In a bid to overcome shortcomings in scientific computing, Chinese scientists have unveiled a new approach to sorting data that promises both higher speed and lower energy consumption. The system combines memristors—electronic components that mimic the memory function of the human brain—with an advanced sorting algorithm to process large amounts of information more efficiently.
Researchers say this method could help overcome performance bottlenecks in not just computing but also artificial intelligence (AI), and hardware design, where rapidly organizing and analyzing vast datasets is essential. Beyond AI, potential applications for this technology include smart traffic systems that analyze images in real time and financial services that require quick risk assessments.
Prototype shows memristor sorting boosts route finding and neural inference
To demonstrate the potential of their technology, scientists from Peking University and the Chinese Institute for Brain Research created a hardware sorting prototype based on memristors. The system successfully handled tasks like route finding and neural network inference, delivering faster performance and lower energy consumption compared to traditional sorting methods, the South China Morning Post reported.
Overall, the system achieved a 7.7-fold increase in throughput and improved energy efficiency by more than 160 times compared to conventional sorting methods. It also boosted area efficiency by over 32 times, marking a significant step towards integrating storage and computing for broader, general-purpose applications.
In a paper published in Nature Electronics last month, the team explained that sorting remains a major performance limitation across applications ranging from artificial intelligence and databases to web search and scientific computing.
Traditional computing systems rely on the Von Neumann architecture, which separates data storage and processing functions, typically using a central processing unit (CPU) to handle calculations.
New insights into memristors show potential to revolutionize computing
According to the researchers of the latest study, the conventional system has led to the Von Neumann bottleneck, which limits the speed of data transfer between memory and processing units. They explained that while sort-in-memory approaches using memristors could help overcome these limitations, current systems still depend on comparison operations, keeping sorting performance constrained.
Unlike ordinary resistors, which simply reduce the flow of electricity in a circuit, memristors have the unique ability to remember how much electrical charge has passed through them. This memory function allows memristors to adjust their resistance based on previous activity, enabling them to act as both storage and processing components.
By combining these functions, memristors could eliminate the need to transfer data between separate memory and processing units, potentially leading to faster and more energy-efficient computing systems.
The scientific team aimed to simplify sorting by removing the need for comparison units. Traditional hardware sorting relies on CPUs, GPUs, or specialised chips that compare numbers step by step using sorting algorithms. Instead, the new method uses memristors to perform iterative search-based sorting, finding minimum or maximum values without directly comparing each pair, which in turn saves both time and energy.
Nicholas James Hornstein, MD, PhD, discussed results from the phase 3 CHALLENGE trial (NCT00819208) that were presented at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting. According to Hornstein, this trial has garnered significant attention, particularly for its exploration of exercise as a therapeutic intervention in colorectal cancer.
This randomized study enrolled patients who had undergone resection for localized colon cancer and assigned them to 1 of 2 arms: a regimented exercise program with a personal trainer or an educational arm providing general advice on the benefits of exercise.
Hornstein, an assistant professor at the Donald and Barbara Zucker School of Medicine of Hofstra University and Northwell Health, noted that the study yielded remarkably positive results. The disease-free survival (DFS) in the group that participated in the structured exercise intervention was substantially higher. The observed DFS benefit from exercise was, according to Hornstein, surprisingly even greater than that seen with oxaliplatin chemotherapy, a standard component of adjuvant treatment for colorectal cancer.
Transcript:
This was not a plenary session. This was an oral [session], and this study has gotten a lot of press. I’ve heard the saying, exercise is the best medicine, and this was explored in the clinical trial. This was a randomized trial taking patients who were status post-resection for localized colon cancer, and it put them into 2 buckets. One, you get a personal trainer and regimented exercise over the course of a week. The other was that you got [educated] about exercise. Somebody sat down and said, “Hey, exercise is great. You should think about it.” [They’re] very different interventions. A lot of people would have expected that this wouldn’t be that positive of a study, but when they randomized the data, the DFS in the group that did exercise as their intervention was drastically higher.
Comparing this with what we normally get, things like oxaliplatin and chemotherapy, there was a higher DFS benefit with exercise than there was with oxaliplatin. This is shocking in terms of the degree of benefit that was observed in this study. Most people would have said, “Oh, yeah, there probably is going to be some benefit to exercise”, but the fact that this is looking to be on the same level as one of our chemotherapy moieties is incredible. This was an interesting study. It is something that I am discussing with all my patients now in the adjuvant setting. I’ve even had some patients who have said, “Hey, can you write me a prescription for a gym pass membership? Can you see if we can get this covered?”, because, to them and me, this is something that needs to be incorporated into our daily practice now, and a lot of patients can benefit. It’s just nice to have a study to point to and say, “Exercise is worth it.”
Reference
Booth CM, Vardy JL, O’Callaghan CJ, et al. A randomized phase III trial of the impact of a structured exercise program on disease-free survival (DFS) in stage 3 or high-risk stage 2 colon cancer: Canadian Cancer Trials Group (CCTG) CO.21 (CHALLENGE). J Clin Oncol. 2025;43(17):LBA3510. doi:10.1200/JCO.2025.43.17_suppl.LBA3510
Ask Charlize Theron what her favorite stunt to do in “The Old Guard 2” was and the Oscar-winner doesn’t even blink.
“The helicopter hands down,” she told me at her recent Charlize Theron Africa Outreach Program Block Party fundraiser in Los Angeles. “We did it towards the end, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God, if I pull this off, I’m gonna be okay with never doing a stunt again.’ That didn’t last long, but it was intricate. It was psychological. The first two weeks of it was sitting down with the pilot and building trust. It was slow moves. But by the end, I was hanging off a helicopter, so who cares?”
As she was performing the scene, Theron said, “I was hanging in the air, going, ‘I’m going to never be able to stop saying that I hung off a helicopter.’”
The Victoria Mahoney-directed movie, the second installment of the Netflix adaptation of Greg Rucka’s comic book, finds the immortals (Theron, KiKi Layne, Matthias Schoenaerts, Marwan Kenzari, Luca Marinelli, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Henry Golding) trying to save mankind from two of their own Discord (franchise newcomer Uma Thurman) and Quỳnh (Veronica Ngô).
A third movie could be on the horizon with the second film ending on a spectacular cliffhanger. In fact, producer Marc Evans told me in May 2023, “There’s an ending to No. 2 that kind of demands a No. 3, which makes me very happy.”
As for now, Theron, who also serves as a producer on the franchise, said, “We’re going to take a break, take a little breather, and then we’ll come back and decide.”
Theron, who is next set to start filming Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey,” also said she plans to direct one day: “I’ve always kind of been interested, but I have young children, and to direct is very all consuming…I need my kids to get out of the house.”
[18F]AIF-NOTA-PCP2 uptake changes reflected therapeutic response to pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus chemotherapy in a small cohort of patients with PD-L1–positive head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC).
[18F]AIF-NOTA-PCP2 may be a safe and effective PET tracer for noninvasive PD-L1 evaluation in patients with head and neck cancers, according to results from a prospective trial (NCT06690216) presented at the 2025 Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Annual Meeting.
Results revealed that [18F]AIF-NOTA-PCP2 showed acceptable dosimetry among all patients with head and neck cancers (n = 24) assessed with the tool. Additionally, no tracer-related adverse effects were observed in the study. Regarding biodistribution, the highest uptake was noted in the spleen, with minimal off-target uptake in the liver and intestines, as well as low renal uptake.
High PD-L1 expression, characterized as having a tumor positive score (TPS) of 20% or greater, was associated with a significantly higher maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) at 5.92 vs 2.39 in tumors with a TPS of less than 20% (P <.001). Additionally, a strong positive correlation was observed between SUVmax and PD-L1 TPS, with a Spearman’s rank correlation of 0.890 (P <.001); the SUVmean vs PD-L1 TPS rs was 0.837 (P <.001).
Additionally, variation in uptake was observed based on anatomical site, with higher uptake observed in orbital fibrous, tonsil, and oropharynx tumors, and lower uptake observed in larynx and oral cavity lesions. Furthermore, nonsquamous histology was associated with a higher uptake than squamous histology, with respective SUVmaxof 6.22 vs 3.61 (P = .041). HPV positivity in the HNSCC was also associated with higher SUVmax; at 5.93 vs 2.25 (P = .007).
[18F]AIF-NOTA-PCP2 uptake changes reflected therapeutic response to pembrolizumab (Keytruda) plus chemotherapy in a small cohort of patients with PD-L1–positive head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Among 3 patients with HNSCC who responded to treatment with pembrolizumab and chemotherapy, PD-L1 downregulation was observed in all patients.
Specifically, in 1 patient who experienced a complete response, a rapid decrease in SUVmax was observed, from 6.52 to 4.06, a 37.7% decrease 1 week following therapy. Among 2 patients who experienced a partial response, a significant decrease in SUVmax was observed following 3 cycles of study regimen, with 54.0% and 23.0% decreases in each patient, respectively.
“[With] [18F]AIF-NOTA-PCP2 … uptake changes clearly reflected therapeutic response. Responders showed significant and early decreases in PD-L1 downregulation.” Yong Wang, MD, managing director of Shandong Cancer Hospital and Institute in Jinan, Shandong, China, said in an oral presentation of the data. “[By] contrast, nonresponders showed a stable or increased uptake, [showing] strong potential for [18F]AIF-NOTA-PCP2 [in] early, dynamic PD-L1 monitoring.”
Patients with HNC who were immunotherapy-naive across diverse tumor subsites were assessed with the peptide-based PET tracer. The median age of enrolled patients was 59.5 years, 79.2% of patients were males, and 25% were HPV positive. A total of 24 patients underwent [18F]AIF-NOTA-PCP2 PET/CT scans,17 underwent paired [18F]FDG PET/CT scans, and a total of 5 patients underwent immunotherapy monitoring.
Preclinical data showed that [18F]AIF-NOTA-PCP2 had an excellent profile, with a high PD-L1 affinity. The half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) of the tracer was 24.7 nanomolars (nM). Additionally, selective targeting of PD-L1–positive tumors in xenograft models were observed in preclinical trials.
A head-to-head comparison assessing [18F]FDG PET/CT scans showed limited concordance between the 2 tracers. A weak correlation was observed between each (P = .042), with many FDG-avid tumors showing low PCP2 uptake and vice versa.
In conclusion, Wang noted that future perspectives should include validation in larger, multicenter cohorts of patients with head and neck cancer, applications of [18F]AIF-NOTA-PCP2 in other cancer types, and the development of standardized immune-PET response criteria.
Reference
Wang Y, Liu Z, Yu J, Hu M, et al. Can [18F]FDG-PET/CT predict PD-L1 expression in head and neck carcinoma? A head-to-head comparison with a novel PD-L1 PET tracer. Presented at: 2025 Society for Nuclear Medicine and Medical Imaging Meeting; June 21-24, 2025; New Orleans, LA.
Cameron Norrie held off a spirited fightback from Chilean qualifier Nicolas Jarry to reach the Wimbledon quarter-finals and keep alive British interest in the singles.
British number three Norrie led by two sets – and held a match point in the third-set tie-break – before finally securing a 6-3 7-6 (7-4) 6-7 (7-9) 6-7 (5-7) 6-3 win under the Court One roof.
After missing his first opportunity, the 29-year-old left-hander regrouped admirably to seal his progress – almost two hours later – at the second opportunity.
The piercing roar which greeted victory indicated Norrie’s delight at coming through a bruising battle where he needed all of his characteristic determination and endurance.
His win came a couple of hours after fellow Briton Sonay Kartal – the final home player in the women’s singles – was beaten on Centre Court.
Norrie is ranked 61st in the world after a difficult couple of seasons, but is now one more victory away from replicating his run to the SW19 semi-finals in 2022.
To do that, he may have to come through one of the most difficult tasks in the sport – beating reigning champion Carlos Alcaraz in the last eight.
Spain’s Alcaraz, seeded second, faces Russian 14th seed Andrey Rublev in their fourth-round match on Sunday.
Lack of PCIe bandwidth can nerf RTX 5090 by up to 25% in content creation workloads — Puget data confirms performance hit when using older generations and fewer lanes Tom’s Hardware
NVIDIA RTX 5090 Loses Over 25% Performance Without Full PCIe Bandwidth, With Noticeable Losses in Rendering Workloads Wccftech
The owners of a pet lion that escaped from a farmhouse and injured a woman and her two children in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore have been arrested, authorities said on Sunday.
The arrest came after dramatic video footage emerged showing the lion leaping over a wall and attacking the victims in a residential area.
Faisal Kamran, a police official, said the woman and her five- and seven-year-old children sustained injuries to their faces and arms on Wednesday night when the lion escaped from its cage.
The lion chases the woman and children. Photograph: Twitter/X
According to a police report, the children’s father said the lion’s owners had stood by and watched as the animal clawed at his family, making no effort to restrain it. The lion later returned to the owners’ farmhouse and was relocated to a wildlife park, police said.
Keeping exotic animals such as lions is considered a status symbol by some wealthy Pakistanis, despite the legal requirements and high fees associated with ownership.
In Turkey, a lion that escaped from a theme park near the resort of Antalya was shot dead on Sunday after attacking a man, the local governor and media reports said.
The lion, reportedly named Zeus, escaped his enclosure at the Land of Lions animal theme park in Manavgat, about 40 miles (65km) east of Antalya, in the early hours of the morning, the governor said.
According to the BirGün newspaper, the lion attacked an agricultural worker called Suleiman Kir who was asleep in a pistachio field with his wife. Kir tussled with the lion before it ran off. He was injured but not badly and was taken to a nearby hospital for treatment.
“We were covered with blankets to protect ourselves from mosquitoes and when the prayer call sounded, I tried to stand up but I couldn’t,” he told the newspaper. “Suddenly I felt something touch my left foot and when I eventually managed to get up, I saw it was something huge – I thought it was a dog.”
In a video posted online, he described the moments wrestling with the lion. “We called for help but there was no one around. As the lion was biting my calf and my neck, I grabbed him around the neck and began to squeeze and he backed off. At that moment, the security forces came,” he said. “If I had not been strong, I wouldn’t be here right now.”
Antalya’s governor said the lion had been tracked down and shot dead. “It was not possible to catch the escaped lion alive because it posed a danger to people and the environment, so it was shot,” he said.
He indicated that an investigation had been opened into the incident. BirGün said there were about 30 big cats at the Land of Lions.
BERLIN — There was something for everyone at this season’s four-day iteration of Berlin Fashion Week, which ended last Thursday.
The offerings included ingenious ideas by recent graduates in specially curated shows; slick, smart presentations by homegrown talent like GmbH and Richert Beil, and the commercial savvy from the likes of Blumarine creative director David Koma, who showed his eponymous menswear line for the first time in Berlin, Berlin-based brand Ottolinger, who had musician Kim Petras modeling and designer Stefano Pilati sitting in the front row, and German designer Johannes Boehl Cronau, with his brand Ioannes fresh off a collaboration with Kylie Jenner.
In between there were art projects, pop-up stores, studio openings and parties, including one at Berlin’s legendary sex club, Kit Kat. Venues ran the gamut from midcentury-modern convention centers to historic breweries, sweaty underground bunkers, sex clubs, construction sites and some of the German capital’s vaunted galleries and charming castles.
There was also politics in the form of talks on the future of fashion and sustainability, 58 seconds of silence observed at the GmbH show in memory of all those killed in Gaza, and a show by Kampala, Uganda-based label Buzigahill, focused on upcycling discarded garments and what it called “textile colonialism.”
Buzigahill designer Bobby Kolade went to design school in Berlin and worked at Balenciaga and Maison Margiela before returning to Uganda, where he began to “return to sender” by upcycling discarded clothing that had been sent to Africa from Europe.
Andreas Hofrichter
It’s true that Berlin isn’t seen as particularly relevant on the international fashion media and buyers’ circuit. Audiences at Berlin shows have tended toward enthusiastic influencers, brand fans and excitable fashion students. But this season it was clear the professional, international contingent was growing, with the event counting around 60 international visitors.
“There’s much more of a feeling that this is an international showcase, that this is serious business,” said Stavros Karelis, the founder and buying director for London concept store Machine-A, who was in Berlin for the third time. “There’s more and more talent coming and clever selections being made,” he told WWD at the end of the week. “From an international perspective, the shows started in early June — so it’s been a month of travel so far — so for somebody to add this [Berlin] as the last part of their trip, that means they’ve found something to see here.”
“Berlin Fashion Week is doing a wonderful job of establishing itself on the global circuit,” agreed Chloe King, director of fashion and lifestyle for Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus, who was at the event for the first time.
“Opportunities to encounter truly unique emerging brands are quite limited,” Shihoko Okuda, a buyer for the Isetan Shinjuku womenswear department in Japan, focused on international creators, told WWD. “Paris Fashion Week is outstanding but since it is already a well-established field, we were seeking something more unique so we can bring freshness to our market.”
Speaking after the event, Okuda said her first visit to Berlin was a success. “Unlike a typical fashion week, it offered a presentation style that fused fashion with Berlin’s unique cultural context. … this allowed us to discover fresh and creative new perspectives,” she noted.
“Berlin is definitely starting to compete with Copenhagen [fashion week],” one international visitor told WWD; as a regular visitor to Copenhagen, which is often described as the “fifth fashion capital” after Paris, Milan, London and New York, they asked to remain anonymous in order to speak freely. “Personally Berlin is much more my style. Copenhagen can be a little boring sometimes.”
The event is “getting bigger and more exciting,” agreed Milan-based artistic director and former Bottega Veneta creative Edward Buchanan; Buchanan spoke about fashion’s future at the week’s “Metamorphosis” series of talks and also modeled for Buzigahill. “I like the independence of the designers here. I just like being here and seeing how artists here in this niche are working and surviving.”
It’s true that for many of the designers showing in Berlin, outright commerciality still seems lower down on their list of motivations. But that more freewheeling, artistic bent could well be part of Berlin’s growing attraction.
Doubtless the fact that the Berlin city senate supports fashion week to the tune of around 4 million euros ($4.7 million) annually helps support those attitudes. Designers selected to participate in the Berlin Contemporary section can get up to 25,000 euros to help fund a runway show as well as easier access to venues.
A group exhibition, the Berliner Salon, was held inside the Helmut Newton Foundation.
Getty Images for Der Berliner Salon
“Maybe there’s not as much business done here but Berlin is a playground for artists,” explained designer Esther Perbandt, who showed exquisitely crafted clothing in her signature black at an installation in central Berlin. “And that’s so nice. Berlin is part of my inspiration too,” said the designer, who rose to international prominence after coming second on the reality show “Making the Cut” in 2020. Around 60 percent of her customers are still from the U.S., she said, adding she eventually hopes to collaborate with a retailer in New York or Los Angeles who will understand her less commercial outlook.
“I just feel so relaxed here,” Georgia-born, London-based designer Koma explained after the first showing of his menswear collection in a Berlin trade fair center, the Palais am Funkturm. Koma’s show was part of a series called “Intervention,” organized by Berlin-based agency Reference Studios. “Because this was so personal to me, I wanted to go somewhere I could feel really good,” Koma said. “I actually asked my commercial team to give me the space to do this.”
A glittering thread ran through Koma’s distinctly preppy looks. Inspired by a love of “David” — that’s Michelangelo, Beckham in his paparazzi era, and himself — the clothes weren’t wildly challenging for well-dressed men to wear. But the use of glittering appliqué flowers, satiny fabrics and Lurex pinstripe suiting gave the smart-casual a subtly flamboyant edge.
Designers of GmbH, Benjamin Huseby and Serhat Isik, were showing in Berlin for the third time after multiple outings in Paris.
“Berlin is our home,” Huseby explained. “It still fuels our creativity.”
GmbH’s new men’s collection again riffed on sportswear, including a more formal, very wearable take on satin boxing shorts, and also referred to the designers’ familial roots, with embroidered slogans like “Mashallah” (which means something along the lines of “beautiful, as God willed it,” in Arabic). But the most sublime aspects of their work were found in the designers’ light touch and playful creativity with menswear staples. Models came down two opposing, curved staircases at the Palais am Funkturm. But it was only when they went past that you saw a sleek shirt transform into a sheer, diaphanous capelet and a slim formal jacket tie elegant knots at its back.
“It’s necessary to be here to represent, to create a space for our community,” Isik added, when asked why the label was still showing in Berlin and not back in Paris. “Especially in this political climate,” he said, referring to the German government’s much criticized repression of protests around Palestinian rights in the country.
Despite the show in Berlin, GmbH still does most of its sales in Paris, the pair said. They had a showroom in Paris during men’s fashion week there.
The Ioannes show was held at the Orangerie, a part of Berlin’s Charlottenburg Palace.
inesbahr
For designer Kasia Kucharska, it was the opposite. Standing in a central city exhibition space, as her gold and pale yellow dress and colorful clutch bags made completely out of the signature “latex lace” she and her team invented, drew cameras and interest, she said a lot of her buyers had actually been in Berlin this time.
“I was quite surprised,” she said. “Usually they only travel to Paris but this time, we got emails asking where they could meet us in Berlin.”
Meanwhile, Berlin brand Richert Beil remains focused on making a living at home and chose a smaller venue and smaller guest list this season. “We see ourselves very much as a niche brand,” