Category: 7. Science

Deep in the cold, dark recesses of a lightyears-wide nebula known as the Taurus molecular cloud (TMC-1), astronomers have discovered cyanocoronene, the largest polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) ever detected in space.

PAHs have a bad reputation on Earth, as they arise from the incomplete combustion of organic matter, such as in tobacco smoke or exhaust fumes, with harmful implications to health.

In the broader Universe, however, they are thought to lock away carbon and play a key role in the chemistry that leads to the formation of stars and planets.

The study recreated cyanocoronene in the lab to determine its unique chemical signature.

With this in hand, scientists tracked observational data from TMC-1, finding clear signs of the large PAH.

Containing 24 carbon atoms, it is the largest individual PAH to have been detected in interstellar space.

Why it matters

The cyanocoronene was in similar amounts to smaller PAHs found before, hinting that such molecules may be more common in space than previously thought.

They could act as stable reservoirs of carbon, seeding new planetary systems with the ingredients for life.

Researchers now aim to find even larger PAHs and to understand how they survive the extremes of space.

“Each new detection brings us closer to understanding the origins of complex organic chemistry in the Universe – and perhaps, the origins of the building blocks of life themselves,” says lead researcher Gabi Wenzel.

Spaceflight has a broad impact on the way our body functions — and that includes our reproductive systems. Indeed, to get a better idea of how future pregnancies and new generations born to humans beyond Earth will be affected, scientists need to examine how well our reproductive germ cells and stem cells respond to potentially harmful factors, like radiation and microgravity.

Researchers from Kyoto University in Japan did just this: They froze the spermatogonial stem cells of mice through a process called cryopreservation, then kept them on the International Space Station (ISS) for six months. Once back on Earth, researchers injected the same spermatogonial stem cells — which are cells located in the testes that play a crucial role in sperm production — back into the testes of mice. After a few months, following natural mating patterns, healthy mice babies were born with relatively normal gene expression.

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Spaceflight has a broad impact on the way our body functions — and that includes our reproductive systems. Indeed, to get a better idea of how future pregnancies and new generations born to humans beyond Earth will be affected, scientists need to examine how well our reproductive germ cells and stem cells respond to potentially harmful factors, like radiation and microgravity.

Researchers from Kyoto University in Japan did just this: They froze the spermatogonial stem cells of mice through a process called cryopreservation, then kept them on the International Space Station (ISS) for six months. Once back on Earth, researchers injected the same spermatogonial stem cells — which are cells located in the testes that play a crucial role in sperm production — back into the testes of mice. After a few months, following natural mating patterns, healthy mice babies were born with relatively normal gene expression.

Researchers were pleasantly surprised to find that spaceflight did not affect how well the germ cells sustained themselves through cryopreservation, underlining an important option for future human use.

“It is important to examine how long we can store germ cells in the ISS to better understand the limits of storage for future human spaceflight,” the study’s first author Mito Kanatsu-Shinohara of Kyoto University said in a statement.

Human reproduction in space is uncharted waters, though as the Kyoto University researchers pointed out in their paper, successful Earth-centered reproductive technology such as embryo freezing may currently have “limited applications,” as other research has found that embryonic cells may be “particularly sensitive to spaceflight,” and have problems developing properly. (Embryos are the youngest form of human offspring, representing the earliest days and weeks of development after an egg is fertilized. For reproductive technology procedures including in-vitro fertilization, embryos are created in a lab and frozen at days-old ages.)

Scientists of the study also pointed out that arguably more simple procedures such as freeze-drying sperm itself (rather than the cells that assist in healthy sperm production), may carry health risks for future offspring, making more research into germ cell preservation techniques crucial for safe long-haul space exploration.

In terms of humans actually reproducing in space, however, scientists may just be scratching the surface as studies of pregnancy in space are limited to animals — and also potentially more limited to men, as fewer women have traveled to space.

While research has found that menstruation itself (the bleeding portion of the menstrual cycle) is largely unaffected by spaceflight, how microgravity and radiation affects follicular development (the phase of the menstrual cycle where an egg is matured and selected for ovulation) and ovulation (the release of an egg for potential pregnancy) in humans requires further research. As space gynecologist Dr. Varsha Jain pointed out in an article for BBC’s Science Focus, reproductive health research on Earth itself is often lacking — the idea of space conception and birth is even more theoretical than that.

