Ruthenium dioxide (RuO2) is a metal oxide that commonly serves as an important metallic conductor, quantum material and industrial electrocatalyst. While there have been debates surrounding the magnetic properties of RuO2, it is generally thought to be nonmagnetic in its bulk form. But now, a new study, published in Science Advances, has found that very thin layers of RuO2 can become magnetic when its lattice is placed under strain.
A dupla abordou ainda seu método de direção, destacando que incentivaram os atores a atuarem como se o título se tratasse de um drama, mesmo sendo uma comédia.
Na sequência, um clipe exclusivo foi exibido para a plateia (e a plataforma brinca com a impossibilidade de exibir o trecho na íntegra, mostrando apenas um retrato da dupla), com Daley e Goldstein comentando o uso de efeitos práticos para as cenas do longa-metragem.
“Mayday” retrata uma dupla composta de um piloto da Marinha dos Estados Unidos e um ex-agente da KGB, que embarcam em uma improvável jornada de fuga que mistura ação, espionagem e humor. O filme chegará no dia 4 de setembro ao Apple TV.
Os realizadores comentaram a história da nova temporada, incluindo o seu tema central (a manipulação e o controle de memórias como ferramenta de sobrevivência e poder), além da dinâmica dos personagens.
O elenco discutiu sua experiência no set ao dirigir veículos esportivos reais para gravações de cenas de ação, destacando ainda a dinâmica de amizade dos personagens e as locações ao redor do mundo, que incluíram países como Budapeste, Marrocos e Eslováquia.
A narrativa se centra em um grupo de amigos de infância que têm suas vidas viradas ao avesso quando um agente secreto da CIA, Sean (interpretado por Cena), volta à sua cidade natal e envolve os companheiros em uma aventura mirabolante para salvar o mundo.
O elenco discutiu os desafios de interpretar várias versões dos seus personagens, e Crouch mencionou aquilo que os fãs podem esperar da nova temporada.
Embora uma terceira temporada ainda não tenha sido confirmada, Braga brincou com a possibilidade de futuros episódios se passarem no Brasil.
Os realizadores discutiram a evolução da produção, a aclamação dela junto à crítica especializada e os desafios relativos à complexidade da narrativa e da mistura dos gêneros de comédia e horror.
O Apple TV está disponível no aplicativo Apple TV em mais de 100 países e regiões, seja em iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, Macs, dispositivos Android, smart TVs ou online — além de também estar em aparelhos como Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Chromecast com Google TV, consoles PlayStation e Xbox. O serviço custa R$29,90 por mês, com um período de teste gratuito de 7 dias. Por tempo limitado, quem comprar e ativar um novo iPhone, iPad, Apple TV ou Mac ganha 3 meses do Apple TV. Ele também faz parte do pacote de assinaturas da empresa, o Apple One.
NOTA DE TRANSPARÊNCIA: O MacMagazine recebe uma pequena comissão sobre vendas concluídas por meio de links deste post, mas você, como consumidor, não paga nada mais pelos produtos/serviços usando os nossos links de afiliado.
If you’ve ever kept a drink cool on a hot summer day by placing it inside a frozen, gel-filled sleeve, you’ll understand the appeal of phase change materials (PCMs). The reason these sleeves work so well (and so much better than simply putting your drink in a cold bath or cool room) is that the solid inside them has a high latent heat, meaning it can absorb relatively large quantities of energy before melting and beginning to warm up.
But what if surrounding your drink with a frozen PCM isn’t enough? What if you want to cool your drink more quickly and evenly? One option would be to create a PCM sleeve with fin-shaped extensions that protrude into your drinking vessel. These fins would cool your drink – or, equivalently, allow your drink to melt the PCM – much more efficiently than a simple sleeve. But what should the fins look like? How far apart should they be? And how many of them do you need?
These are the questions that Paolo Proia, Mauro Sbragaglia and Giacomo Falcucci considered in a study published in EPL– though not with the aim of keeping their drinks cold. As researchers at the University Tor Vergata of Rome, Italy, Proia, Sbragaglia and Falcucci are interested in PCMs that store and release heat like a battery. Such materials are useful in fields such as electronics and refrigeration where heat is a common byproduct. Other applications include maintaining the efficiency of solar panels by preventing them from getting too hot and keeping buildings cool in the daytime via insulation.
Physics World spoke with them about their work.
