Autistic children showed earlier and less age-related refinement in the brain signals involved in processing faces. A child looks at a face, and within milliseconds the brain begins sorting its features, expression, and identity. Researchers have now traced that process across the entire scalp in one of the most comprehensive studies of face perception in [...]
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A native Australian millet may carry the genetic fingerprints of thousands of years of Aboriginal harvesting, storage, and plant management. Seen from the air, Channel Country resembles a vibrant and vast tapestry, with a network of waterways crisscrossing the land. Spread across more than 280,000 square kilometers in outback Australia, it is one of the [...]
For years, ruthenium dioxide (RuO₂) has kept physicists confused. Depending on which experiment they looked at, the metallic oxide either appeared magnetic or not magnetic at all.
This uncertainty has made it difficult to determine whether RuO₂ belongs to an unusual new class of materials known as altermagnets, which could one day power faster and more energy-efficient electronics.
Now, in a new study, researchers have shown that the missing piece may not be the material itself—but how tightly it is stretched. By growing an ultrathin RuO₂ film just two nanometers thick and keeping its crystal lattice under strain, they detected clear signs of magnetic order that had remained hidden in thicker, relaxed samples.
The findings suggest that magnetism in RuO₂ is not a fixed property but something scientists may be able to switch on simply by engineering the material’s atomic structure. “RuO2 has attracted renewed interest due to expectations of prominent altermagnetic spin splitting,” the researchers said.
RuO₂ is already widely used as an industrial catalyst and is valued for its excellent electrical conductivity.
However, over the past few years, it has become the focus of an intense debate because some experiments suggested it might be an altermagnet—a recently proposed type of magnetic material that combines features of conventional magnets and nonmagnetic materials.
Unlike an ordinary bar magnet, an altermagnet has almost no overall magnetization even though its electrons remain magnetically ordered. Previous studies, however, produced conflicting results.
Some reported magnetic order, unusual Hall effects, and efficient spin-charge conversion, while others found no evidence of magnetism in bulk crystals or relaxed thin films. A recent study even concluded that RuO₂ showed no altermagnetic behavior down to films 5 nanometers thick.
However, no one had directly examined fully strained films thinner than about four nanometers using techniques capable of measuring both the motion and spin of electrons at the same time.
“The spin structure of RuO2 remains largely unexplored in the ultrathin limit,” the study authors note.
To explore that missing regime, the researchers grew atomically smooth RuO₂ films only two nanometers thick on titanium dioxide-based substrates. Since the substrate’s atomic spacing differs slightly from that of RuO₂, the ultrathin film is forced to stretch to match it—a condition known as epitaxial strain.
You can think of it like laying a small wire mesh over a frame with slightly different spacing. The mesh has to stretch to fit, subtly changing the positions of every junction. In a crystal, those tiny shifts alter how electrons move and interact.
The team then used spin-resolved angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (spin-ARPES), which shines light on the material to eject electrons. By measuring each electron’s energy, momentum, and spin, scientists can map the material’s electronic structure in remarkable detail.
To ensure the results were genuine, they repeated the measurements in two different experimental geometries to separate real magnetic signals from possible measurement artifacts. Additional X-ray and optical experiments confirmed that the films remained fully strained and revealed their crystal symmetry.
The measurements uncovered an unusual momentum-dependent spin texture, meaning the direction of an electron’s spin changed systematically depending on how it moved through the crystal.
After performing a detailed symmetry analysis, the researchers ruled out nonmagnetic explanations, including effects caused by the crystal’s polar structure or by the measurement process itself.
As the study authors note, “A comprehensive symmetry analysis rules out nonmagnetic origins of this spin texture. These findings suggest an emergent nonrelativistic spin structure enabled by epitaxial strain in the ultrathin limit, marking a distinct departure from the behavior of relaxed or bulk RuO₂.”
The observed behavior was consistent with either weak ferromagnetism or altermagnetism, indicating that strain fundamentally changes the electronic ground state of RuO₂.
The findings suggest that strain could become a practical way to switch magnetic properties on in materials that normally do not display them, opening new possibilities for low-power spintronic devices based on electron spin instead of electric charge.
However, the experiments were carried out at around 15 kelvin (about −258°C), so it is still unknown whether the same behavior persists at room temperature.
Future studies will need to determine exactly which magnetic state emerges and whether it can be reliably controlled in real-world devices.
The study is published in the journal Science Advances.
A 1.4-million-year-old trail of footprints reveals that a powerful human relative grew nearly as large as us and may have traveled in all-male groups. Eight individuals walked across the wet ground beside an ancient Kenyan lake. Within a short time, sediment buried their footprints and preserved a scene that would remain hidden for roughly 1.4 [...]
