A novel fusion device based at the University of Seville in Spain has achieved its first plasma. The SMall Aspect Ratio Tokamak (SMART) is a spherical tokamak that can operate with a “negative triangularity” – the first compact spherical tokamak to do so. Work performed on the machine could be useful when designing compact fusion power plants based on spherical tokamak technology.

SMART has been constructed by the University of Seville’s Plasma Science and Fusion Technology Laboratory. With a vessel dimension of 1.6 × 1.6 m, SMART has a 30 cm diameter solenoid wrapped around 12 toroidal field coils while eight poloidal field coils are used to shape the plasma.

Triangularity refers to the shape of the plasma relative to the tokamak. The cross section of the plasma in a tokamak is typically shaped like a “D”. When the straight part of the D faces the centre of the tokamak, it is said to have positive triangularity. When the curved part of the plasma faces the centre, however, the plasma has negative triangularity.

It is thought that negative triangularity configurations can better suppress plasma instabilities that expel particles and energy from the plasma, helping to prevent damage to the tokamak wall.

Last year, researchers at the University of Seville began to prepare the tokamak’s inner walls for a high pressure plasma by heating argon gas with microwaves. When those tests were successful, engineers then worked toward producing the first plasma.

“This is an important achievement for the entire team as we are now entering the operational phase,” notes SMART principal investigator Manuel García Muñoz. “The SMART approach is a potential game changer with attractive fusion performance and power handling for future compact fusion reactors. We have exciting times ahead.”

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Astrophysicists have released a series of images of exocomet belts and the tiny “pebbles” that reside in them.

Exocomets are boulders of rock and ice, at least 1 km in size, that exist outside our solar system. Exocometary belts – regions containing many such icy bodies – are found in at least 20% of planetary systems. When the exocomets within these belts smash together they can also produce small pebbles.

The belts in the latest study orbit 74 nearby stars that cover a range of ages – from those that are have just formed to those in more mature systems like our own Solar System. The belts typically lie tens to hundreds of astronomical units (the distance from the Earth to the Sun) from their central star.

At that distance, the temperature is between -250 to -150 degrees Celsius, meaning that most compounds on the exocomets are frozen as ice.

While most exocometary belts in the latest study are disks, some are narrow rings. Some even have multiple rings/disks that are eccentric, which provides evidence that yet undetectable planets are present and their gravity affects the distribution of the pebbles in these systems.

According the Sebastián Marino from the University of Exeter, the images reveal “a remarkable diversity in the structure” of the belts.

Indeed, Luca Matrà from Trinity College Dublin says that the “power” of such a large survey is to reveal population-wide properties and trends. “[The survey] confirmed that the number of pebbles decreases for older planetary systems as belts run out of larger exocomets smashing together, but showed for the first time that this decrease in pebbles is faster if the belt is closer to the central star,” Matrà adds. “It also indirectly showed – through the belts’ vertical thickness – that unobservable objects as large as 140 km to Moon-size are likely present in these belts.”

The researchers took the images using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array – an array of 66 radio telescopes in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile – as well as the eight-element Submillimeter Array based in Hawaii.

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Increased collaboration between different areas of materials research and development will be needed if the UK is to remain a leader in the field. That is according to the National Materials Innovation Strategy, which claims to be the first document aimed at boosting materials-based innovation in the UK. Failing to adopt a “clear, national strategy” for materials will hamper the UK’s ability to meet its net-zero and other sustainability goals, the strategy says.

Led by the Henry Royce Institute – the UK’s national institute for advanced materials – the strategy included the input of over 2000 experts in materials science, engineering, innovation, policy and industry. It says that some 52 000 people in the UK work or contribute to the materials industry, adding about £4.4bn to the UK economy each year. Of the 2700 companies in materials innovation in the UK, 70% are registered outside of London and the South East, with 90% being small and medium-sized enterprises.

According to the 160-page strategy, materials innovation touches “almost every strategically important sector in the UK” and points to “six areas of opportunity” where materials can have an impact. They are: energy; healthcare; structural innovations; surface technologies; electronics, telecommunications and sensors; and consumer products, packaging and specialist polymers.

The strategy, which is the first phase of an effort to speed up materials development in the UK, calls for a more collaborative effort between different fields to help spur materials innovation that has “traditionally been siloed across sectors”. It claims that every materials-related job results in 12 additional jobs within “materials innovation business”, adding that “a commitment to materials innovation” by the UK could double the number of materials-specific roles by 2035.

