This extinct dog was raised for its wool and its only known pelt has finally returned to canada.

A drinking fountain marked “colored,” a segregated waiting room, or a sign separating public spaces by race could tell the story of an entire social system. During the Jim Crow era, these ordinary sights became symbols of a country where racial separation was woven into everyday routines, shaping where people could go, what services they […]

If you’re called by an unidentified number, the advice is to remain silent until you’re sure there’s a human being on the line. Is this the end of an era?

Name: Hello.

Age: 200 years old.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Posed by model Getty Images

© Photograph: Posed by model Getty Images

© Photograph: Posed by model Getty Images

When Star Trek premiered in 1966, it introduced audiences to a vision of the future filled with advanced technology, distant worlds, and a diverse crew working together aboard the USS Enterprise. Alongside its groundbreaking ideas about space exploration and human progress, the series also became known for its distinctive visual style, particularly the futuristic uniforms […]

China has made astounding scientific progress over the past decade, with the country outperforming all others in the world according to a recent analysis by Nature. Based on data from 2025, its 2026 Research Leaders study puts China ahead of the US (in second), Germany (third) and the UK (fourth).

Across all disciplines, Nature reports that most (51) of the top 100 institutions in the world are in China, with only four in the UK. The picture is slightly different if you judge academic institutions based only on their work in the physical sciences, but China still has 30 of the top 100 institutions, with only seven from the UK.

Professional physicists may not care much for such league tables but they do reveal just how far China has come in recent years. The country’s scientific strength was particularly evident at the fourth International Congress of Basic Science (ICBS) in Beijing, which I recently attended.

Founded in 2023 by the Fields-medal-winning mathematician Shing-Tung Yau, this year’s ICBS ran from 9-21 August at the Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications (BIMSA), of which Yau is president. Its international character is evident from the fact that a total of 50 of its 140 full-time researchers are from outside China.

Awards and honours

Over 800 participants from more than 30 countries attended the congress, which had the theme “Advancing science for humanity”, with my participation supported by the organisers. The programme was huge, featuring over 500 academic sessions covering topics from generative AI reasoning to quantum information.

Nine scientists, including four women, were awarded an inaugural Basic Science Medal. They were Claire Voisin (algebraic gemoetry), Horng-Tzer Yau (probability theory), Shou-Wu Zhang (maths), Yifang Wang (particle physics), Xiao-Gang Wen (condensed matter), Andrea Liu (complex systems), Zhenan Bao (flexible electronics), Xiaowei Zhuang (imaging), and Feng Zhang (CRISPR co-discoverer).

Meanwhile, Frontiers of Science Awards were given to over 500 researchers from 20 countries who had done work of “excellent and of outstanding scholarly value” over the last 5-10 years in the three fields represented at the ICBS. Authors from many Chinese institutions were among the recipients, underscoring the growing international impact and vitality of China’s basic science research.

There were 20 plenary sessions, over 400 Frontiers of Science Awardee talks, plus events for entrepreneurs and school and university students. Especially engaging were the “nights of mathematics, physics and engineering”, enlivened by dance amd music performances by students. An exchange meeting was held too for research institutions in Beijing seeking to integrate basic science with frontier technologies

The closing ceremony saw the winners of this year’s ICBS Innovation Fellowships announced. They are all researchers under 50 who work full-time in China and have demonstrated potential in mathematics, physics, information sciences, and other fundamental and interdisciplinary fields. Each receives research funding and can work with a partner institution in China for an agreed period.

AI surges ahead

Artificial intelligence (AI) was one of the major themes of ICBS 2026. Fields medallist Martin Hairer from EPFL Lausanne, for example, said AI won’t end mathematics, but will transform how it’s carried out. It may speed up certain areas while others might fall away.

Caucher Birkar from Tsinghua University – another Fields medallist – pointed out that AI is highly capable in computation, searching for examples, and completing proofs of mathematical lemmas, but it remains difficult for AI to generate truly original ideas.

As for Robert Endre Tarjan, a Turing award laureate from Princeton University, he encouraged young researchers to be curious and commit themselves to long-term scientific exploration. Researchers, he said, can train AI to be a powerful tool for scientific discovery, but they must also develop their own ability to identify meaningful questions and establish independent judgment.

The last word was left to congress chair Shing-Tung Yau, who emphasised that while AI will enhance scientific research, the essence of scientific discovery will always depend on human creativity, imagination and independent thinking.

