the GMT, which is already 40% completed thanks to private funds, received NSF approval confirming that the observatory will advance into its “major facilities final design phase”, one of the final steps before becoming eligible for federal construction funding. The TMT, meanwhile, which is set to be built in Hawaii, has been hit with delays following protests over adding more telescopes to Mauna Kea. In a statement from the TMT International Observatory, it said it was “disappointed that the NSF’s current budget proposal does not include TMT”.

It is also possible that one of the twin Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) facilities – one in Hanford, Washington and the other in Livingston, Louisiana – would have to close down after the budget proposes a 39.6% cut to LIGO operations. Having one LIGO facility would significantly cut its ability to identify and localize events that produce gravitational waves.

“This level of cut, if enacted, would drastically reduce the science coming out of LIGO and have long-term negative consequences for gravitational-wave astrophysics,” notes LIGO executive director David Reitze. LIGO officials told Physics World that the cuts would be “extremely punishing to US gravitational wave science” and would mean “layoffs to staff, reduced scientific output, and the loss of scientific leadership in a field that made first detections just under 10 years ago”.

NASA’s science funding, meanwhile, would reduce by 47% year on year, and the agency as a whole would see more than 5500 staff lose their jobs as its workforce gets slashed from 17 391 to just 11 853. NASA would also lose planned missions to Venus, Mars, Jupiter and the asteroid Apophis that will pass close to Earth in 2029. Several scientific missions focusing on planet Earth, meanwhile, would also be axed.

The American Astronomical Society expressed “grave concern” that the cuts to NASA and the NSF “would result in an historic decline of American investment in basic scientific research”. The Planetary Society called the proposed NASA budget “an extinction-level event for the space agency’s most productive, successful and broadly supported activity”. Before the cuts were announced, the Trump administration pulled its nomination of billionaire industrialist Jared Isaacman for NASA administrator after his supporter Elon Musk left his post as head of the “Department of Government Efficiency.”

‘The elephant in the room’

The Department of Energy, meanwhile, will receive a slight increase in its defence-related budget, from the current $34.0bn to next year’s proposed $33.8bn. But its non-defence budget will fall by 26% from $16.83bn to $12.48bn. Michael Kratsios, Trump’s science adviser and head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, sought to justify the administration’s planned cuts in a meeting at the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) on 19 May.

“Spending more money on the wrong things is far worse than spending less money on the right things,” Kratsios noted, adding that the country had received “diminishing returns” on its investments in science over the past four decades and that it now requires “new methods and approaches to supporting research”. He also suggested that research now undertaken at US universities falls short of what he called “gold standard science”, citing “political biases [that] have displaced the vital search for truth”. Universities, he stated, have lost public trust because they have “promoted diversity, equity and inclusion”.

The US science community, however, is unconvinced. “The elephant in the room right now is whether the drastic reductions in research budgets and new research policies across the federal agencies will allow us to remain a research and development powerhouse,” says Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academy of Sciences. “Thus, we are embarking on a radical new experiment in what conditions promote science leadership – with the US being the ‘treatment’ group, and China as the control.”

Former presidential science adviser Neal Lane, now at Rice University, told Physics World that while the US administration appears to value some aspects of scientific research such as AI, quantum, nuclear and biotechnologies, it “doesn’t seem to understand or acknowledge that technological advances and innovation often come from basic research in unlikely fields of science“. He expects the science community to “continue to push back” by writing and visiting members of Congress, many of whom support science, and “by speaking out to the public and encouraging various organizations to do that same”.

Indeed, an open letter by the group Stand Up for Science dated 26 May calls the administration’s stated commitment to “gold standard science” an approach “that will actually undermine scientific rigor and the transparent progress of science”. It would “introduce stifling limits on intellectual freedom in our nation’s laboratories and federal funding agencies”, the letter adds.

As of 13 June, the letter had more than 9250 signatures. Another letter, sent to Jay Bhattachayra, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), from some 350 NIH members, almost 100 of whom identified themselves, asserted that they “remain pressured to implement harmful measures” such as halting clinical trials midstream. In the budget request, the NIH would lose about 40%, leaving it with $27.5bn next year. The administration also plans to consolidate the NIH’s 27 institutes into just eight.

A political divide

On the day that the budget was announced, 16 states run by Democratic governors called on a federal court to block cuts in programmes and funding for the NSF. They point out that universities in their states could lose significant income if the cuts go ahead. In fact, the administration’s budget proposal is just that: a proposal. Congress will almost certainly make changes to it before presenting it to Trump for his signature. And while Republicans in the Senate and House of Representatives find it difficult to oppose the administration, science has historically enjoyed support by both Democrats and Republicans.

Despite that, scientists are gearing up for a difficult summer of speculation about financial support. “We are gaming matters at the moment because we are looking at the next budget cycle,” says Peter Littlewood, chair of the University of Chicago’s physics department. “The principal issues now are to bridge postdocs and graduating PhD students, who are in limbo because offers are drying up.” Littlewood says that, while alternative sources of funding such as philanthropic contributions can help, if the proposed government cuts are approved then philanthropy can’t replace federal support. “I’m less worried about whether this or that piece of research gets done than in stabilizing the pipeline, so all our discussions centre around that,” adds Littlewood.

Lane fears the cuts will put people off from careers in science, even in the unlikely event that all the cuts get reversed. “The combination of statements by the president and other administrative officials do considerable harm by discouraging young people born in the US and other parts of the world from pursuing their education and careers in [science] in America,” he says. “That’s a loss for all Americans.”

The post US astronomy facing ‘extinction level’ event following Trump’s 2026 budget request appeared first on Physics World.

Astronomers in China have observed a pulsar that becomes partially eclipsed by an orbiting companion star every few hours. This type of observation is very rare and could shed new light on how binary star systems evolve.

While most stars in our galaxy exist in pairs, the way these binary systems form and evolve is still little understood. According to current theories, when two stars orbit each other, one of them may expand so much that its atmosphere becomes large enough to encompass the other. During this “envelope” phase, mass can be transferred from one star to the other, causing the stars’ orbit to shrink over a period of around 1000 years. After this, the stars either merge or the envelope is ejected.

In the special case where one star in the pair is a neutron star, the envelope-ejection scenario should, in theory, produce a helium star that has been “stripped” of much of its material and a “recycled” millisecond pulsar – that is, a rapidly spinning neutron star that flashes radio pulses hundreds of times per second. In this type of binary system, the helium star can periodically eclipse the pulsar as it orbits around it, blocking its radio pulses and preventing us from detecting them here on Earth. Only a few examples of such a binary system have ever been observed, however, and all previous ones were in nearby dwarf galaxies called the Magellanic Clouds, rather than our own Milky Way.

A special pulsar

Astronomers led by Jinlin Han from the National Astronomical Observatories of China say they have now identified the first system of this type in the Milky Way. The pulsar in the binary, denoted PSR J1928+1815, had been previously identified using the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical radio Telescope (FAST) during the FAST Galactic Plane Pulsar Snapshot survey. These observations showed that PSR J1928+1815 has a spin period of 10.55 ms, which is relatively short for a pulsar of this type and suggests it had recently sped up by accreting mass from a companion.

The researchers used FAST to observe this suspected binary system at radio frequencies ranging from 1.0 to 1.5 GHz over a period of four and a half years. They fitted the times that the radio pulses arrived at the telescope with a binary orbit model to show that the system has an eccentricity of less than 3 × 10⁻⁵. This suggests that the pulsar and its companion star are in a nearly circular orbit. The diameter of this orbit, Han points out, is smaller than that of our own Sun, and its period – that is, the time it takes the two stars to circle each other – is correspondingly short, at 3.6 hours. For a sixth of this time, the companion star blocks the pulsar’s radio signals.

The team also found that the rate at which this orbital period is changing (the so-called spin period derivative) is unusually high for a millisecond-period pulsar, at 3.63 × 10⁻¹⁸ s s⁻¹ .This shows that energy is rapidly being lost from the system as the pulsar spins down.

“We knew that PSR J1928+1815 was special from November 2021 onwards,” says Han. “Once we’d accumulated data with FAST, one of my students, ZongLin Yang, studied the evolution of such binaries in general and completed the timing calculations from the data we had obtained for this system. His results suggested the existence of the helium star companion and everything then fell into place.”