The results of the study were published in August in the journal Stem Cell Reports.

All vertebrate species have a pelvis, but there is only one that uses it for upright, two-legged walking. The evolution of the human pelvis, and our two-legged gait, dates back 5 million years, but the precise evolutionary process that allowed this to happen has remained a mystery.

Now, researchers have mapped the key structural changes in the pelvis that enabled early humans to first walk on two legs and accommodate giving birth to a big-brained baby. The study, published in Nature on 27 August, compared the embryonic development of the pelvis between humans and other mammals. They found two key evolutionary steps during embryonic development — related to the growth of cartilage and bone in the pelvis — which put humans on a separate evolutionary path from other apes.

“Everything from the base of our skull to the tips of our toes has been changed in modern humans in order to facilitate bipedalism,” says Tracy Kivell, a palaeoanthropologist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.

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Kivell says the study offers a new understanding of how some of those changes came about, not just in living humans, but also in fossils from ancient hominins such as Denisovans. “I think it’s exciting in terms of moving forward this area of functional genomics,” she says.

Two small steps for evolution

As modern humans evolved, our pelvises developed the wide, bowl-like shape needed to allow upright, two-legged walking — but it is unclear exactly how that happened. “The human pelvis is dramatically different than what you see in chimpanzees and gorillas, so we wanted to set out to try and understand what’s happening there,” says study co-author Terence Capellini, a developmental geneticist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

To investigate, the researchers studied anatomical, histological and genomic changes in samples of human pelvis from different stages of development. They then compared human pelvic development with the process in mouse embryos and other primate species, including gibbons and chimpanzees.

The researchers focussed their analysis the formation of the ilium; one of the pelvic bones that supports internal organs and anchors the gluteal muscles to stabilise walking. The team collected samples of primate embryos from museums, where they had been preserved in some cases for hundreds of years. “These museum collections are exceptionally precious; they were collected in the last hundred to two hundred years,” says Capellini.

The analysis identified two key steps in the development of the human ilium which enabled its characteristic shape and therefore its ability to support bipedalism.

The first step occurs during early development of the ilium cartilage. Early bone development begins as a vertical rod of cartilage, 7 weeks after gestation. This process is similar in non-human primates. But what happens next sets the human pelvis apart from other primates — in humans, the ilium cartilage rotates 90 degrees shortly after its formation. This ultimately makes the pelvis short and broad.

The second step unique to humans occurs later in development, at 24 weeks after gestation, when the ilium cartilage ‘ossifies’ and is replaced by bone cells. In humans, some of these bone cells form much later than in other primates, which allows the cartilage cells to maintain the shape of the pelvis while it grows.

Together, these developmental quirks help to create a pelvis with the perfect shape for bipedalism.

Bipedalism genes?

As well as pinpointing differences between the formation of the pelvis in human and non-human embryos, the researchers identified a series of genetic factors that control how the pelvis develops. They found found five different genes that were involved in creating the molecular signals for cartilage growth and bone formation in the ilium.

“I was impressed with how much work it was, they really did some incredible things”, says Daniel Schmitt, a biological anthropologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. “It reveals mechanisms that allow changes in [bone] shape that we never knew anything about before, and we can now consider those mechanisms all throughout the body.”

Kivell says the study left her wondering whether DNA from fossilized hominins could help to explain how different genes impact how the human skeleton grows. “I’m curious when [other bone structures] evolved.”

This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on August, 27 2025.

Kagome metals, characterized by their two-dimensional lattices of corner-sharing triangles, have recently been predicted to host compact molecular orbitals, or standing-wave patterns of electrons that could potentially facilitate unconventional superconductivity and novel magnetic orders that can be made active by electron correlation effects. In most materials, these flat bands remain too far from active energy levels to have any significant impact; however, in CsCr₃Sb₅, they are actively involved and directly influence the material’s properties.

Pengcheng Dai, Ming Yi and Qimiao Si of Rice’s Department of Physics and Astronomy and Smalley-Curl Institute, along with Di-Jing Huang of Taiwan’s National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, led the study.

“Our results confirm a surprising theoretical prediction and establish a pathway for engineering exotic superconductivity through chemical and structural control,” said Dai, the Sam and Helen Worden Professor of Physics and Astronomy.

The finding provides experimental proof for ideas that had only existed in theoretical models. It also shows how the intricate geometry of kagome lattices can be used as a design tool for controlling the behavior of electrons in solids.