“Advanced materials hold the key to finding and delivering solutions to some of the most pressing national and global challenges of today and directly contribute billions to our national economy,” says materials engineer David Knowles, who is chief executive of the Henry Royce Institute. “But to unlock the full value of materials we must break down traditional long-standing silos within the industry. This strategy has kickstarted that process.”

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NASA has confirmed that its Parker Solar Probe has survived its record-breaking closest approach to the solar surface. The incident occurred on 24 December where it flew some 6.1 million kilometres above the surface of the Sun – well within the orbit of Mercury. A “beacon tone” that was received on 26 December with further telemetry taken on 1 January confirmed that the spacecraft not only survived but also executed the commands that had been pre-programmed into its flight computers before the flyby.

The Parker Solar Probe – named after physicist Eugene Parker who was born in 1927 and made several breakthroughs of our understanding of the solar wind and also explained why the Sun’s corona is hotter than its surface – was launched in 2018 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The mission carries four instruments including magnetometers, an imager and two dedicated particle analysers. To withstand the intense temperatures, which can reach almost 1400°C, the spacecraft and instruments are protected by a 11.4 cm carbon-composite shield.

During the mission’s seven-year lifespan, it will perform 24 orbits around the Sun with the next close solar passes occurring on 22 March and 19 June. Data transmission from the first pass in December will begin later this month when the spacecraft and its most powerful onboard antenna are in better alignment with Earth to transmit at higher data rates.

“Flying this close to the Sun is a historic moment in humanity’s first mission to a star,” notes Nicky Fox, head of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington. “By studying the Sun up close, we can better understand its impacts throughout our solar system, including on the technology we use daily on Earth and in space, as well as learn about the workings of stars across the universe to aid in our search for habitable worlds beyond our home planet.”

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Engineers have successfully integrated key parts of NASA’s $4bn Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope marking a significant step towards completion.  The space agency has announced that the mission’s payload, which includes the telescope, two instruments and the instrument carrier, has been combined with the spacecraft that will deliver the observatory to its place in space at Lagrangian point L2.

The Roman telescope, which was previously named the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope, was given top priority among large space-based missions in the 2010 US National Academy of Science Decadal Survey.

Since then, however, the telescope has had a difficult existence. In Donald Trump’s first term as US president it was twice given zero funding only for US Congress to reinstate its budget.

Roman will be the most stable large telescope ever built, at least 10 times more so than NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

The telescope’s primary instrument is the Wide Field Instrument, a 300-megapixel infrared camera that will give it a deep, panoramic view of the universe. This will be used to study exoplanets, stars, galaxies and black holes with Roman able to image large areas of the sky 1000 times faster than Hubble with the same sharp, sensitive image quality.

The next steps for the telescope involve installing its solar panels, aperture cover – that shields the telescope from unwanted light – as well as a “outer barrel assembly” that serves as the telescope’s exoskeleton. The Roman mission should be complete next year with a launch before May 2027.

“With this incredible milestone, Roman remains on track for launch, and we’re a big step closer to unveiling the cosmos as never before,” notes Mark Clampin, acting deputy associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA.

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From squirting cucumbers to cosmic stamps, physics has had its fair share of quirky stories this year. Here is our pick of the best 10, not in any particular order.

Escape from quantum physics

Staff at the clunkily titled Dresden-Würzburg Cluster of Excellence for Complexity and Topology in Quantum Matter (ct.qmat) had already created a mobile phone app “escape room” to teach children about quantum mechanics. But this year the app became reality at Dresden’s science museum. Billed as “Germany’s first quantum physics escape room”, the Kitty Q Escape Room has four separate rooms and 17 puzzles that offer visitors a multisensory experience that explores the quirky world of quantum mechanics. The goal for participants is to discover if Kitty Q – an imaginary being that embodies the spirit of Schrödinger’s cat – is dead or alive. Billed as being “perfect for family outings, children’s birthday parties and school field trips”, the escape room “embraces modern gamification techniques”, according to ct.qmat physicist Matthias Vojuta, “We ensure that learning happens in an engaging and subtle way,” he says. “The best part [is] you don’t need to be a maths or physics expert to enjoy the game.

Corking research

Coffee might be the drink of choice for physicists, but when it comes to studying the fascinating physics of liquids, champagne is hard to beat. That’s mostly because of the huge pressures inside the bottle and the explosion of bubbles that are released once the cork is removed. Experiments have already examined the expanding gas jet that propels the cork stopper out of a just-opened bottle caused by the radiation of shock waves up the neck. Now physicists in Austria have looked at the theory of how these supersonic waves move. The “Mach disc” that forms just outside the bottle opening is, they found, convex and travels away from the bottle opening before moving back towards it. A second Mach disc then forms when the first disc moves back although it’s not clear if this splits from the first or is a distinct disc. Measuring the distance of the Mach disc from the bottle also provides a way to determine the gas pressure or temperature in the champagne bottle.

Cosmic stamps

We love a good physics or astronomy stamp here at Physics World and this year’s offering from the US Postal Service didn’t disappoint. In January, they released two stamps to mark the success of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), which took off in 2021. The first features an image taken by the JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera of the “Cosmic Cliffs” in the Carina Nebula, located about 7600 light-years from Earth. The other stamp has an image of the iconic Pillars of Creation within the vast Eagle Nebula, which lies 6500 light-years away that was captured by the JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument. “With these stamps, people across the country can have their own snapshot of Webb’s captivating images at their fingertips,” noted NASA’s head of science, the British-born physicist Nicola Fox.

Record-breaking cicadas

This year marked the first time in more than 200 years that two broods belonging to two species of cicadas emerged at the same time. And the cacophony that the insects are famous for wasn’t the only aspect to watch out for. Researchers at Georgia Tech in the US examined another strange aspect of these creatures – how they wee. We know that most insects urinate via droplets as this is more energy efficient than emitting a stream of liquid. But cicadas are such voracious eaters of tree sap that individually flicking each drop away would be too taxing. To get around this problem, cicadas (just as we do) eject the pee via a jet, which the Georgia Tech scientists looked at for the first time. “Previously, it was understood that if a small animal wants to eject jets of water, then this [is] challenging, because the animal expends more energy to force the fluid’s exit at a higher speed,” says Elio Challita, who is based at Harvard University. “This is due to surface tension and viscous forces. But a larger animal can rely on gravity and inertial forces to pee.” According to the team, cicadas are the smallest animal to create such high-speed jets – a finding that could, say the researchers, lead to the design of better nozzles and robots. 

Raising the bar

Machine learning was a big topic this year thanks to the 2024 Nobel prizes for both physics and chemistry. Not to be outdone, scientists from Belgium announced they had used machine-learning algorithms to predict the taste and quality of beer and what compounds brewers could use to improve the flavour of certain tipples. Kevin Verstrepen from KU Leuven and colleagues spent five years characterizing over 200 chemical properties from 250 Belgian commercial beers across 22 different styles, such as Blond and Tripel beers. They also gathered tasting notes from a panel of 15 people and from the RateBeer online beer review database. A machine-learning model that was trained on the data could predict the flavour and score of the beers using just the beverages’ chemical profile. By adding certain aromas predicted by the model, the team was even able to boost the quality – as determined by blind tasting – of existing commercial Belgian ale. The scientists hope the findings could be used to improve alcohol-free beer. Yet KU Leuven researcher Michiel Scheurs admits that they did celebrate the work “with the alcohol-containing variants”.

Beetling away

Whirligig beetles can reach speeds of up to 1m/s – or 100 body lengths per second – as they skirt across the water. Scientists thought the animals did this using their oar-like hind legs to generate “drag-based” thrust, a bit like how a rodent swims. To do so, however, the beetle would need to move its legs faster than its swimming speed, which in turn would require pushing against the water at unrealistic speeds. To solve this bugging problem, researchers at Cornell University used high-speed cameras to film the whirligigs as they swam. They found that the beetles instead use lift-based thrust, which has been documented in whales, dolphins and sea lions. The thrusting motion is perpendicular to the water surface and the researchers calculate that the forces generated by the beetle in this way can explain their speedy movements in the water. According to Cornell’s Yukun Sun, that makes whirligig beetles “by far the smallest organism to use lift-based thrust for swimming”.

Pistachio packing problem

It sounds like a question you might get in an exam: if you have a full bowl of N pistachios, what size container do you need for the leftover 2N non-edible shells? Given that pistachios come in different shapes and sizes and the shells are non-symmetric, the problem’s a tougher nut to crack than you might think. Thankfully, the secret of pistachio-packing was  revealed in a series of experiments by physicists Ruben Zakine and Michael Benzaquen from École Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France. After placing 613 pistachios in a two-litre cylinder, they found that the container holding the shells needs to be just over half the size of the original pistachio bowl for well-packed nuts and three-quarters for loosely packed pistachios. Zakine and Benzaquen say that numerical simulations could be carried out to compare with the experimental findings and that the work extends beyond just nuts. “Our analysis can be relevant in other situations, for instance to determine the optimal container needed [for] mussel or oyster shells after a Pantagruelian seafood diner,” they claim