Short-lived phenomenon

This is the first time a short-life (10⁷ years) binary consisting of a neutron star and a helium star has ever been detected, Han tells Physics World. “It is a product of the common envelope evolution that lasted for only 1000 years and that we couldn’t observe directly,” he says.

“Our new observation is the smoking gun for long-standing binary star evolution theories, such as those that describe how stars exchange mass and shrink their orbits, how the neutron star spins up by accreting matter from its companion and how the shared hydrogen envelope is ejected.”

The system could help astronomers study how neutron stars accrete matter and then cool down, he adds. “The binary detected in this work will evolve to become a system of two compact stars that will eventually merge and become a future source of gravitational waves.”

Full details of the study are reported in Science.

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European startup The Exploration Company, which is developing a cargo vehicle with a key test flight launching within days, says it has long-term plans to fly people as well.

The post The Exploration Company outlines plans for human spaceflight appeared first on SpaceNews.

As the world celebrates the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, it’s natural that we should focus on the exciting applications of quantum physics in computing, communication and cryptography. But quantum physics is also set to have a huge impact on medicine and healthcare. Quantum sensors, in particular, can help us to study the human body and improve medical diagnosis – in fact, several systems are close to being commercialized.

Quantum computers, meanwhile, could one day help us to discover new drugs by providing representations of atomic structures with greater accuracy and by speeding up calculations to identify potential drug reactions. But what other technologies and projects are out there? How can we forge new applications of quantum physics in healthcare and how can we help discover new potential use cases for the technology?

Those are the some of the questions tackled in a recent report, on which this Physics World article is based, published by Innovate UK in October 2024. Entitled Quantum for Life, the report aims to kickstart new collaborations by raising awareness of what quantum physics can do for the healthcare sector. While the report says quite a bit about quantum computing and quantum networking, this article will focus on quantum sensors, which are closer to being deployed.

Sense about sensors

The importance of quantum science to healthcare isn’t new. In fact, when a group of academics and government representatives gathered at Chicheley Hall back in 2013 to hatch plans for the UK’s National Quantum Technologies Programme, healthcare was one of the main applications they identified. The resulting £1bn programme, which co-ordinated the UK’s quantum-research efforts, was recently renewed for another decade and – once again – healthcare is a key part of the remit.

As it happens, most major hospitals already use quantum sensors in the form of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines. Pioneered in the 1970s, these devices manipulate the quantum spin states of hydrogen atoms using magnetic fields and radio waves. By measuring how long those states take to relax, MRI can image soft tissues, such as the brain, and is now a vital part of the modern medicine toolkit.

While an MRI machine measures the quantum properties of atoms, the sensor itself is classical, essentially consisting of electromagnetic coils that detect the magnetic flux produced when atomic spins change direction. More recently, though, we’ve seen a new generation of nanoscale quantum sensors that are sensitive enough to detect magnetic fields emitted by a target biological system. Others, meanwhile, consist of just a single atom and can monitor small changes in the environment.

There are lots of different quantum-based companies and institutions working in the healthcare sector

As the Quantum for Life report shows, there are lots of different quantum-based companies and institutions working in the healthcare sector. There are also many promising types of quantum sensors, which use photons, electrons or spin defects within a material, typically diamond. But ultimately what matters is what quantum sensors can achieve in a medical environment.

Quantum diagnosis

While compiling the report, it became clear that quantum-sensor technologies for healthcare come in five broad categories. The first is what the report labels “lab diagnostics”, in which trained staff use quantum sensors to observe what is going on inside the human body. By monitoring everything from our internal temperature to the composition of cells, the sensors can help to identify diseases such as cancer.

Currently, the only way to definitively diagnose cancer is to take a sample of cells – a biopsy – and examine them under a microscope in a laboratory. Biopsies are often done with visual light but that can damage a sample, making diagnosis tricky. Another option is to use infrared radiation. By monitoring the specific wavelengths the cells absorb, the compounds in a sample can be identified, allowing molecular changes linked with cancer to be tracked.

Unfortunately, it can be hard to differentiate these signals from background noise. What’s more, infrared cameras are much more expensive than those operating in the visible region. One possible solution is being explored by Digistain, a company that was spun out of Imperial College, London, in 2019. It is developing a product called EntangleCam that uses two entangled photons – one infrared and one visible (figure 1).

If the infrared photon is absorbed by, say, a breast cancer cell, that immediately affects the visible photon with which it is entangled. So by measuring the visible light, which can be done with a cheap, efficient detector, you can get information about the infrared photon – and hence the presence of a potential cancer cell (Phys. Rev. 108 032613). The technique could therefore allow cancer to be quickly diagnosed before a tumour has built up, although an oncologist would still be needed to identify the area for the technique to be applied.

Point of care

The second promising application of quantum sensors lies in “point-of-care” diagnostics. We all became familiar with the concept during the COVID-19 pandemic when lateral-flow tests proved to be a vital part of the worldwide response to the virus. The tests could be taken anywhere and were quick, simple, reliable and relatively cheap. Something that had originally been designed to be used in a lab was now available to most people at home.

Quantum technology could let us miniaturize such tests further and make them more accurate, such that they could be used at hospitals, doctor’s surgeries or even at home. At the moment, biological indicators of disease tend to be measured by tagging molecules with fluorescent markers and measuring where, when and how much light they emit. But because some molecules are naturally fluorescent, those measurements have to be processed to eliminate the background noise.

One emerging quantum-based alternative is to characterize biological samples by measuring their tiny magnetic fields. This can be done, for example, using diamond specially engineered with nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defects. Each is made by removing two carbon atoms from the lattice and implanting a nitrogen atom in one of the gaps, leaving a vacancy in the other. Behaving like an atom with discrete energy levels, each defect’s spin state is influenced by the local magnetic field and can be “read out” from the way it fluoresces.

One UK company working in this area is Element Six. It has joined forces with the US-based firm QDTI to make a single-crystal diamond-based device that can quickly identify biomarkers in blood plasma, cerebrospinal fluid and other samples extracted from the body. The device detects magnetic fields produced by specific proteins, which can help identify diseases in their early stages, including various cancers and neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s. Another firm using single-crystal diamond to detect cancer cells is Germany-based Quantum Total Analysis Systems (QTAS).

Matthew Markham, a physicist who is head of quantum technologies at Element Six, thinks that healthcare has been “a real turning point” for the company. “A few years ago, this work was mostly focused on academic problems,” he says. “But now we are seeing this technology being applied to real-world use cases and that it is transitioning into industry with devices being tested in the field.”

An alternative approach involves using tiny nanometre-sized diamond particles with NV centres, which have the advantage of being highly biocompatible. QT Sense of the Netherlands, for example, is using these nanodiamonds to build nano-MRI scanners that can measure the concentration of molecules that have an intrinsic magnetic field. This equipment has already been used by biomedical researchers to investigate single cells (figure 2).

Australian firm FeBI Technologies, meanwhile, is developing a device that uses nanodiamonds to measure the magnetic properties of ferritin – a protein that stores iron in the body. The company claims its technology is nine orders of magnitude more sensitive than traditional MRI and will allow patients to monitor the amount of iron in their blood using a device that is accurate and cheap.

Wearable healthcare

The third area in which quantum technologies are benefiting healthcare is what’s billed in the Quantum for Life report as “consumer medical monitoring and wearable healthcare”. In other words, we’re talking about devices that allow people to monitor their health in daily life on an ongoing basis. Such technologies are particularly useful for people who have a diagnosed medical condition, such as diabetes or high blood pressure.

NIQS Tech, for example, was spun off from the University of Leeds in 2022 and is developing a highly accurate, non-invasive sensor for measuring glucose levels. Traditional glucose-monitoring devices are painful and invasive because they basically involve sticking a needle in the body. While newer devices use light-based spectroscopic measurements, they tend to be less effective for patients with darker skin tones.

The sensor from NIQS Tech instead uses a doped silica platform, which enables quantum interference effects. When placed in contact with the skin and illuminated with laser light, the device fluoresces, with the lifetime of the fluorescence depending on the amount of glucose in the user’s blood, regardless of skin tone. NIQS has already demonstrated proof of concept with lab-based testing and now wants to shrink the technology to create a wearable device that monitors glucose levels continuously.