The post AI dominates the 4th International Congress of Basic Science in Beijing appeared first on Physics World.

Record store shelves once told stories long before anyone dropped a needle on vinyl. A cover was an artist’s first impression, a single image meant to stop browsers mid-flip and pull them toward the turntable. Between the 1970s and the 1990s, that impulse produced some genuinely brilliant design work, alongside a wave of album art […]

Open any box of decades-old family photographs and there is a good chance one image will stop the scroll: a man in a belted sweater, knee-high boots, and a print bold enough to make modern eyes squint. Vintage menswear advertisements from the 1970s are full of moments like this, and viewed through a 21st-century lens, […]

On December 12, 1972, Château de Ferrières, the grand 19th-century estate owned by the Rothschild family outside Paris, became the setting for one of the most unusual private gatherings of the era. Hosted by Marie-Hélène de Rothschild, the event was not a traditional formal ball but a carefully staged surrealist spectacle filled with bizarre costumes, […]

American swimwear manufacturers entered the 1950s with a design philosophy borrowed directly from the corset makers and eveningwear tailors of the previous decades. Rather than treating the swimsuit as simple beachwear, companies like Catalina, Cole of California, and Jantzen engineered garments meant to shape and flatter the body with the same precision applied to formal […]

In the 1950s, Italy was a country where centuries of history blended naturally with everyday life. Ancient churches, medieval streets, Renaissance buildings, and traditional neighborhoods still stood largely untouched by the rapid changes that would come with mass tourism and modern development. A remarkable collection of Kodachrome photographs from 1956 offers a rare glimpse of […]

Sun-drenched shores, tailored wool swimsuits, and a newfound sense of freedom all came together to define one of the most stylish decades in beach history. The 1930s transformed swimming from a rare luxury into a beloved national pastime, and with that shift came a wave of fashion innovation that still captures attention nearly a century […]

The geometric earthwork structures, carved into the ground with embankments and ditches, are in some cases more than 2,500 years old, researchers said.

A century ago, a virus swept across the planet with a speed and lethality the modern world had never witnessed, reshaping societies from crowded cities to remote villages in a matter of months. The 1918 influenza pandemic remains one of the deadliest public health disasters in recorded history. Within roughly fifteen months, it claimed more […]

I am writing from Argentina as a researcher working within the country’s national scientific system. While discussions about science funding are often framed in terms of budgets and economic indicators, the reality is experienced in laboratories, offices and research facilities where scientific knowledge is produced.

Today, many of us in Argentina are witnessing a progressive deterioration of Argentine science, both in terms of infrastructure and human capital.

I am based at the Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica (CNEA), where uncertainty has become routine. Hundreds of employees remain on temporary contracts that can be terminated without warning. On 1 July 2026, a total of 61 colleagues lost their jobs, with armed military police officers occupying the building to contain a peaceful employee protest. Beyond the immediate human cost, these dismissals are steadily dismantling scientific capabilities that have taken decades to build.

The impact became tangible when my colleague Paula Alderete, an experienced electron microscope specialist, lost her position. Alderete, who has published two papers with me, was responsible not only for operating a highly specialized instrument, but also for maintaining it and supporting dozens of research projects.

Without Paula Alderete’s expertise, our lab’s electron microscope has become largely unusable. It is a quiet reminder that scientific infrastructure depends as much on people as on expensive equipment.

Faramarz S Gard

Without her expertise, the microscope has become largely unusable. Every morning I pass her empty desk on my way to the laboratory. It has become a quiet reminder that scientific infrastructure depends as much on people as on expensive equipment.

The deterioration extends beyond personnel. In my laboratory, an X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) instrument worth more than $1m must sometimes be protected with plastic sheets because rainwater leaks through the roof.

Equipment designed to operate under tightly controlled environmental conditions is now exposed to circumstances that threaten its long-term reliability. Similar situations are becoming increasingly common across Argentina’s universities and research institutes as maintenance budgets shrink and infrastructure ages.

Argentina has a scientific tradition that reaches far beyond its borders. The country has produced five Nobel laureates, including three in the sciences, and has made internationally recognized contributions to nuclear technology, medicine, agriculture, astronomy and materials science. Institutions such as CNEA, CONICET (Argentina’s national research council) and the national universities have trained generations of researchers whose work has strengthened international collaborations and advanced scientific knowledge worldwide.

Scientific systems rarely collapse through a single dramatic event. They decline incrementally: one technician dismissed, one laboratory left unrepaired, one instrument taken out of service, one young scientist deciding to build a career elsewhere. These individual losses accumulate into a weakening of scientific capacity that may take decades to rebuild.

When a country loses the expertise required to operate advanced laboratories or maintain unique scientific infrastructure, the consequences extend beyond national borders.

Faramarz S Gard

This should concern more than Argentina. Modern science depends on international networks of researchers, shared facilities and long-term collaboration. When a country loses the expertise required to operate advanced laboratories or maintain unique scientific infrastructure, the consequences extend beyond national borders.

Knowledge is lost, collaborations weaken, and opportunities for discovery diminish.scientific infrastructure is more than buildings and instruments; it is the people whose expertise gives those resources value. Once that expertise disappears, replacing it is far more difficult than preserving it.

The empty desk of a single scientist may seem insignificant, but multiplied across laboratories and institutions, it becomes a warning of how a research system is quietly dismantled. Argentina’s experience is therefore not only a national concern but also a reminder that scientific capacity, wherever it exists, is a global resource that is remarkably difficult to rebuild once lost.

I write this letter not only to describe a difficult situation but also to call attention to the broader consequences of sustained disinvestment in science. The international scientific community should recognize that the erosion of research systems in countries such as Argentina represents a loss not only for those nations but for global science itself.

Science is built by people, sustained by institutions, and enabled by infrastructure. Today, all three are under increasing strain in Argentina.

The post Letter from Argentina: ‘an empty desk and an idle electron microscope signal the erosion of the country’s science’ appeared first on Physics World.

How do we make good, well-informed decisions? This is the central question of author Helen Pearson’s new book Beyond Belief: How Evidence Shows What Really Works. It examines evidence-based decision-making and compares it with “conventional wisdom and questionable opinion”. Pearson is interested in how we can use scientific reasoning to empower decision-making using empirical evidence, rather than choices based on opinion or public sentiment.

Pearson uses human stories and historical narratives to outline “the evidence revolution”, in which academics, policy-makers and civilians have tried to embed evidence into decision-making. She tackles disciplines where evidence is seldom used, such as people management, or where its absence is surprising, like environmental conservation. Throughout Beyond Belief, Pearson asks us to understand what makes for good evidence, and how evidence can be better used in daily life.

An award-winning science journalist and editor at the journal Nature, Pearson is particularly good at establishing clear narratives based on a host of different scientific studies. She begins with the field of medicine, focusing on Iain Chalmers, one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration. Formed in 1993, it is considered to be a trailblazer in evaluating evidence-based healthcare. Indeed, the institution has influenced important changes to treatment, including the use of corticosteroids to save the lives of premature babies.

It seems obvious, Pearson suggests, that doctors would choose treatments based on rigorous evidence. Instead, she shows us that evidence-based medicine is a young field that only emerged in the 1970s. One particularly personal example she gives is the standard practice of shaving knee cartilage in meniscal tears – a procedure I nearly underwent in 2015 – which was shown to be no better than exercise therapy after a landmark trial in 2016. Beyond Belief offers a glimpse into how recent, and as-yet fragile, our reliance on evidence-based treatment is; as well as how much opposition it has faced from institutional inertia and scepticism.

The book is not just about medicine. It includes examples ranging from the roll-out of the pioneering Mexican social welfare scheme, PROGRESA, which helped to decrease poverty and improve health and education in the country; to the ineffective use of bat bridges over the UK’s A11 dual-carriageway. She also discusses using evidence to make management decisions, as opposed to relying on corporate wisdom or management consultancy. The examples are often surprising, underscoring Pearson’s central argument that evidence allows for better decisions, but getting people to use good evidence consistently is challenging.

Throughout the book, Pearson is engaging and often witty, while still discussing the complexities of implementing evidence-based best practice. Beyond Belief is highly readable too – even when navigating difficult concepts in meta-analyses. Pearson outlines the difficulties of teaching people how to use evidence, how to design studies well, and how studies can easily be misleading. She presents the enormous challenge of encouraging institutions to use evidence correctly, while remaining hopeful about our direction of travel.