The physics of paper cuts

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a paper cut, you’ll know how painful it can be. To find out why paper is able to slice through skin so well, Kaare Jensen – a physicist from the Technical University of Denmark – and colleagues carried out a series of experiments using paper with a range of thicknesses to make incisions into a piece of gelatine at various angles. When combined with modelling, they discovered that paper cuts are a competition between slicing and “buckling”. Thin paper with a thickness of about 30microns doesn’t cut skin so well because it buckles – a mechanical instability that happens when a slender object like paper is compressed. But thick paper (above about 200microns) is poor at making an incision because it distributes the load over a greater area, resulting in only small indentations. The team discovered, however, that there is a paper cut “sweet spot” at around 65microns, which just happens to be close to the paper thickness used in print magazines. The researchers have now put their findings to use, creating a 3D-printed scalpel that uses scrap paper for the cutting edge. Dubbed a “papermachete”, it can slice through apple, banana peel, cucumber and even chicken. “Studying the physics of paper cuts has revealed a surprising potential use for paper in the digital age: not as a means of information dissemination and storage, but rather as a tool of destruction,” the researchers write.

Squirting cucumbers

The plant kingdom is full of intriguing ways to distribute seeds such as the dandelion pappus effortlessly, drifting on air currents. Not to be outdone, the squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium), which is native to the Mediterranean and is often regarded as a weed, has its own unique way of ejecting seeds. When ripe, the ovoid-shaped fruits detach from the stem and as it does so explosively ejects seeds in a high-pressure jet of mucilage. The process, which lasts just 30 ms, launches the seeds at more than 20 m/s with some landing 10 m away. Researchers in the UK revealed the mechanism behind the squirt for the first time by using high-speed imaging and mathematical modelling. The researchers found that in the weeks leading up to the ejection, fluid builds up inside the fruits so they become pressurized. Then just before seed dispersal, some of this fluid moves from the fruit to the stem, making it longer and stiffer. This process crucially causes the fruit to rotate from being vertical to close to an angle of 45°, improving the launch angle for the seeds. During the first milliseconds of ejection, the tip of the stem holding the fruit then recoils away causing the pod to counter-rotate and detach. As it does so, the pressure inside the fruit causes the seeds to eject at high speed. By changing parameters in the model, such as the stiffness of the stem, reveals that the mechanism has been fine-tuned to ensure optimal seed dispersal.

Chimp Shakespeare

And finally, according to the infinite monkeys theorem, a monkey randomly pressing keys on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time would eventually type out the complete works of William Shakespeare purely by chance. Yet analysis by two mathematicians in Australia found that even a troop might not have time to do so within the supposed timeframe of the universe. The researchers came to their conclusion after creating a computational model that assumed a constant chimpanzee population of 200 000, each typing at one key per second until the end of the universe in about 10¹⁰⁰ years. If that is true, there’d be only a 5% chance a single monkey would type “bananas” within its own lifetime of just over 30 years. But even all the chimps feverishly typing away couldn’t produce Shakespeare’s entire works (coming in at over 850 000 words) before the universe ends. “It is not plausible that, even with improved typing speeds or an increase in chimpanzee populations, monkey labour will ever be a viable tool for developing non-trivial written works,”  the authors conclude, adding that while the infinite monkeys theorem is true, it is also “somewhat misleading”, or in reality it’s “not to be”.

You can be sure that next year will throw up its fair share of quirky stories from the world of physics. See you next year!

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The past few years have seen several missions to the Moon and that continued in 2024. Yet things didn’t get off to a perfect start. In 2023, the Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, launched its Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM) mission to the Moon. Yet when it landed in January, it did so upside down. Despite that slight mishap, Japan still became the fifth nation to successfully soft land a craft on the Moon, following the US, Soviet Union, China and India.

In February, meanwhile, US firm Intuitive Machines achieved a significant milestone when it became the first private mission to soft land on the Moon. Its Odysseus mission touched down on the Moon’s Malapert A region, a small crater about 300 km from the lunar south pole. In doing so it also became the first US mission to make a soft landing on the Moon since Apollo 17 in December 1972.

Another significant lunar first came later in the year when China’s Chang’e-6 mission successfully returned samples back to Earth from the Moon’s far side. The feat made it into our top 10 breakthroughs for this year.

Amateur radio astronomers

Astronomy is unique in having a significant amateur community and while radio astronomy emerged from amateur beginnings, it is now the focus of elite, international global consortia. In this fascinating feature, astrophysicist and amateur radio astronomer Emma Chapman from the University of Nottingham, UK, outlined how the subject developed and why it needs to strike a fine balance between its science and engineering roots. And also make sure not to miss Chapman discussing the history of radio astronomy on the Physics World Stories podcast.