Body imaging

The fourth application of quantum tech lies in body scanning, which allows patients to be diagnosed without needing a biopsy. One company leading in this area is Cerca Magnetics, which was spun off from the University of Nottingham. In 2023 it won the inaugural qBIG prize for quantum innovation from the Institute of Physics, which publishes Physics World, for developing wearable optically pumped magnetometers for magnetoencephalography (MEG), which measure magnetic fields generated by neuronal firings in the brain. Its devices can be used to scan patients’ brains in a comfortable seated position and even while they are moving.

Quantum-based scanning techniques could also help diagnose breast cancer, which is usually done by exposing a patient’s breast tissue to low doses of X-rays. The trouble with such mammograms is that all breasts contain a mix of low-density fatty and other, higher-density tissue. The latter creates a “white blizzard” effect against the dark background, making it challenging to differentiate between healthy tissue and potential malignancies.

That’s a particular problem for the roughly 40% of women who have a higher concentration of higher-density tissue. One alternative is to use molecular breast imaging (MBI), which involves imaging the distribution of a radioactive tracer that has been intravenously injected into a patient. This tracer, however, exposes patients to a higher (albeit still safe) dose of radiation than with a mammogram, which means that patients have to be imaged for a long time to get enough signal.

A solution could lie with the UK-based firm Kromek, which is using cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) semiconductors that produce a measurable voltage pulse from just a single gamma-ray photon. As well as being very efficient over a broad range of X-ray and gamma-ray photon energies, CZTs can be integrated onto small chips operating at room temperature. Preliminary results with Kromek’s ultralow-dose and ultrafast detectors show they work with barely one-eighth of the amount of tracer as traditional MBI techniques.

“Our prototypes have shown promising results,” says Alexander Cherlin, who is principal physicist at Kromek. The company is now designing and building a full-size prototype of the camera as part of Innovate UK’s £2.5m “ultralow-dose” MBI project, which runs until the end of 2025. It involves Kromek working with hospitals in Newcastle along with researchers at University College London and the University of Newcastle.

Microscopy matters

The final application of quantum sensors to medicine lies in microscopy, which these days no longer just means visible light but everything from Raman and two-photon microscopy to fluorescence lifetime imaging and multiphoton microscopy. These techniques allow samples to be imaged at different scales and speeds, but they are all reaching various technological limits.

Quantum technologies can help us break the technological limits of microscopy

Quantum technologies can help us break those limits. Researchers at the University of Glasgow, for example, are among those to have used pairs of entangled photons to enhance microscopy through “ghost imaging”. One photon in each pair interacts with a sample, with the image built up by detecting the effect on its entangled counterpart. The technique avoids the noise created when imaging with low levels of light (Sci. Adv. 6 eaay2652).

Researchers at the University of Strathclyde, meanwhile, have used nanodiamonds to get around the problem that dyes added to biological samples eventually stop fluorescing. Known as photobleaching, the effect prevents samples from being studied after a certain time (Roy. Soc. Op. Sci. 6 190589). In the work, samples could be continually imaged and viewed using two-photon excitation microscopy with a 10-fold increase in resolution.

Looking to the future

But despite the great potential of quantum sensors in medicine, there are still big challenges before the technology can be deployed in real, clinical settings. Scalability – making devices reliably, cheaply and in sufficient numbers – is a particular problem. Fortunately, things are moving fast. Even since the Quantum for Life report came out late in 2024, we’ve seen new companies being founded to address these problems.

One such firm is Bristol-based RobQuant, which is developing solid-state semiconductor quantum sensors for non-invasive magnetic scanning of the brain. Such sensors, which can be built with the standard processing techniques used in consumer electronics, allow for scans on different parts of the body. RobQuant claims its sensors are robust and operate at ambient temperatures without requiring any heating or cooling.

Agnethe Seim Olsen, the company’s co-founder and chief technologist, believes that making quantum sensors robust and scalable is vital if they are to be widely adopted in healthcare. She thinks the UK is leading the way in the commercialization of such sensors and will benefit from the latest phase of the country’s quantum hubs. Bringing academia and businesses together, they include the £24m Q-BIOMED biomedical-sensing hub led by University College London and the £27.5m QuSIT hub in imaging and timing led by the University of Birmingham.