“By identifying active flat bands, we’ve demonstrated a direct connection between lattice geometry and emergent quantum states,” said Yi, an associate professor of physics and astronomy.

The research team employed two advanced synchrotron techniques alongside theoretical modeling to investigate the presence of active standing-wave electron modes. They used angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) to map electrons emitted under synchrotron light, revealing distinct signatures associated with compact molecular orbitals. Resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) measured magnetic excitations linked to these electronic modes.

“The ARPES and RIXS results of our collaborative team give a consistent picture that flat bands here are not passive spectators but active participants in shaping the magnetic and electronic landscape,” said Si, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy, “This is amazing to see given that, until now, we were only able to see such features in abstract theoretical models.”

Theoretical support was provided by analyzing the effect of strong correlations starting from a custom-built electronic lattice model, which replicated the observed features and guided the interpretation of results. Fang Xie, a Rice Academy Junior Fellow and co-first author, led that portion of the study.

Obtaining such precise data required unusually large and pure crystals of CsCr₃Sb₅, synthesized using a refined method that produced samples 100 times larger than previous efforts, said Zehao Wang, a Rice graduate student and co-first author.

The work underscores the potential of interdisciplinary research across fields of study, said Yucheng Guo, a Rice graduate student and co-first author who led the ARPES work.

“This work was possible due to the collaboration that consisted of materials design, synthesis, electron and magnetic spectroscopy characterization and theory,” Guo said.

Co-authors from Rice include Yuefei Huang, Bin Gao, Ji Seop Oh, Han Wu, Zheng Ren, Yuan Fang, Yiming Wang, Ananya Biswas, Yichen Zhang, Ziqin Yue, Boris Yakobson and Junichiro Kono.

Other contributors include Hsiao-Yu Huang, Jun Okamoto, Ganesha Channagowdra, Atsushi Fujimori and Chien-Te Chen of Taiwan’s National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center; Xingye Lu of Beijing Normal University; Zhaoyu Liu and Jiun-Haw Chu of the University of Washington; Cheng Hu, Chris Jozwiak, Aaron Bostwick and Eli Rotenberg of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Makoto Hashimoto and Donghui Lu of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Robert Birgeneau of the University of California, Berkeley; and Guang-Han Cao of Zhejiang University.

The U.S. Department of Energy, Robert A. Welch Foundation, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, National Science Foundation and Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship program supported this study.

In the deep, dark Pacific, hydrothermal vents spew boiling-hot water and poisonous substances into the ocean. Hardly anything can survive in such a harsh environment. Yet somehow, one animal thrives.

Recently, scientists plunged into the depths of the west Pacific to explore these hydrothermal vents. As they discuss in their new paper, published in the journal PLOS Biology, the vents release not only boiling water, but also levels of hydrogen sulphide (a toxic gas) and arsenic (a potent carcinogen) that would be deadly to most animals.

Amazingly, they found an animal happily living in the hottest parts of these vents. It was Paralvinella hessleri, a species of worm.

“This was my first deep-sea expedition, and I was stunned by what I saw on the ROV monitor,” says Dr Hao Wang, lead author of the study, “the bright yellow Paralvinella hessleri worms were unlike anything I had ever seen, standing out vividly against the white biofilm and dark hydrothermal vent landscape.

“I could hardly believe that any animal could survive in such a dangerous place – just centimetres away from scalding hydrothermal fluids, surrounded by toxic sulphide gas.”

So how do the worms survive?

Using a remote-controlled vehicle with robotic arms, the researchers collected a few of the worms in order to study how they deal with such high levels of arsenic and hydrogen sulphide. Given that the worms are sessile (do not move around), the researchers could easily scoop them up with the vehicle’s robotic arms.

Back in the lab, the researchers found that the worms had so much arsenic in their bodies that it accounted for about 1% of their body weight. By analysing the worms at the cellular level, the scientists found that they use a surprising method to neutralise this arsenic, and it involves putting two poisons head-to-head. 

As arsenic from the environment naturally accumulates in their skin cells, the worms absorb sulphide from the surrounding seawater. When sulphide meets arsenic, it forms a mineral called orpiment.

Orpiment is commonly found in volcanic areas. A dazzling yellow, it has been used by artists to create paint for millennia; there is even evidence that the ancient Egyptians used it in their artwork more than 5,000 years ago.