Hidden stories

Still on the podcast front, this Physics World Stories podcast from this year features a fascinating chat with astronaut Eileen Collins, who shared her extraordinary journey as the first woman to pilot and command a spacecraft. In the process, she broke several barriers in space exploration and inspired generations with her courage and commitment to discovery.

Euclid’s spectacular images

Astronomy and spectacular images go hand in hand and this year didn’t disappoint. While the James Webb Space Telescope continued to amaze, in May the European Space Agency released five spectacular images of the cosmos along with 10 scientific papers as part of Euclid’s early release observations. Euclid’s next data release will focus on its primary science objectives and is currently slated for March 2025, so keep an eye out for those next year.

The quest for dark matter

And finally, in the search for a cosmological model that perfectly explains our universe, most astronomers invoke the notion of dark matter. But what if they should instead modify the age-old laws of gravity? This year Physics World published the first articles of a three-part series, in which science writer Keith Cooper  looked at the struggles and successes of modified gravity in explaining phenomena at varying galactic scales as well as matching observations from the cosmic microwave background. In his second piece, Cooper explored some of dark matter’s recent successes and the serious challenges it is also facing.  Look out for the final article in this three-part series next year.

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The US Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $50m to a consortium of national laboratories and universities to develop sodium-ion batteries as a sustainable, low-cost alternative to lithium-ion technology.

Lithium-ion batteries currently dominate the electric-vehicle market and they are also used in smartphones and to store energy from renewable source such as wind and solar. Yet relying on a single battery technology such as lithium-ion creates dependencies on critical elements such as lithium, cobalt and nickel.

Sodium, however, is an abundant, inexpensive element and offers a promising way to diversify battery materials. The downside is that sodium-ion batteries currently store less energy per unit weight and volume than lithium-ion batteries.

The money from the DOE over the next five years will be used to create the Low-cost Earth-abundant Na-ion Storage (LENS) consortium. LENS will be led by Argonne National Laboratory and includes five other DOE national laboratories such as Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkely and Sandia as well eight US universities.

“By leading the LENS consortium, Argonne will push sodium-ion battery technology forward and contribute to a secure energy future for everyone,” notes Argonne director Paul Kearns. ​“Our scientific expertise and dynamic collaborations in this important field will strengthen US competitiveness.”

The LENS consortium will now develop high-energy electrode materials and electrolytes for sodium-ion batteries as well as design, integrate and benchmark battery cells with the aim of creating high-energy, long-lasting batteries.

“The challenge ahead is improving sodium-ion energy density so that it first matches and then exceeds that of phosphate-based lithium-ion batteries while minimizing and eliminating the use of all critical elements,” says LENS consortium director Venkat Srinivasan.

• Venkat Srinivasan, William Mustain and Martin Freer appeared on a Physics World Live panel discussion about battery technology held on 21 November 2024, which you can watch online now

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The plant kingdom is full of intriguing ways to distribute seeds such as the dandelion pappus effortlessly drifting on air currents to the ballistic nature of fern sporangia.

Not to be outdone, the squirting cucumber (Ecballium elaterium), which is native to the Mediterranean and is often regarded as a weed, has its own unique way of ejecting seeds.

When ripe, the ovoid-shaped fruits detach from the stem and as it does so explosively ejects seeds in a high-pressure jet of mucilage.

The process, which lasts just 30 milliseconds, launches the seeds at more than 20 metres per second with some landing 10 metres away.

Researchers in the UK have, for the first time, revealed the mechanism behind the squirt by carrying out high-speed videography, computed tomography scans and mathematical modelling.

“The first time we inspected this plant in the Botanic Garden, the seed launch was so fast that we weren’t sure it had happened,” recalls Oxford University mathematical biologist Derek Moulton. “It was very exciting to dig in and uncover the mechanism of this unique plant.”

The researchers found that in the weeks leading up to the ejection, fluid builds up inside the fruits so they become pressurised. Then just before seed dispersal, some of this fluid moves from the fruit to the stem, making it longer and stiffer.

This process crucially causes the fruit to rotate from being vertical to close to an angle of 45 degrees, improving the launch angle for the seeds.

During the first milliseconds of ejection, the tip of the stem holding the fruit then recoils away causing the fruit to counter-rotate and detach. As it does so, the pressure inside the fruit causes the seeds to eject at high speed.

By changing certain parameters in the model, such as the stiffness of the stem, reveals that the mechanism has been fine-tuned to ensure optimal seed dispersal. For example, a thicker or stiffer stem would result in the seeds being launched horizontally and distributed over a narrower area.

According to Manchester University physicist Finn Box, the findings could be used for more effective drug delivery systems “where directional release is crucial”.