There are places where tensions arise, one being in the chapter on policing. Pearson describes how evidence can be used in effective policing, for example, to support increasing patrols or stop-and-search in crime hot-spots. This reveals an interesting question about what the role of successful policing is – crime reduction, retributive justice or rehabilitation – and whose definition of justice that evidence is being used to support.

In these cases, the author’s arguments would have been strengthened if she had engaged more with the central premise of the book: that evidence always makes for better decisions. There are nuances that arise between evidence-based policy and harm reduction, and broader questions of trust that cause people to rebuke evidence entirely. A more serious conversation about these reservations might have deepened the argument in favour of empirical evidence, particularly in questions of social policy.

This discussion is not entirely absent. One particular strength of Beyond Belief is Pearson’s examination of COVID, drawn from her experience as a Nature editor during the pandemic. In this chapter, close to the book’s end, Pearson presents the difficulties of using evidence-based trials in acutely developing crises, in which scientists and public-health bodies have to adapt quickly to minimize harm. At a time when discussions about public health responses to COVID are so polarized, Beyond Belief provides a nuanced analysis of how we can arrive at a scientific conclusion under immense pressure.

At the heart of this book is Pearson’s passion and advocacy for a scientific approach to decision-making. She includes a call to action, empowering readers to be champions of evidence in their lives. Although only present in the short chapters towards the book’s end, her anecdotes about childcare, artificial intelligence and using your vote to support evidence through democracy, are useful reference tools. She also succeeds in her goal of starting a conversation about how we can best use evidence.

Ultimately, Beyond Belief sets out to demonstrate the ways in which evidence enters our lives and improves them. Pearson asks us to advocate for science in a world of increasing misinformation, and to challenge conventional wisdom while equipping us with the tools to do so. For that alone, her book is well worth reading.

• 2026 Princeton University Press 368pp £25 hb

The post Evidence in action: how science helps us make better decisions appeared first on Physics World.

**Major spoilers ahead

“Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal,” observes Ryland Grace, the main protagonist of Project Hail Mary, as he floats alone in interstellar space, millions of miles from Earth. And yet there is nothing ordinary about the spectacular film released earlier this year, based on Andy Weir’s bestselling 2021 novel of the same name.

With its sweeping plot that spans civilizations and light-years, at its heart, Project Hail Mary is a humorous and uplifting story routed in friendship, survival and what it means to be “human”. It also shines a bright light on international co-operation and scientific problem-solving under great pressure, as the human race is forced to come together in a time of dire need.

Starring Ryan Gosling (who also produced the film), the tale follows Grace, a middle-school science teacher turned extremely unwilling astronaut – “I put the ‘not’ in astronaut! I’ve never done a space walk, I can’t even moonwalk!” Strongarmed into becoming our interstellar saviour, Grace has the self-deprecating charm coupled with enough scientific acumen to make him a lead character that audiences can happily root for.

The film is a visual masterpiece, with sequences that visualize the beauty and terror of space, often viewed from Grace’s disorienting and lonely perspective; alongside scenes on an increasingly more frantic Earth in a bid for survival and sunshine. It is directed and produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller (The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), who are both well known for their funny and fast-paced movie style. If you expected a certain level of inventive energy in their adaption of this story you will not be disappointed, as Project Hail Mary is expansive in every aspect. New cinematic techniques were combined with the centuries old artform of puppetry to simulate the disorienting reality of long-term zero gravity and the unique physiology of alien life for gigantic IMAX screens.

A dual timeline narrative

Project Hail Mary opens with a familiar Weir set-up – a lone scientist in crisis, who must use all his ingenuity and scientific know-how to save the day. Indeed, Grace wakes up aboard a spacecraft, light-years from Earth with no memory of his identity or how he got there. He soon realizes that he is the sole surviving member of the crew on the ship, and as he slowly recovers his memories, he recalls their desperate, one-way mission to save humanity.

Interspersed in flashbacks, we learn that scientists have discovered a so-called “Petrova line” of infrared light between the Sun and Venus. They have worked out that this line is made up of a mysterious micro-organism, which seems to be consuming the Sun’s energy and threatens to plunge our planet into icy doom. Dubbed “astrophage” (Latin for “star eater”), the algae-like microbe has already noticeably dimmed the light that Earth receives from the Sun, and extrapolating, it will cause catastrophic global cooling within 30 years.