Q-BIOMED is, for example, planning to use both single-crystal diamond and nanodiamonds to develop and commercialize sensors that can diagnose and treat diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s at much earlier stages of their development. “These healthcare ambitions are not restricted to academia, with many startups around the globe developing diamond-based quantum technology,” says Markham at Element Six.

As with the previous phases of the hubs, allowing for further research encourages start-ups – researchers from the forerunner of the QuSIT hub, for example, set up Cerca Magnetics. The growing maturity of some of these quantum sensors will undoubtedly attract existing medical-technology companies. The next five years will be a busy and exciting time for the burgeoning use of quantum sensors in healthcare.

The post How quantum sensors could improve human health and wellbeing appeared first on Physics World.

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A sensitive new portable device can detect gas molecules associated with certain diseases by condensing dilute airborne biomarkers into concentrated liquid droplets. According to its developers at the University of Chicago in the US, the device could be used to detect airborne viruses or bacteria in hospitals and other public places, improve neonatal care, and even allow diabetic patients to read glucose levels in their breath, to list just three examples.

Many disease biomarkers are only found in breath or ambient air at levels of a few parts per trillion. This makes them very difficult to detect compared with biomarkers in biofluids such as blood, saliva or mucus, where they are much more concentrated. Traditionally, reaching a high enough sensitivity required bulky and expensive equipment such as mass spectrometers, which are impractical for everyday environments.

Rapid and sensitive identification

Researchers led by biophysicist and materials chemist Bozhi Tian have now developed a highly portable alternative. Their new Airborne Biomarker Localization Engine (ABLE) can detect both non-volatile and volatile molecules in air in around 15 minutes.

This handheld device comprises a cooled condenser surface, an air pump and microfluidic enrichment modules, and it works in the following way. First, air that (potentially) contains biomarkers flows into a cooled chamber. Within this chamber, Tian explains, the supersaturated moisture condenses onto nanostructured superhydrophobic surfaces and forms droplets. Any particles in the air thus become suspended inside the droplets, which means they can be analysed using conventional liquid-phase biosensors such as colorimeteric test strips or electrochemical probes. This allows them to be identified rapidly with high sensitivity.

Tiny babies and a big idea

Tian says the inspiration for this study, which is detailed in Nature Chemical Engineering, came from a visit he made to a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in 2021. “Here, I observed the vulnerability and fragility of preterm infants and realized how important non-invasive monitoring is for them,” Tian explains.

“My colleagues and I envisioned a contact-free system capable of detecting disease-related molecules in air. Our biggest challenge was sensitivity and initial trials failed to detect key chemicals,” he remembers. “We overcame this problem by developing a new enrichment strategy using nanostructured condensation and molecular sieves while also exploiting evaporation physics to stabilize and concentrate the captured biomarkers.”

The technology opens new avenues for non-contact, point-of-care diagnostics, he tells Physics World. Possible near-term applications include the early detection of ailments such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), which can lead to markers of inflammation appearing in patients’ breath. Respiratory disorders and neurodevelopment conditions in babies could be detected in a similar way. Tian suggests the device could even be used for mental health monitoring via volatile stress biomarkers (again found in breath) and for monitoring air quality in public spaces such as schools and hospitals.

“Thanks to its high sensitivity and low cost (of around $200), ABLE could democratize biomarker sensing, moving diagnostics beyond the laboratory and into homes, clinics and underserved areas, allowing for a new paradigm in preventative and personalized medicine,” he says.

Widespread applications driven by novel physics

The University of Chicago scientists’ next goal is to further miniaturize and optimize the ABLE device. They are especially interested in enhancing its sensitivity and energy efficiency, as well as exploring the possibility of real-time feedback through closed-loop integration with wearable sensors. “We also plan to extend its applications to infectious disease surveillance and food spoilage detection,” Tian reveals.

The researchers are currently collaborating with health professionals to test ABLE in real-world settings such as NICUs and outpatient clinics. In the future, though, they also hope to explore novel physical processes that might improve the efficiency at which devices like these can capture hydrophobic or nonpolar airborne molecules.