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UK physics “deep tech” could be missing out on almost a £1bn of investment each year. That is according to a new report by the Institute of Physics (IOP), which publishes Physics World. It finds that venture capital investors often struggle to invest in high-innovation physics industries given the lack of a “one-size-fits-all” commercialisation pathway that is seen in others areas such as biotech.

According to the report, physics-based businesses add about £230bn to the UK economy each year and employ more than 2.7 million full-time employees. The UK also has one of the largest venture-capital markets in Europe and the highest rates of spin-out activity, especially in biotech.

Despite this, however, venture capital investment in “deep tech” physics – start-ups whose business model is based on high-tech innovation or significant scientific advances – remains low, attracting £7.4bn or 30% of UK science venture-capital investment.

To find out the reasons for this discrepancy, the IOP interviewed science-led businesses as well as 32 leading venture capital investors. Based on these discussions, it was found that many investors are confused about certain aspects of physics-based start-ups, finding that they often do not follow the familiar lifecycle of development as seen other areas like biotech.

Physics businesses are not, for example, always able to transition from being tech focussed to being product-led in the early stages of development, which prevents venture capitalists from committing large amounts of money. Another issue is that venture capitalists are less familiar with the technologies, timescales and “returns profile” of physics deep tech.

The IOP report estimates that if the full investment potential of physics deep tech is unlocked then it could result in an extra £4.5bn of additional funding over the next five years. In a foreword to the report, Hermann Hauser, the tech entrepreneur and founder of Acorn Computers, highlights “uncovered issues within the system that are holding back UK venture capital investment” into physics-based tech. “Physics deep-tech businesses generate huge value and have unique characteristics – so our national approach to finance for these businesses must be articulated in ways that recognise their needs,” writes Hauser.

Physics deep tech is central to the UK’s future prosperity

Tom Grinyer

At the same time, investors see a lot of opportunity in subjects such as quantum and semiconductor physics as well as with artificial intelligences and nuclear fusion. Jo Slota-Newson, a managing partner at Almanac Ventures who co-wrote the report, says there is “huge potential” for physics deep-tech businesses but “venture capital funds are being held back from raising and deploying capital to support this crucial sector”.

The IOP is now calling for a coordinated effort from government, investors as well as the business and science communities to develop “investment pathways” to address the issues raised in the report.  For example, the UK government should ensure grant and debt-financing options are available to support physics tech at “all stages of development”.

Slota-Newson, who has a background in science including a PhD in chemistry from the University of Cambridge, says that such moves should be “at the heart” of the UK’s government’s plans for growth. “Investors, innovators and government need to work together to deliver an environment where at every stage in their development there are opportunities for our deep tech entrepreneurs to access funding and support,” adds Slota-Newson. “If we achieve that we can build the science-driven, innovative economy, which will provide a sustainable future of growth, security and prosperity.”

The report also says that the IOP should play a role by continuing to highlight successful physics deep-tech businesses and to help them attract investment from both the UK and international venture-capital firms. Indeed, Tom Grinyer, group chief executive officer of the IOP, says that getting the model right could “supercharge the UK economy as a global leader in the technologies that will define the next industrial revolution”.

“Physics deep tech is central to the UK’s future prosperity — the growth industries of the future lean very heavily on physics and will help both generate economic growth and help move us to a lower carbon, more sustainable economy,” says Grinyer. “By leveraging government support, sharing information better and designing our financial support of this key sector in a more intelligent way we can unlock billions in extra investment.”

That view is backed by Hauser. “Increased investment, economic growth, and solutions to some of our biggest societal challenges [will move] us towards a better world for future generations,” he writes. “The prize is too big to miss”.

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While spaghetti might have a diameter of a couple of millimetres and capelli d’angelo (angel hair) is around 0.8 mm, the thinnest known pasta to date is thought to be su filindeu (threads of God), which is made by hand in Sardinia, Italy, and is about 0.4 mm in diameter.

That is, however, until researchers in the UK created spaghetti coming in at a mindboggling 372 nanometres (0.000372 mm) across (Nanoscale Adv. 10.1039/D4NA00601A).

About 200 times thinner than a human hair, the “nanopasta” is made using a technique called electrospinning, in which the threads of flour and liquid were pulled through the tip of a needle by an electric charge.

“To make spaghetti, you push a mixture of water and flour through metal holes,” notes Adam Clancy from University College London (UCL). “In our study, we did the same except we pulled our flour mixture through with an electrical charge. It’s literally spaghetti but much smaller.”