A “Petrova Taskforce” is created, made up of scientists and military personnel from across the globe. It is led by the formidable Eva Stratt – perfectly played by German actor Sandra Hüller – who brings a reticent Grace into the fold, who uses his skills as a one-time top molecular biologist to study the unicellular organism. It is Grace who, after some comedic and somewhat DIY experimentation, figures out that the astrophage are capable of absorbing and storing solar radiation; and later expelling it, which serves as a source of propulsion, allowing them to travel at near-light speeds.

Further research shows that all but one of the stars in our galactic neighbourhood are similarly infected by the astrophage. The exception is Tau Ceti, which is 11.9 light-years away from Earth (see box “Around the Sun”) and hosts a few planets of its own. The taskforce decides to send a one-way crewed mission to this special star, to determine what makes it immune to these interstellar interlopers.

In an interesting twist, it is the astrophage themselves that ultimately fuel the Hail Mary ship, after Grace discovers how to breed them on Earth. With only enough time to breed the required amount of astrophage for a one-way trip – they decide that any findings will be sent back to Earth via a series of much smaller and lighter probes. Despite Tau Ceti being almost 12 light-years away from Earth, it takes the spacecraft only about four years to get there, thanks to the fact that the ship travels at 92% the speed of light. This allows relativistic effects such as time dilation and length contraction come into play.

With this complex set-up, the real story picks up once Grace arrives at Tau Ceti, only to find that he is second in line, with another spaceship already there. Grace soon meets its sole occupant – the alien creature that he refers to as Rocky thanks to its stone-like morphology. Grace learns that Rocky is on the exact same mission as him, and that the alien hails from another nearby astrophage-infested star system called 40 Eridani. The pair soon realize that the only way to save both their planets is to work together.

Alongside Grace and Rocky’s adventures in space, the film does well in bringing in the more sober aspects of the story back on Earth – highlighting the trials and triumphs of the taskforce. These range from the global mobilization of scientists and engineers, working together to build and fuel a light-speed ship in record time; to Stratt’s character bypassing international law to ensure humanity’s survival. Lord and Miller use a distinct visual language to illustrate the two timelines. The Earth sequences look more bleak; while the scenes aboard the Hail Mary use visualizations of waveforms and light-absorption to show how Grace perceives the microscopic threat that is astrophage.

Rocky is one of the most lovable alien creatures to have graced our cinema screens in recent years, brought to life by the clever use of puppetry. The astrophage, by contrast, are meant to evoke fear and intrigue. We are treated to visualizations of how these “black matter” organisms absorb radiation, giving the audience a sense of how matter and energy can be manipulated on a grand scale. Visually, this metaphor continues throughout the film and, ultimately, to the survival of the planet.

Science and fiction, on screen and the page

It is clear that both Weir and the film’s producers and director were keen to highlight science and scientists throughout the book and film. For example, 40 Eridani is a real star system and Weir used astronomical data to build Rocky’s world.

In fact, when the book Project Hail Mary was written, the planet 40 Eridani-B was believed to be real. More recent data has revealed the dimming of the star that inferred the planet’s existence is in fact more likely a result of the composition of the star itself, and the planet most likely does not exist (see box “Exoplanetary exploits”).

In Project Hail Mary, Weir used the real-world observations of stars sometimes dimming for unknown reasons to come up with the idea of the astrophage and its effects on stars. The book also has much more detailed (if scientifically dubious) explanations, using neutrinos and quantum physics, for how astrophage devours starlight and manages to survive on the surface of stars.

Weir wrote the book before the global COVID-19 pandemic, but it was released in the very midst of it. Indeed, there are many parallels in the way humanity deals with global problems. As we see in Project Hail Mary, the fictional version of our world has this immediate burning issue and while not everybody quite agrees on a plan, there is a global realization and agreement that something must be done, no matter what it takes. Weir is not so convinced that it always works like this though, as he told us that “I do think that the world works together when there’s a common problem, but only if it’s a direct and immediate problem like COVID. We’re not so great at it when it’s a slow burn, like environmental damage.”

Filmmaker and scriptwriter Drew Goddard – who wrote the screenplay for Project Hail Mary as well as Weir’s previous bestselling-book-turned-movie The Martian – reportedly drew up a list of 10 things that he would like to bring from the pages to the film. He achieved nine of them – the missing one was the nuking of the polar ice-caps by Stratt to purposefully trigger global warming. It is a shocking and thought-provoking moment in the book, stripped from the film due to the necessary time it would take to explore and depict such a drastic decision (though one can imagine an entire story based on just that one issue). The film also could have included some more details from the book of the political machinations on Earth, though there are already a lot of ideas to take in, especially for those viewers who have not read the book.