From perfumes and synthetic flavorings to plastics and resins, acetaldehyde is a chemical used to make countless everyday products.
However, producing it efficiently has remained a challenge because the catalysts that convert ethanol into acetaldehyde gradually lose activity, generate unwanted byproducts, or break down over time.
Now, researchers have developed a three-metal catalyst that tackles those long-standing problems in an unusual way. By pairing platinum and chromium atoms inside a silver matrix, they created tiny dumbbell structures known as heterometallic pair sites.
These atomic pairs selectively remove only the hydrogen atoms needed to convert ethanol into acetaldehyde while suppressing the deactivation pathways seen in comparable platinum-silver and chromium-silver catalysts.
“Our catalyst solves an important problem in chemistry because it completes a selective dehydrogenation: Instead of stripping away all of the hydrogen atoms, it removes just the ones necessary,” Anatoly Frenkel, one of the study authors and a chemist at Stony Brook University, said.
Moreover, since the process starts with ethanol that can be produced from biomass such as crop residues, forestry waste, and food waste, it could also provide a more sustainable alternative to conventional petrochemical production.
Catalysts speed up chemical reactions without being consumed, but making one that is both fast and selective is difficult. In ethanol dehydrogenation, conventional catalysts often keep reacting after removing the required hydrogen atoms, triggering unwanted reactions.
Over time, they can also become coated with carbon deposits, known as coking, or undergo structural changes that reduce their performance.
To overcome these problems, the researchers turned to quantum mechanical calculations, which predicted that platinum and chromium atoms would naturally pair up when dispersed inside silver.
“Prior quantum chemical calculations and surface science experiments by our collaborators showed that platinum-chromium pairs form preferentially in silver and exhibit electronic structures distinct from isolated platinum and chromium sites, enabling unique surface chemistry,” Jason Weaver, one of the study authors and a chemist at the University of Florida, said.
The team then fabricated thin films of the alloys to test whether these predicted atomic pairs actually formed.
The researchers combined several advanced techniques to examine the catalyst from the inside out. At Brookhaven National Laboratory’s National Synchrotron Light Source II, X-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) measurements confirmed that platinum and chromium atoms had indeed paired together throughout the silver host.
The catalyst’s surface was then analyzed at Sweden’s MAX IV synchrotron using surface-sensitive XAFS and ambient-pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (AP-XPS), which allowed scientists to observe the catalyst while it was actively converting ethanol.
These measurements showed that only catalysts containing platinum-chromium pairs efficiently produced acetaldehyde.
Additional scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) mapped the distribution of platinum and chromium atoms inside the silver matrix, providing further evidence that the unusual atomic arrangement was responsible for the catalyst’s behavior.
“Combining this with the local bonding information from surface-sensitive XAFS gives a really complete picture of the state of the catalyst and how this affects its performance,” Lindsay Merte, one of the study authors and an associate professor of physics at Malmö University, said.
Catalytic tests showed that the trimetallic platinum-chromium-silver catalyst became active at around 200°C and steadily increased its activity up to 350°C, where it selectively converted ethanol into acetaldehyde and hydrogen, with mass spectrometry identifying these as the dominant gaseous products.
In contrast, platinum-silver catalysts accumulated carbon deposits that blocked active sites, while chromium-silver catalysts became less effective because of oxidation.
The platinum-chromium pairs greatly suppressed both of these deactivation pathways, allowing the catalyst to remain active for longer.
The researchers also found that these heterometallic pair sites stayed stable even at relatively high active-metal loadings, addressing a common limitation of many atomically dispersed catalysts.
Previous studies had suggested that carefully designed pairs of different metals could outperform isolated single atoms, but this work provides experimental evidence that such heterometallic pair sites can operate under realistic reaction conditions.
The study offers a new blueprint for catalyst design. Instead of searching for entirely new materials, scientists may be able to create longer-lasting, more selective catalysts simply by arranging familiar metals in new atomic partnerships—a strategy that could benefit not only ethanol dehydrogenation but many other industrial chemical reactions as well.
However, the catalyst has so far been demonstrated only as a model thin-film system, so additional work will be needed before it can be adapted for industrial reactors.
The researchers’ next goal is to translate the same atomic design into high-surface-area nanoparticles, which are better suited for large-scale chemical manufacturing.
The study is published in the journal Angewandte Chemie.
Growing populations and expanding industries are intensifying freshwater shortages across parts of Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia, increasing the need for sustainable water supplies. Solar desalination has emerged as a promising solution, using sunlight to convert seawater into freshwater with relatively low energy requirements.
But real-world conditions pose a challenge. Seawater near ports, shipping routes, and industrial areas is often contaminated with oil, which can clog desalination membranes and reduce their performance.
Although many experimental solar desalination systems have shown strong results in laboratory tests using clean saltwater, it remains uncertain how effectively they would operate in polluted seawater.
In an effort to overcome this limitation, researchers at Pusan National University developed a multifunctional hydrogel membrane that combines oil separation and solar-driven desalination in a single system.
Led by Professor Sanghyun Jeong from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the team designed a membrane architecture that simultaneously removes oil contaminants while producing freshwater, eliminating the need for separate treatment stages. The study was published online on June 1, 2026, and will appear in the October 15, 2026, issue of Desalination.
Inspired by the need for selective water treatment, the researchers developed a membrane with a “Janus” architecture, giving each side a distinct function. One surface is hydrophilic, made from a chitosan and polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel, allowing water to pass through while blocking oil droplets.
The opposite surface is hydrophobic and incorporates copper oxide nanoparticles coated with a carbon shell, which are embedded within a nanofiber layer. This dual-sided design enables the membrane to handle different contaminants while supporting more efficient desalination and oil separation.
By separating the membrane’s functions across different layers, the researchers prevented oil separation and solar heat generation from interfering with each other, a common challenge in single-layer designs. The hydrophobic side absorbs sunlight, converts it into heat, and drives water evaporation at the membrane surface.
Testing showed that the membrane removed more than 99.99% of oil from contaminated seawater while maintaining stable performance across different oil droplet sizes and repeated cycles. During solar desalination experiments, it achieved a water evaporation rate of about 0.05 gallons per square foot per hour, nearly three times higher than conventional single-layer membranes.
According to Prof. Jeong, the new membrane technology could support more sustainable water treatment by harnessing renewable solar energy while combining contaminant removal and freshwater production in a single platform. The integrated approach has the potential to reduce energy consumption, simplify operations, and minimize secondary waste generation compared with conventional desalination methods.
The researchers suggest that the membrane developed in this study represents a broader strategy for designing next-generation water treatment technologies. By integrating multiple treatment functions into a single membrane architecture, the approach could provide a framework for creating more efficient and adaptable systems beyond desalination applications.
Coal has long been associated with electricity generation, steelmaking, and carbon emissions. But a new technology unveiled in China aims to give the fossil fuel a very different role. Transforming it into high-value carbon materials used in industries ranging from energy storage to aerospace.
The technology, presented at an industry conference in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, converts ordinary coal into premium carbon materials through a specialized coal liquefaction process. Developers say the approach could significantly increase the economic value of coal while reducing emissions associated with conventional coal utilization.
According to the company, the technology was jointly developed by Zhaoqing Shunxin Coal Chemical Industry Technology Co., Ltd. and Guangdong Coal-based Carbon Materials Research Co., Ltd. It was reviewed by an expert panel organized by the China International Association for the Promotion of Science and Technology in October 2025, which assessed the process as having reached an internationally leading level and recommended accelerating its commercialization.
Rather than burning coal for energy or converting it into fuels, the process focuses on extracting carbon-rich molecular structures that can serve as feedstock for advanced engineering materials.
The developers say the technology is based on quantum chemistry, separating coal molecules according to their chemical structure and bond strength. Molecules with lower bond energies are converted into oil and gas, while highly stable aromatic structures are transformed into condensed-ring pitch. A carbon-rich precursor used to manufacture advanced carbon materials.
One of the most notable aspects of the technology is the range of materials it claims can be produced. According to the developers, the condensed-ring pitch can be used to manufacture carbon foam, carbon fibers, 3D graphene, super-activated carbon, and supercapacitor-grade activated carbon. These materials are widely used across sectors including aerospace, energy storage, electronics, and advanced manufacturing.
The company also claims its carbon foam exceeds China’s Class A flame-retardancy standard and is suitable for military and aerospace applications. If these performance claims are validated at commercial scale, the technology would shift coal from being primarily an energy resource to serving as a raw material for high-performance engineered products.
The developers also highlight environmental benefits. According to the company, approximately 60% of the carbon contained in coal can be converted directly into carbon materials rather than being released through combustion. The process is also claimed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by around two tonnes per tonne of coal processed, while generating virtually no waste gas, wastewater, or solid waste.
Economically, the approach aims to move coal further up the value chain. Instead of producing a commodity worth hundreds or thousands of yuan per tonne, the process is designed to generate advanced carbon materials that can command values ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of yuan per tonne, depending on the final product. These figures were provided by the technology’s developers and have not been independently verified.
The technology has already taken its first step toward industrial deployment. The developers announced a cooperation agreement with the state-owned China Pingmei Shenma Group to construct a 6,000-tonne-per-year coal-based carbon materials project in Henan Province. They also said several carbon products produced using the process have completed user testing with downstream manufacturers and are now ready for commercial-scale deployment.