According to Tian, the work has unveiled “unexpected evaporation physics” in dilute droplets with multiple components. Notably, they have seen evidence that such droplets defy the limit set by Henry’s law, which states that at constant temperature, the amount of a gas that dissolves in a liquid of a given type and volume is directly proportional to the partial pressure of the gas in equilibrium with the liquid. “This opens a new physical framework for such condensation-driven sensing and lays the foundation for widespread applications in the non-contact diagnostics, environmental monitoring and public health applications mentioned,” Tian says.

The post Handheld device captures airborne signs of disease appeared first on Physics World.

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When I’m sitting in my armchair, eating chocolate and finding it hard to motivate myself to exercise, a little voice in my head starts singing “You’ve got to move it, move it” to the tune of will.i.am’s “I like to move it”. The positive reinforcement and joy of this song as it plays on a loop in my mind propels me out of my seat and onto the tennis court.

Songs like this are earworms – catchy pieces of music that play on repeat in your head long after you’ve heard them. Some tunes are more likely to become earworms than others, and there are a few reasons for this.

To truly hook you in, the music must be repetitive so that the brain can easily finish it. Generally, it is also simple, and has a rising and falling pitch shape. While you need to hear a song several times for it to stick, once it’s wormed its way into your head, some lyrics become impossible to escape – “I just can’t get you out of my head”, as Kylie would say.

In his book Musicophilia, neurologist Oliver Sacks describes these internal music loops as “the brainworms that arrive unbidden and leave only on their own time”. They can fade away, but they tend to lie in wait, dormant until an association sets them off again – like when I need to exercise. But for me as a physics teacher for 16–18 year olds, this fact is more than just of passing interest: I use it in the classroom.

There are some common mistakes students make in physics, so I play songs in class that are linked (sometimes tenuously) to the syllabus to remind them to check their work. Before I continue, I should add that I’m not advocating rote learning without understanding – the explanation of the concept must always come first. But I have found the right earworm can be a great memory aid.

I’ve been a physics teacher for a while, and I’ll admit to a slight bias towards the music of the 1980s and 1990s. I play David Bowie’s “Changes” (which the students associate with the movie Shrek) when I ask the class to draw a graph, to remind them to check if they need to process – or change – the data before plotting. The catchy “Ch…ch…ch…changes” is now the irritating tune they hear when I look over their shoulders to check if they have found, for example, the sine values for Snell’s law, or the square root of tension if looking at the frequency of a stretched wire.

When describing how to verify the law of conservation of momentum, students frequently leave out the mechanism that makes the two trollies stick together after the collision. Naturally, this is an opportunity for me to play Roxy Music’s “Let’s stick together”.

Meanwhile, “Ice ice baby” by Vanilla Ice is obviously the perfect earworm for calculating the specific latent heat of fusion of ice, which is when students often drop parts of the equations because they forget that the ice both melts and changes temperature.

In the experiment where you charge a gold leaf electroscope by induction, pupils often fail to do the four steps in the correct order. I therefore play Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger” to remind pupils to earth the disc with their finger. Meanwhile, Spandau Ballet’s bold and dramatic “Gold” is reserved for Rutherford’s gold leaf experiment.

“Pump up the volume” by M|A|R|R|S or Ireland’s 1990 football song “Put ‘em under pressure” are obvious candidates for investigating Boyle’s law. I use “Jump around” by House of Pain when causing a current-carrying conductor in a magnetic field to experience a force.

Some people may think that linking musical lyrics and physics in this way is a waste of time. However, it also introduces some light-hearted humour into the classroom – and I find teenagers learn better with laughter. The students enjoy mocking my taste in music and coming up with suitable (more modern) songs, and we laugh together about the tenuous links I’ve made between lyrics and physics.

More importantly, this is how my memory works. I link phrases or lyrics to the important things I need to remember. Auditory information functions as a strong mnemonic. I am not saying that this works for everyone, but I have heard my students sing the lyrics to each other while studying in pairs or groups. I smile to myself as I circulate the room when I hear them saying phrases like, “No you forgot mass × specific latent heat – remember it’s ‘Ice, ice baby!’ ”.

On their last day of school – after two years of playing these tunes in class – I hold a quiz where I play a song and the students have to link it to the physics. It turns into a bit of a sing-along, with chocolate for prizes, and there are usually a few surprises in there too. Have a go yourself with the quiz below.

The post ‘Can’t get you out of my head’: using earworms to teach physics appeared first on Physics World.

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