While each individual strand is too thin to see directly with the human eye or with a visible light microscope, the team used the threads to form a mat of nanofibres about two centimetres across, creating in effect a mini lasagne sheet.

The researchers are now investigating how the starch-based nanofibres could be used for medical purposes such as wound dressing, for scaffolds in tissue regrowth and even in drug delivery. “We want to know, for instance, how quickly it disintegrates, how it interacts with cells, and if you could produce it at scale,” says UCL materials scientist Gareth Williams.

But don’t expect to see nanopasta hitting the supermarket shelves anytime soon. “I don’t think it’s useful as pasta, sadly, as it would overcook in less than a second, before you could take it out of the pan,” adds Williams. And no-one likes rubbery pasta.

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If you want to read about controversies in physics, a (brief) history of the speed of light or the quest for dark matter, then make sure to check out this collection of papers to mark the 10th anniversary of the St Cross Centre for the History and Philosophy of Physics (HAPP).

HAPP was co-founded in 2014 by Jo Ashbourn and James Dodd and since then the centre has run a series of one-day conferences as well as standalone lectures and seminars about big topics in physics and philosophy.

Based on these contributions, HAPP has now published a 10th anniversary commemorative volume in the open-access Journal of Physics: Conference Series, which is published by IOP Publishing.

The volume is structured around four themes: physicists across history; space and astronomy; philosophical perspectives; and concepts in physics.

The big names in physics to write for the volume include Martin Rees on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence across a century; Carlo Rovelli on scientific thinking across the centuries; and the late Steven Weinberg on the greatest physics discoveries of the 20th century.

I was delighted to also contribute to the volume based on a talk I gave in February 2020 for a one-day HAPP meeting about big science in physics.

The conference covered the past, present and future of big science and I spoke about the coming decade of new facilities in physics and the possible science that may result. I also included my “top 10 facilities to watch” for the coming decade.

In a preface to the volume, Ashbourn writes that HAPP was founded to provide “a forum in which the philosophy and methodologies that inform how current research in physics is undertaken would be included alongside the history of the discipline in an accessible way that could engage the general public as well as scientists, historians and philosophers,” adding that she is “looking forward” to HAPP’s second decade.

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Researchers in Japan have launched the world’s first wooden satellite to test the feasibility of using timber in space. Dubbed LignoSat2, the small “cubesat” was developed by Kyoto University and the logging firm Sumitomo Forestry. It was launched on 4 November to the International Space Station (ISS) from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Given the lack of water and oxygen in space, wood is potentially more durable in orbit than it is on Earth where it can rot or burn. This makes it an attractive and sustainable alternative to metals such as aluminium that can create aluminium oxide particles during re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere.

Work began on LignoSat in 2020. In 2022 scientists at Kyoto sent samples of cherry, birch and magnolia wood to the ISS where the materials were exposed to the harsh environment of space for 240 days to test their durability.

While each specimen performed well with no clear deformation, the researchers settled on building LignoSat from magnolia – or Hoonoki in Japanese. This type of wood has traditionally been used for sword sheaths and is known for its strength and stability.

LignoSat2 is made without screws of glue and is equipped with external solar panels and encased in an aluminium frame. Next month the satellite is expected to be deployed in orbit around the Earth for about six months to measure how the wood withstands the environment and how well it protects the chips inside the satellite from cosmic radiation.

Data will be collected on the wood’s expansion and contraction, the internal temperature and the performance of the electronic components inside.

Researchers are hopeful that if LignoSat is successful it could pave the way for satellites to be made from wood. This would be more environmentally friendly given that each satellite would simply burn up when it re-enters the atmosphere at the end of its lifetime.

“With timber, a material we can produce by ourselves, we will be able to build houses, live and work in space forever,” astronaut Takao Doi who studies human space activities at Kyoto University told Reuters.

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According to the well-known thought experiment, the infinite monkeys theorem, a monkey randomly pressing keys on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time would eventually type out the complete works of William Shakespeare purely by chance.

Yet a new analysis by two mathematicians in Australia finds that even a troop might not have the time to do so within the supposed timeframe of the universe.

To find out, the duo created a model that includes 30 keys – all the letters in the English language plus punctuation marks. They assumed a constant chimpanzee population of 200,000 could be enlisted to the task, each typing at one key per second until the end of the universe in about 10¹⁰⁰ years.

“We decided to look at the probability of a given string of letters being typed by a finite number of monkeys within a finite time period consistent with estimates for the lifespan of our universe,” notes mathematician Stephen Woodcock from the University of Technology Sydney.