What was your motivation for doing this research?
Our interest in PCMs stems, in part, from our interest in their many applications, especially in the ecological transition to less carbon-intensive fuels. PCMs are particularly good at managing heat in hydrogen storage with metal hydrides, for example, because storing hydrogen in these materials produces heat, while releasing the hydrogen requires it. Using a PCM to store the heat of the adsorption process and give it back during the release means that the produced heat doesn’t go to waste. Instead, it improves the efficiency of the process.
We’re also fascinated by the complexity of the equations involved. The coupling of fluid and temperature dynamics already causes interesting phenomena such as convection. By adding a phase transition to the mix, you introduce a moving boundary that complicates the system even more, both phenomenologically and analytically, since the describing equations must account for it.
We started this paper as a way of extending our previous work on the insertion of fins inside a PCM to three dimensions. PCMs are exceptionally good in latent heat but severely lacking in sensible heat; in other words, they store heat well, but they absorb and release it poorly. Fins are useful in relieving this flaw since they enhance the heat transfer surface and provide a horizontal heat source, which is instrumental for the development of convection, the main driver of heat transfer in this kind of system. By switching to a 3D system, we had more freedom to explore complex layouts of multiple fins and the importance of their relative position.
Phase change modellers: (left-right) Paolo Proia, Mauro Sbragaglia and Giacomo Falcucci. (Courtesy: Paolo Proia)
What is the most important advance in the paper?
The most important result is that naively inserting fins too close to each other can cause interference. If there are overlaps in the fins’ “influence zone”, the system will waste energy by, in effect, trying to melt something that was already molten from heating by a nearby fin. Moreover, by comparing a single fin and multiple fins with the same total surface, we found that the latter configuration benefits from the gaps between the fins. This is because the substance in these gaps melts early and starts acting as an extra heating surface, contributing to the development of bigger convective structures.
Why is it so challenging to model melting in phase change materials in 3D?
Beyond the analytical requirements we already mentioned, the success of this type of modelling depends on having a resolution that is high enough to capture correctly all the phenomena in the system. This means the number of computational sites N must be sufficiently large. In 2D, we “only” have N2 sites to model, but in 3D, this scales to N3. That creates a challenge because making N too large would severely slow down the simulation. Moreover, we must be sure to respect the restraints on the physical parameters for which the lattice Boltzmann method is a correct approximation of the equations involved. So, we underwent a thorough validation process to pinpoint the best parameters for the algorithm.
What do you plan to do next?
First, we’d like to further optimize the code. The main bottleneck is the speed of a single iteration. Ideally, we’d like to study a wider range of layouts and physical conditions, but with the code we have now, that would impact heavily on performance. For example, a slower-melting substance requires more iterations to completely melt, which translates into more real-life time to model, sometimes outside the limits of feasibility. This problem would obviously be solved if we can make a single iteration faster.
Another issue we have is that some ranges of physical parameters can make the simulation unstable. Fortunately, there exist some remedies to this, and we plan to eventually adopt them.
Finally, we would be happy to see other researchers use these findings in their own optimization studies on fin shapes and spatial layouts. It would also be very interesting to see someone study this problem from an analytical angle or to see some experimental validation. In the medium term, we are planning to conduct our own experiments to use as a benchmark for our computational results.
One of the most striking discoveries in condensed matter physics over the past few years is that simply rotating one atomically thin crystal on top of an identical layer can create entirely new electronic behavior. This idea became famous in 2018, when physicists found that graphene sheets stacked at a very particular “magic angle” could turn into a superconductor, even though a single sheet of graphene is not. That discovery launched an entire field, sometimes called twistronics, built around moiré patterns: the large-scale interference patterns that appear when two crystal lattices are laid on top of each other with a slight mismatch in angle or spacing. In many materials, these patterns reshape how electrons move, sometimes producing superconductivity or other exotic collective states.
Moiré collapse
Most of this research has focused on materials whose crystal structure looks roughly the same in every direction, such as graphene, where the interesting physics shows up only at very small twist angles, close to perfect alignment. Now, a team of researchers instead looks at a strongly directional material: bilayer black phosphorus, whose atomic structure behaves very differently along two perpendicular directions in the plane, somewhat like a fabric that stretches easily one way but not the other. That built-in directionality turns out to change the whole logic of moiré physics, producing an effect the authors call moiré collapse. 1
Moiré collapse in twisted anisotropic homobilayers. Source: D. J. P. de Sousa et al. (2026) Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2527371123 / fair use
In black phosphorus, the two layers start out rotated 90 degrees relative to each other. As that angle is dialed away from 90 degrees, the moiré pattern does something unusual. Rather than staying a two-dimensional pattern, like a slowly shifting checkerboard, it stretches more and more along one direction until, at a specific angle that depends only on the material’s own geometry, it effectively stops repeating in the other direction altogether. What remains behaves like a one-dimensional crystal, even though the material is still built from ordinary two-dimensional atomic sheets. For twisted bilayer black phosphorus, the calculations place this collapse at a twist of about 71.6 degrees, or equivalently about 18.4 degrees away from the initial 90-degree arrangement.
Pure geometry
This transformation has nothing to do with how electrons repel or attract each other; it is pure geometry. The mathematical description of the moiré pattern, expressed in terms of the directions in which its periodicity repeats, is squeezed from two independent directions down to one. In ordinary space, this means the pattern keeps a well-defined repeat distance along one axis while stretching out indefinitely along the other, with no repeating pattern left in that direction at all.
Such a dramatic structural change reshapes the electrons riding on top of it. At the untwisted 90-degree configuration, the anisotropy of one layer happens to cancel out the anisotropy of the other, so electrons move about equally well in every in-plane direction. As the twist angle approaches the collapse point, that cancellation breaks down. The electron energy bands become sharply directional, and electrons increasingly travel along one preferred line rather than spreading across the plane. Their energy spectrum starts to show the telltale fingerprints of one-dimensional systems, including sharp spikes in the density of available electron states known as one-dimensional van Hove singularities.
Luttinger liquid physics
One-dimensional conductors behave very differently from ordinary metals. In a three-dimensional metal, electrons can mostly be treated as independent particles that only weakly notice one another. Confine them to a single dimension, however, and that picture stops working: electrons cannot slip past each other, so they are forced to move collectively, in a coordinated wave-like fashion. The framework that describes this collective behavior, called Luttinger liquid theory, traces back to work by Sin-Itiro Tomonaga in 1950 and Joaquin Luttinger in 1963, and it has since been confirmed experimentally in systems such as carbon nanotubes. In a Luttinger liquid, the basic excitations are not single electrons at all, but collective ripples of charge and spin, and this leads to electrical transport properties that look qualitatively different from those of a normal metal.
The calculations in this study show that moiré collapse naturally sets up the conditions Luttinger liquid physics requires. As the collapse angle is approached, the one-dimensional electronic channels that form become progressively less coupled to their neighbors, making the correlated, wave-like behavior increasingly favorable. The analysis estimates a Luttinger parameter of about 0.3 for the collapsed black phosphorus system, a value indicating strong electron-electron interactions, and it predicts distinctive collective charge oscillations and unusual, non-metallic patterns in electrical conduction that could, in principle, be measured in the laboratory.
A notable feature of this mechanism is that the electron bands stay quite dispersive even at collapse, with electron speeds exceeding 100 kilometers per second. This sets it apart from most previously studied moiré systems, including twisted graphene, where strong correlations usually arise because the electronic bands become extremely flat and electrons effectively slow to a crawl. Here, the correlated behavior instead comes from the geometric collapse of the moiré lattice itself, with fast-moving electrons confined to one dimension rather than slow ones spread over two.
Moiré collapse is not a peculiarity of one material
To test these ideas, the researchers combined simplified mathematical models with detailed first-principles calculations of the atomic and electronic structure. Beyond black phosphorus, they found the same collapse in twisted bilayer tin selenide, another layered material with strongly directional bonding. The details of the electronic structure differ somewhat because of the specific atomic orbitals involved, but the same geometric collapse into quasi-one-dimensional channels appears, suggesting the phenomenon is not a peculiarity of one material but a general consequence of twisting any sufficiently anisotropic crystal.
Taken together, the findings outline a different strategy for engineering exotic quantum matter. Instead of hunting for a special magic angle that flattens electronic bands, as in twisted graphene, this approach relies on a purely geometric collapse angle at which a two-dimensional moiré material naturally turns one-dimensional. If confirmed in experiments, it would offer a new and versatile platform for studying Luttinger liquids and other correlated electronic phases that only emerge when electrons are squeezed into moving along a single line.