Although the technology still faces the challenge of proving its performance at industrial scale, it reflects a broader shift in how coal is being viewed. Rather than serving solely as a fuel, researchers are increasingly exploring its potential as a source of advanced materials, potentially opening new applications for one of the world’s most abundant carbon resources.
The Moon’s far side is overturning a long-held theory, revealing that the early Solar System’s asteroid assault may have faded slowly instead of exploding in one catastrophic burst. For decades, scientists have debated whether the early Solar System endured one sudden, catastrophic wave of asteroid strikes or a much longer period of gradually fading violence. [...]
Every space story worth its salt eventually reaches for lightspeed, the moment the engines catch and the stars streak. It is one of the oldest dreams in science fiction, so it is worth saying plainly what the physics actually allows, and what it flatly does not.
The blunt answer is that travelling at the speed of light is not merely difficult for anything with mass. It is impossible, and not in a way that a better engine will one day fix.
I am a writer with a long interest in this material, not a physicist, so treat this as a careful reading of settled science and clearly labelled speculation, kept apart.
The problem is built into relativity. The faster you push an object, the more energy each additional increment of speed demands, and the returns shrink as you approach the speed of light. To actually reach it, the energy required rises without limit. You would need an infinite amount, which is another way of saying it cannot be done.
Light itself gets to travel at light speed for one reason: photons have no mass. Massless things must move at that speed, and things with mass never can. The speed of light is not a speed limit that a clever enough spacecraft might one day break. It is closer to a feature of the shape of spacetime, the same for everyone, everywhere.
So the honest reply to “will we ever travel at the speed of light” is no, not us and not our machines, because we are made of mass.
The more interesting question is how near that wall you can press, and here the news is better, at least in principle.
There is no limit stopping you from approaching light speed, only from reaching it, and relativity throws in a strange gift on the way. As you travel faster, your own clock runs slow relative to the people you left behind. A crew moving close to light speed could in theory cross many light-years while ageing only a little, even as decades or centuries passed back on Earth. The distance does not shrink, but the time you personally spend crossing it can.
The gap between that principle and anything we can build is enormous. The fastest object we have ever launched, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe, travels at less than a tenth of one per cent of light speed. Even nature rarely gets close: a star whipped around the black hole at our galaxy’s centre reaches only about 3 per cent of light speed at its fastest, and that is one of the quickest large objects we know of.
One concept comes nearer than the rest. Breakthrough Starshot, an initiative announced in 2016, proposes to skip heavy engines entirely and instead push a fleet of gram-scale probes with a ground-based laser, accelerating tiny light sails to around 20 per cent of the speed of light. At that pace a probe could reach the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, in roughly twenty years rather than tens of thousands.
It is important to be clear about its status. This is a design and a research programme, not a spacecraft. The engineering problems, from a laser array of unprecedented power to a sail that will not vaporise, are unsolved. But it is the nearest thing to genuine near-light-speed travel that anyone has seriously put on paper.
If you cannot go faster than light through space, general relativity leaves a stranger door ajar: rearranging space itself.
In 1994 the physicist Miguel Alcubierre found a solution to Einstein’s equations describing a warp drive, a bubble that contracts spacetime in front of a ship and expands it behind, so the ship sits still while space does the moving. Wormholes, tunnels between distant points, are also valid solutions on paper. Neither would break the local speed limit, which is what makes them so tempting.
The catch is the same for both, and it is severe. They require what physicists call exotic matter, a form of negative energy that we have never observed and do not know how to make. Early estimates for a warp bubble needed more negative energy than the mass-energy of the entire observable universe. Later work trimmed that figure dramatically, but it remains vast, and the fundamental obstacle stands.
Recent designs have taken the opposite tack, dropping the exotic matter to stay within known physics, but the versions that need no negative energy are subluminal. They stay below light speed. As things stand, the maths permits shortcuts that the physics of building them cannot yet reach.
Put together, the picture is honest rather than romantic. At the speed of light, no, not for anything with mass. Close to it, physics allows what our engineering cannot presently manage, though concepts like Starshot show what trying would look like. Faster than it, only inside equations that call for a substance nobody has ever found.
None of this is likely to change at the level of the physics. What is worth watching is the near-lightspeed end, where a laser-driven sail or some successor might one day turn a fraction of the speed of light from a diagram into a departure.
The post Travelling at the speed of light is not just hard but impossible for anything that has mass, since it would take infinite energy, so the real question is how close we could get and whether the loopholes physicists talk about are more than mathematics appeared first on Space Daily.
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