The mathematicians found that there is only a 5% chance a single monkey would type “bananas” within its own lifetime of just over 30 years. Yet even with all the chimps feverishly typing away, they would not be able to produce Shakespeare’s entire works (coming in at over 850,000 words) before the universe ends. They would, however, be able to type “I chimp, therefore I am”.

“It is not plausible that, even with improved typing speeds or an increase in chimpanzee populations, monkey labour will ever be a viable tool for developing non-trivial written works,” the authors conclude, adding that while the infinite monkeys theorem is true, it is also “somewhat misleading”, or rather it’s “not to be” in reality.

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The US condensed-matter physicist Leon Cooper, who shared the 1972 Nobel Prize for Physics, has died at the age of 94. In the late 1950s, Cooper, together with his colleagues Robert Schrieffer and John Bardeen, developed a theory of superconductivity that could explain why certain materials undergo an absolute absence of electrical resistance at low temperatures.

Born on 28 February 1930 in New York City, US, Cooper graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1947 before earning a degree from Columbia University, which he completed in 1951, and then a PhD in 1954.

Cooper then spent time at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the University of Illinois and Ohio State University before heading to Brown University in 1958 where he remained for the rest of his career.

It was in Illinois that Cooper began to work on a theoretical explanation of superconductivity – a phenomenon that was first seen by the Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes when he discovered in 1911 that the electrical resistance of mercury suddenly disappeared beneath a temperature of 4.2 K.

However, there was no microscopic theory of superconductivity until 1957, when Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer – all based at Illinois – came up with their “BCS” theory. This described how an electron can deform the atomic lattice through which it moves, thereby pairing with a neighbouring electron, which became known as a Cooper pair. Being paired allows all the electrons in a superconductor to move as a single cohort, known as a condensate, prevailing over thermal fluctuations that could cause the pairs to break.

Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer published their BCS theory in April 1957 (Phys. Rev. 106 162), which was then followed in December by a full-length paper (Phys. Rev. 108 1175). Cooper was in his late 20s when he made the breakthrough.

Not only did the BCS theory of superconductivity successfully account for the behaviour of “conventional” low-temperature superconductors such as mercury and tin but it also had application in particle physics by contributing to the notion of spontaneous symmetry breaking.

For their work the trio won the 1972 Nobel Prize for Physics “for their jointly developed theory of superconductivity, usually called the BCS-theory”.

From BCS to BCM

While Cooper continued to work in superconductivity, later in his career he turned to neuroscience. In 1973 he founded and directed Brown’s Institute for Brain and Neural Systems, which studied animal nervous systems and the human brain. In the 1980s he came up with a physical theory of learning in the visual cortex dubbed the “BCM” theory, named after Cooper and his colleagues Elie Bienenstock and Paul Munro.

He also founded the technology firm Nestor along with Charles Elbaum, which aimed to find commercial and military applications for artificial neural networks.

As well as the Nobel prize, Cooper was awarded the Comstock Prize from the US National Academy of Sciences in 1968 and the Descartes Medal from the Academie de Paris in 1977.

He also wrote numerous books including An Introduction to the Meaning and Structure of Physics in 1968 and Physics: Structure and Meaning in 1992. More recently, he published Science and Human Experience in 2014.

“Leon’s intellectual curiosity knew no boundaries,” notes Peter Bilderback, who worked with Cooper at Brown. “He was comfortable conversing on any subject, including art, which he loved greatly. He often compared the construction of physics to the building of a great cathedral, both beautiful human achievements accomplished by many hands over many years and perhaps never to be fully finished.”

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NASA has released the first images of a full-scale prototype for the six telescopes that will be included in the €1.5bn Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission.

Expected to launch in 2035 and operate for at least four year, LISA is a space-based gravitational-wave mission led by the European Space Agency.

It will comprise of three identical satellites that will be placed in an equilateral triangle in space, with each side of the triangle being 2.5 million kilometers – more than six times the distance between the Earth and the Moon.

The three craft will send infrared laser beams to each other via twin telescopes in the satellites. The beams will be sent to free-floating golden cubes – each slightly smaller than a Rubik’s cube — that are placed inside the craft.

The system will be able to measure the separation between the cubes down to picometers, or trillionths of a meter. Such subtle changes in the distances between the measured laser beams will indicate the presence of a gravitational wave.

The prototype telescope, dubbed the Engineering Development Unit Telescope, was manufactured and assembled by L3Harris Technologies in Rochester, New York.

It is made entirely from an amber-coloured glass-ceramic called Zerodur, which has been manufactured by Schott in Mainz, Germany. The primary mirror of the telescopes is coated in gold to better reflect the infrared lasers and reduce heat loss.

On 25 January ESA’s Science Programme Committee formally approved the start of construction of LISA.

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