Author: César Tomé López is a science writer and the editor of Mapping Ignorance
Disclaimer: Parts of this article may have been copied verbatim or almost verbatim from the referenced research paper/s.
References
D. J. P. de Sousa, S. Lee, F. Guinea, and T. Low (2026) Moiré collapse and Luttinger liquids in twisted anisotropic homobilayers Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2527371123↩
Many of today’s electronic devices — from the semiconductors in your cell phone to the photovoltaic cells in your solar panels — are built on thin-film substrates. The thin film is an electronically conductive material while the substrate is an inert material. Or is it?
Physicists and materials scientists have long assumed substrates do not react to electrical stimulus, but new research from the University of California San Diego Alex Frañó’s lab and a team of collaborators has shown that substrates are not inert after all. The discovery 1 has the potential to help engineers build the dense, three-dimensional, brain-inspired computer chips needed for more energy-efficient computing.
Source: Unsplash
In a human brain, a vast network of neurons works across different regions, enabling every thought and action we take. Yet thoughts that are quick and simple for humans — recognizing faces, differentiating a cat from a dog or solving a captcha — can be devilishly hard and energy-intensive for computers. Quantum materials may provide a solution.
It was this quest to develop new materials that led Frañó’s lab to study vanadium dioxide thin-film devices. When a voltage is applied to the thin film, an electric filament forms — something similar happens when the Earth and atmosphere create a voltage strong enough to result in lightning. The filament in the thin film drives the device’s electrical spiking, much like the signals in our neurons.
This reaction has been studied countless times in labs around the world, but Frañó’s lab was implementing a new technique, developed by graduate student Elliot Kisiel, called dark-field X-ray microscopy. Kisiel, who spent most of his graduate studies at Argonne National Laboratory and is now a Mayer Postdoctoral Fellow there, developed the tool to combine the best of two worlds: electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction.
“Dark-field X-ray microscopy gives us the ability to look at an entire device in one image, which not only greatly improves how fast we can perform these measurements, but also allows us to study the areas surrounding the devices with high fidelity,” he stated.
A changing substrate
Since the lenses for X-rays are often thick and, therefore, absorb most of the X-rays that pass through them, the team needed to look at something that provided more signal, which is why they decided to look at the substrate during some of their preliminary testing with this new technique.
What they saw was completely unexpected: not only was there a change in the thin film, but there was also a change in the substrate, showing for the first time that the two parts were sharing energy or “coupled.” This discovery went against everything scientists had assumed about substrates for decades.
Materials for a new age of computing
Thin films are so called because they are vanishingly thin — around 100 nanometers — while the substrates they sit on can be 10,000 times thicker. Despite their lopsided sizes, in this experiment, the thin film was able to push and pull on the substrate. Frañó likened the discovery to a tree on a mountaintop being able to move the entire mountain. Furthermore, the substrate also acted on the thin film, each pushing and pulling on the other.
They spent the next four years making sure what they saw wasn’t a fluke. They not only reproduced the results doing the research exactly as they had done it the first time, but they also reproduced the results when they changed certain aspects of the sample, such as the thickness and material of the substrate. They also tested their results using different instrumentation. Much of that work was done at Argonne, which has a synchrotron facility that produces high brilliance X-rays, and at Brookhaven National Laboratory, home to the world’s only all-electric ultrafast electron microscope, which is able to capture exactly how a working device behaves under realistic operating conditions.
It wasn’t a fluke.
“The assumption that substrates are inert needs to be rethought,” Frañó stated. “Going forward, we have to assume that the substrate is undergoing changes when the film is. This is a transformational notion that counters decades of previous supposition.”
This paper is a companion to a paper that was published last year in ACS Nano2. In that paper, they used dark-field X-ray microscopy to study the thin film, while this paper focuses on the substrate. Together they illustrate how one research result leads to the next research inquiry.
In Frañó’s case, the question he now asks himself is, “What can we do with this new substrate discovery? If a tree is moving the whole mountain, let’s find a way to capitalize on that.”
One idea is that the substrate can act as a medium that can couple materials on either end of the substrate. Currently, thin film devices are connected two-dimensionally, but if researchers could build on both sides of a substrate, it would allow for three-dimensionality, opening up the possibility of denser, more interconnected computer chips, and bringing us one step closer to the next generation of computing.
References
Elliot Kisiel et al. (2026) Dynamic asymmetric strain imprinted into substrates by an oxide thin film doi:10.1126/science.adt9347↩
Elliot Kisiel et al. (2025) High-Resolution Full-Field Structural Microscopy of the Voltage-Induced Filament Formation in VO2-Based Neuromorphic Devices. ACS Nano doi: 10.1021/acsnano.4c14696↩
The second season of “Dark Matter” premieres Friday, August 28 on Apple TV.
On Saturday, in San Diego Comic-Con’s Hall H, the stars and creative team behind Apple TV’s critically acclaimed sci-fi thriller “Dark Matter” unveiled the trailer for the upcoming second season. Based on the blockbuster novel by bestselling author Blake Crouch — who also created the series and serves as showrunner — “Dark Matter” stars and is executive produced by Golden Globe nominee Joel Edgerton and Academy Award winner Jennifer Connelly. The 10-episode second season premieres globally on Friday, August 28, 2026 on Apple TV with the first episode, followed by one new episode every Friday through October 30, 2026.
Hailed as one of the best sci-fi novels and celebrating the 10th anniversary of its release this year, “Dark Matter” is a story about the road not taken. In season one, the series followed Jason Dessen (Edgerton), a physicist, professor and family man who — one night while walking home on the streets of Chicago — is abducted into an alternate version of his life. Wonder quickly turns to nightmare when he tries to return to his reality amid the mind-bending landscape of lives he could have lived. Season two picks up with the Dessens as they settle into a quiet life in a world that finally seems safe, until the unimaginable forces them to run once again. As Jason’s obsession with the Box deepens, Daniela’s (Connelly) growing paranoia pushes her to the brink, and their son Charlie (Oakes Fegley) starves for a sense of stability as their family is threatened. Elsewhere, Amanda (Alice Braga) and Ryan (Jimmi Simpson) join forces in a desperate attempt to find their way home. With Blair (Amanda Brugel) determined to stop him, Leighton (Dayo Okeniyi) relentlessly chases his grand vision of creating a perfect world.
In addition to Edgerton and Connelly, the ensemble cast returning for season two includes Braga, Simpson, Okeniyi, Fegley and Brugel.
Alongside the season two premiere, the “Dark Matter” universe expands with the launch of “Dark Matter: The Official Podcast.” Hosted by “Dark Matter” author and showrunner Crouch and executive producer Jacquelyn Ben-Zekry, the podcast takes listeners deeper into the series with a robust roster of cast members, key creatives and industry experts. Together, they explore the show’s biggest moments, the science behind the multiverse, the creative process and how the series expands beyond Crouch’s original novel.
New podcast episodes will be released alongside each episode throughout the season, beginning with a special catch-up episode ahead of the season two premiere that recaps the key moments from season one and invites fans back into the many worlds of “Dark Matter.” Each episode will feature an extensive lineup of cast and creative guests, including Edgerton, Connelly, Braga, Simpson, Brugel, Okeniyi, Margo Martindale, Fegley, Chris Diamantopoulos, Matt Tolmach and some surprise guests, including content creators and authors who are superfans of the show.
“Dark Matter” is produced for Apple TV by Sony Pictures Television. Crouch serves as creator, executive producer, showrunner and writer alongside executive producers Tolmach, Richard Lederer and Ben-Zekry, who co-wrote every episode of season two with Crouch. In addition to starring, Edgerton and Connelly also serve as executive producers.
“Dark Matter: The Official Podcast,” produced by Sony Pictures Television, will be available to watch and listen on Apple Podcasts, the Sony Pictures Television YouTube channel and the Apple TV YouTube channel.
Apple TV offers premium, compelling drama and comedy series, feature films, groundbreaking documentaries, and kids and family entertainment, and is available to watch across all of a user’s favorite screens. After its launch on November 1, 2019, Apple TV became the first all-original streaming service to launch around the world, and has premiered more original hits and received more award recognitions faster than any other streaming service in its debut. To date, Apple Original films, documentaries and series have been honored with 850 wins and 3,800 award nominations and counting including multi-Emmy Award-winning and history-making comedies “The Studio” and “Ted Lasso,” global cultural phenomenon “Severance,” Apple’s most-viewed drama “Pluribus,” Academy Award Best Picture winner “CODA” and Academy Award winner “F1,” the highest-grossing sports feature of all time.
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