Building a common language

When it comes to depicting an alien, the filmmakers did a great job, not only of realizing Rocky on screen, but also showing the growing friendship between two creatures from distant worlds. Despite their many differences, both Grace and Rocky have been displaced from their homes and tasked with the burden of saving them. To do so, they must overcome their fear of the unknown, and find ways to converse and connect.

On Earth, we are able to communicate in a number of ways – even sometimes between species. In science fiction, science and maths often become a common language. Rocky’s language is decidedly otherworldly. The script, which includes not just the spoken lines but also the complex “musical” language of the Eridian, was developed with linguists and xenobiologists. Via Grace, the audience is able to experience the genuine difficulty of two distinct life-forms learning to communicate for the first time (see box “Words of great encouragement”).

Despite the challenges the pair face in dealing with a culture alien to their own, the two of them go from being fearful and intrigued to amused and friendly; eventually making great sacrifices to help one another.

“I’m going to have to science the **** out of this.”

Alongside the intriguing linguistics, a side-effect of the interwoven timelines is that viewers are confronted with the reality of scientific progress: it is often messy, desperate and driven by people who are deeply flawed. For the most part, the characters are shown as tenacious individuals, who refuse to give up in the face of a dying sun.

Grace is the embodiment of a reluctant hero. He is also painted as something of a lone voice in academia, having presented a paper at a conference about non-carbon-based life, and being ridiculed for the idea. He is then ostracized by the scientific community, and so turns to being a school-teacher instead, making him a rather unlikely candidate for a space mission.

Despite Grace’s reticence, it turns out he is perfect for the role of saviour of the planet, mainly thanks to his relentless resolve to find the answer, even when armed with minimal resources. Gosling’s face, initially confused, then increasingly determined, fills the screen as we see him try to come to terms with his mission.

It is, however, impossible to know for sure how a person in such total isolation may truly feel or react. This uncertainty is core to the script. The big questions of the film about the value of sacrifice and the necessity of co-operation are left for the audience to decide. The directors are not didactic storytellers, and Weir himself is adamant that his main aim is to entertain. It will be a great bonus if readers and viewers come away with a new understanding of science and the scientific process.

Indeed, this story features many physics concepts, from exoplanetary science to the special theory of relativity; as well as space travel, artificial gravity and a healthy dose of quantum and materials science. Weir contends that the science of Project Hail Mary is sound until you get deep into the quantum level. It is there where he used a literary plot device often referred to as a “MacGuffin” that enabled interstellar travel, using a biological organism.

Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford, recently joined the Physics World Stories podcast, and was delighted that Weir went to such lengths for the science in his narratives. “I think it really surprised me in terms of energy storage,” says Smethurst. “It’s mass-energy equivalence at the crux of the story, if the astrophage can take in the Sun’s energy and store it and then release it later. It’s just e = mc².”

She goes on to explain that this fundamental physics concept is what allowed for interstellar travel, by harnessing huge amounts of energy to accelerate the spacecraft up to nearly the speed of light. In reality, the issue lies in terms of what kind of single-cell can store that much energy and with that much energy efficiency, which she estimates to be “a billion times more efficient” than any we know on Earth.

But Smethurst goes on to highlight that this is what makes Weir a creative writer, especially when it came to developing the biological and physical mechanisms that allow astrophage to interact with neutrinos. “He invented this whole term in the book called ‘super cross-sectionality’,” she says, “which is fun because it’s sort of a borrowed word from particle physics, when you talk about cross sections of particles and whether they’re likely to intersect. So I like that the idea is obviously sci-fi, but the fact that it’s rooted in some elements of physics and he made that effort to do that, I think was incredible.”

At the heart

Project Hail Mary succeeds as an entertaining space adventure because it trusts its audience to be as smart as its protagonist. It treats astrophysics and molecular biology not as hurdles to the plot, but as the plot itself. Without giving it all away, the story does not end with a straightforward “victory” and much of the lessons learned come from the realization that science is a universal language. In 2026, where global challenges often feel intractable, the film offers a fundamentally sunny outlook. It suggests that when people – or even different species from distant planets – come together to overcome impossible odds, survival is possible.

Using the immense format of IMAX, Project Hail Mary leads us into a total immersion of Grace’s lonely, pressurized world; only to show us that we are never truly alone – as long as we have the tools of discovery, and the ability to overcome our fear of the unknown.

The post ‘Amaze, amaze, amaze’: in <em>Project Hail Mary</em>, science and friendship save the day appeared first on Physics World.

The Nobel-prize-winning Belgian theoretical physicist François Englert, whose work led to the discovery of the Higgs boson, died on 18 June at the age of 93.

Englert’s studies, which he carried out in the early 1960s with his colleague Robert Brout, demonstrated that fundamental particles can acquire mass by interacting with a field that permeates the universe. The work set in motion a decades-long hunt for the Higgs boson, which was finally discovered at the CERN particle-physics lab near Geneva in 2012.

For the work, Englert shared half of the 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics together with the British theoretical physicist Peter Higgs, who died in 2024.

Born in Brussels, Belgium, on 6 November 1932, Englert studied electrical engineering at the Free University of Brussels (ULB) before switching to physics and completing a PhD at the university in 1959.

For two years he then worked at Cornell University before returning to ULB in 1961, where he remained for the rest of his career.

New particle

“Spontaneous symmetry breaking” is a well-known concept in condensed-matter physics where it had been used to explain how, for example, unordered regions of a magnetic material could suddenly align themselves in a specific direction.

In the early 1960s, the Japanese–American particle physicist Yoichiro Nambu adapted the phenomenon into quantum field theory.

Working at the ULB, Englert and Brout took inspiration from Nambu’s work and in 1964 the pair proposed that the weak and electromagnetic interactions could be united by spontaneous symmetry breaking.

Higgs, who independently came to the same conclusion as Brout and Englert, showed that the particles that carried the weak force acquired their mass through interactions with an all-pervasive field, now known as the Higgs field with the interactions occurring via the Higgs boson.

In 2012 at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, physicists working on the LHC’s giant ATLAS and CMS detectors discovered the Higgs boson with a mass of about 125 GeV.

The following year, Englert shared half of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics with Higgs “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments”.

Brout died in 2011 so was not given the Nobel prize as it is not awarded posthumously.

As well as the Nobel prize, Englert won many other awards including the Francqui Prize, awarded by the Francqui Foundation in 1982, the Wolf Prize in Physics (2004) and the American Physical Society J J Sakurai Prize (2010). In 2013, he was ennobled a baron by King Albert II of Belgium.

Particle physicist John Ellis from King’s College London, who has spent most of his career at CERN, told Physics World that he will remember Englert for his “his modest and polite demeanour, despite his evident and justified pride in his ground-breaking work”.

“His memory lives on as one of the founders of the Standard Model and an originator of one of its greatest puzzles, the Brout-Englert-Higgs mechanism for breaking symmetries and generating particle masses,” adds Ellis. “How long will it be before we understand this remarkable, yet crucial, aspect of Nature?”

The post Belgian Nobel-prize-winning theoretical physicist François Englert dies aged 93 appeared first on Physics World.

A yearbook page from the 1970s rarely looks like a fashion statement at first glance, yet look closer and the hemlines tell their own story. Row after row of young women pose in skirts several inches above the knee, a length that had been considered scandalous barely a decade earlier. These photographs, tucked away in […]

Genetic prediction models are poised to revolutionize medicine. But because they have been trained on European DNA, they threaten to widen health care disparities.

Psychologist Candice Odgers has studied adolescent mental health for 25 years. She fears the current debate around smartphones obscures some of the biggest issues facing teenagers – from the impact of Covid to the health of their adult caregivers

The quickest way to make being online safer for children and teens would be to kick all adult men off the internet, the Canadian psychologist Candice Odgers believes. Men are the biggest perpetrators of sextortion and most likely to spread misinformation, she says.

Odgers is not recommending this as a policy for governments to adopt: “That would be crazy, right? It would be unfair.” But she is on a drive to puncture the prevailing narrative that the best way to address online harms is a social media ban for teenagers.

Continue reading...

© Photograph: Jessica Pons/The Guardian

© Photograph: Jessica Pons/The Guardian

© Photograph: Jessica Pons/The Guardian