It is this vibrant mineral that makes the worms bright yellow.

While humans have developed a similar method to treat arsenic-contaminated water, we had no idea that animals might be using the same strategy. But how exactly the worms manage it at the molecular level is still unclear; more work needs to be done to understand the biological pathways involved in orpiment production.

“Understanding the underlying mechanisms could help us develop new approaches to dealing with environmental toxins,” Dr Wang says.

Top image: Paralvinella hessleri on hydrothermal vent. Credit: Wang H, et al., 2025, PLOS Biology, CC-BY 4.0

More amazing wildlife stories from around the world

Researchers have identified more than 1,000 potentially problematic open-access journals using an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that screened around 15,000 titles for signs of dubious publishing practices.

The approach, described in Science Advances on 27 August¹, could be used to help tackle the rise in what the study authors call “questionable open-access journals” — those that charge fees to publish papers without doing rigorous peer review or quality checks.

Predatory publishers’ latest scam: bootlegged and rebranded papers

None of the journals flagged by the tool has previously been on any kind of watchlist, and some titles are owned by large, reputable publishers. Together, the journals have published hundreds of thousands of research papers that have received millions of citations.

The study suggests that “there’s a whole group of problematic journals in plain sight that are functioning as supposedly respected journals that really don’t deserve that qualification”, says Jennifer Byrne, a research-integrity sleuth and cancer researcher at the University of Sydney, Australia.

The tool is available online in a closed beta version, and organizations that index journals, or publishers, can use it to review their portfolios, says study co-author Daniel Acuña, a computer scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder. But, he adds, the AI sometimes makes mistakes, and is not designed to replace detailed evaluations of journals and individual publications that might result in a title being removed from an index. “A human expert should be part of the vetting process” before any action is taken, he says.

Screening journals

The AI tool can analyse a vast amount of information from journals’ websites and the papers they publish, and search for red flags — such as short turnaround times for publishing articles and high rates of self-citation. It also assesses whether members of a journal’s editorial board are affiliated with well known, reputable research institutions, and checks how transparent publications are about licensing and fees. Several of the criteria used to train the tool come from best-practice guidance developed by the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ), an index of open-access journals run by the non-profit DOAJ Foundation in Roskilde, Denmark.

Cenyu Shen, the DOAJ’s deputy head of editorial quality, who is based in Helsinki, says that the number of problematic journals is rising, and that their “tactics are becoming more sophisticated”. “We are observing more instances where questionable publishers acquire legitimate journals, or where paper mills purchase journals to publish low-quality work,” she adds. (Paper mills are businesses that sell fake papers and authorships.)

I’m worried I’ve been contacted by a predatory publisher — how do I find out?

The DOAJ’s own quality checks on journals are done mostly manually and are initiated only after receiving complaints. In 2024, the directory investigated 473 journals, a rise of 40% compared with 2021. “The time our team spent on these investigations also grew significantly by nearly 30%, to 837 hours,” says Shen.

AI tools could help to speed up some of these assessments, Acuña says. He and his colleagues trained their model on 12,869 journals that are currently indexed in the DOAJ as legitimate, as well as 2,536 that the directory had flagged as violating its quality standards.

When the researchers asked the AI to evaluate 15,191 open-access journals listed in the public database Unpaywall, it identified 1,437 journals as questionable. The team estimated that some 345 of these were mistakenly flagged: they included discontinued titles, book series and journals from small, learned-society publishers. The researchers also found that the tool had failed to flag a further 1,782 questionable journals, based on estimates of error rates.

September offers longer nights in the northern hemisphere that tend to be less hazy than those experienced in mid-summer. In the sky, no major showers are visible from either hemisphere, but the northern hemisphere enjoys the advantage of higher sporadic rates. Most of the shower activity this month is produced from the Perseus-Aurigid complex active this time of year. These showers rarely produce more than 5 meteors per hour but still manage to produce most of the shower activity seen this month. Unfortunately, the Perseus-Aurigid complex lies too low in the northern sky for southern hemisphere observers to view very well. Video studies have shown that the Taurids are visible as early as September 28th, therefore after this date the Anthelion radiant will no longer be listed until the Taurid showers end in December. The Anthelion meteors are still active but their radiant is superimposed upon that of the more numerous Taurids, therefore it is impossible to properly separate these meteors. Observers in the southern hemisphere suffer from some of their lowest rates of the year this month. The Taurid radiants are not too badly placed so observers south of the equator can expect to see a little of this activity from this source this month.

During this period, the moon reaches its first quarter phase on Sunday August 31st. On that date it will be located 90 degrees east of the sun and will set near 22:00 local summer time (LST) on the previous evening. As the week progresses, the waxing gibbous moon will encroach upon the morning sky and will hamper meteor observing until it sets. The estimated total hourly rates for evening observers this weekend should be near 4 as seen from mid-northern latitudes (45N) and 3 as seen from tropical southern locations (25S). For morning observers, the estimated total hourly rates should be near 12 as seen from mid-northern latitudes (45N) and 9 as seen from tropical southern locations (25S). The actual rates seen will also depend on factors such as personal light and motion perception, local weather conditions, alertness, and experience in watching meteor activity. Evening rates are reduced during this period due to moonlight. Note that the hourly rates listed below are estimates as viewed from dark sky sites away from urban light sources. Observers viewing from urban areas will see less activity as only the brighter meteors will be visible from such locations.

The radiant (the area of the sky where meteors appear to shoot from) positions and rates listed below are exact for Saturday night/Sunday morning August 30/31. These positions do not change greatly day to day so the listed positions may be used during this entire period. Most star atlases (available online and at bookstores and planetariums) will provide maps with grid lines of the celestial coordinates so that you may find out exactly where these positions are located in the sky. I have also included charts of the sky that display the radiant positions for evening, midnight, and morning. The center of each chart is the sky directly overhead at the appropriate hour. These charts are oriented for facing south but can be used for any direction by rotating the charts to the desired direction. A planisphere or computer planetarium program is also useful in showing the sky at any time of night on any date of the year. Activity from each radiant is best seen when it is positioned highest in the sky (culmination), either due north or south along the meridian, depending on your latitude. Radiants that rise after midnight will not reach their highest point in the sky until daylight. For these radiants, it is best to view them during the last few hours before dawn. It must be remembered that meteor activity is rarely seen at its radiant position. Rather they shoot outwards from the radiant, so it is best to center your field of view so that the radiant lies toward the edge and not the center. Viewing there will allow you to easily trace the path of each meteor back to the radiant (if it is a shower member) or in another direction if it is sporadic. Meteor activity is not seen from radiants that are located far below the horizon. The positions below are listed in a west to east manner in order of right ascension (celestial longitude). The positions listed first are located further west therefore are accessible earlier in the night while those listed further down the list rise later in the night.

These sources of meteoric activity are expected to be active this week

.

The large Anthelion (ANT) radiant is currently centered at 23:20 (350) -03. This position lies in northeastern Aquarius, 4 degrees northeast of the 4^th magnitude star known as phi Aquarius. This radiant is best placed near 02:00 LST when it lies on the meridian and is highest in the southern sky. Rates at this time should be near 2 no matter your location. With an entry velocity of 30 km/sec., the average Anthelion meteor would be of medium-slow velocity.

The Aurigids (AUR) are active from August 28-September 5 with a peak on September 1^st. The radiant is currently located at 06:04 (091) +39. This position lies in eastern Auriga, 1 degree northeast of the 3rd magnitude star known as Mahasim (theta Aurigae A). This area of the sky is best placed for viewing during the last dark hour before dawn when it lies highest in the northeastern sky. Current rates are expected to be near 1 as seen from the northern hemisphere and less than 1 as seen from south of the equator. Rates could increase near 3 UT on the 1st as this shower has a sharp but short maximum. With an entry velocity of 66 km/sec., the average meteor from this source would be of swift velocity.

Sporadic meteors are those meteors that cannot be associated with any known meteor shower. All meteor showers are evolving and disperse over time to the point where they are no longer recognizable. Away from the peaks of the major annual showers, these sporadic meteors make up the bulk of the activity seen each night. As seen from the mid-northern hemisphere (45N) one would expect to see during this period approximately 12 sporadic meteors per hour during the last hour before dawn as seen from rural observing sites. Evening rates would be near 3 per hour. As seen from the tropical southern latitudes (25S), morning rates would be near 7 per hour as seen from rural observing sites and 2 per hour during the evening hours. Locations between these two extremes would see activity between these listed figures. Evening rates are slightly reduced due to moonlight.

The list below offers information in tabular form. Rates and positions in the table are exact for Saturday night/Sunday morning.

Class Explanation: A scale to group meteor showers by their intensity:

• Class I: the strongest annual showers with Zenith Hourly Rates normally ten or better.
• Class II: reliable minor showers with ZHR’s normally two to ten.
• Class III: showers that do not provide annual activity. These showers are rarely active yet have the potential to produce a major display on occasion.
• Class IV: weak minor showers with ZHR’s rarely exceeding two. The study of these showers is best left to experienced observers who use plotting and angular velocity estimates to determine shower association. These weak showers are also good targets for video and photographic work. Observers with less experience are urged to limit their shower associations to showers with a rating of I to III.
  

But in the tiny world of atoms, things are strange — and operate under the bizarre laws of quantum physics. University of Vermont professor Dennis Clougherty and his student Nam Dinh wondered if there are systems in the atomic world that behave like the vibrating motion of a guitar string in the Newtonian world. “If so, can we construct a quantum theory of the damped harmonic oscillator?” Clougherty wondered.

In a study published on July 7, 2025, in the journal Physical Review Research, he and Dinh did just that: found an exact solution to a model that behaves as a “damped quantum harmonic oscillator,” they write — a guitar-string type of motion at the scale of atoms.

It turns out that for roughly 90 years, theorists have tried to describe these damped harmonic systems using quantum physics — but with limited success. “The difficulty involves preserving Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, a foundational tenet of quantum physics,” says Clougherty, a professor of physics at UVM since 1992. Unlike the human-scale world of, say, bouncing balls or arcing rockets, the famed Heisenberg uncertainty principle shows that there is a fundamental limit to the precision with which the position and momentum of a particle can be known simultaneously. At the scale of an atom, the more accurately one property is measured, the less accurately the other can be known.

Lamb Chopped

The model studied by the UVM physicists was originally constructed by British physicist Horace Lamb in 1900, before Werner Heisenberg was born, and well before the development of quantum physics. Lamb was interested in describing how a vibrating particle in a solid could lose energy to the solid. Using Newton’s laws of motion, Lamb showed that elastic waves created by the particle’s motion feed back on the particle itself and cause it to damp — that is, to vibrate with less and less energy over time.

“In classical physics, it is known that when objects vibrate or oscillate, they lose energy due to friction, air resistance, and so on,” says Dinh. “But this is not so obvious in the quantum regime.”

Clougherty and Dinh (who graduated from UVM in 2024 with a BS in physics, in 2025 with a master’s degree, and is now pursuing a PhD in mathematics at UVM) — with support from the National Science Foundation and NASA — reformulated Lamb’s model for the quantum world and found its solution. “To preserve the uncertainty principle, it is necessary to include in detail the interaction of the atom with all the other atoms in the solid,” Clougherty explains, “it’s a so-called many-body problem.”

Tiny Tools?

How did they solve this problem? Hold onto your seat. “Through a multimode Bogoliubov transformation, which diagonalizes the Hamiltonian of the system and allows for the determination of its properties,” they write, yielding a state called a “multimode squeezed vacuum.” If you missed a bit of that, suffice it to say that the UVM researchers were able to mathematically reformulate Lamb’s system so that an atom’s oscillating behavior could be fully described in precise terms.

And precisely locating the position of one atom could lead to something like the world’s tiniest tape measure: new methods for measuring quantum distances and other ultra-precision sensor technologies. These potential applications emerge from an important consequence of the UVM scientists’ new work: it predicts how the uncertainty in the position of the atom changes with the interaction to the other atoms in the solid. “By reducing this uncertainty, one can measure position to an accuracy below the standard quantum limit,” Clougherty says. In physics, there are some ultimate limits, like the speed of light — and that Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle prevents perfect measurement of a particle. But this uncertainty can be reduced beyond normal limits by certain quantum tricks — in this case, calculating the particle’s behavior in a special “squeezed vacuum” state which reduces the noise of quantum randomness in one variable (location) by increasing it in another (momentum).

This kind of mathematical maneuver was behind the creation of the first successful gravitational wave detectors, which can measure changes in distance one thousand times smaller than the nucleus of an atom — and for which the Nobel Prize was awarded in 2017. Who knows what the Vermont theorists’ discovery of a new quantum solution to Lamb’s century-old model might reveal.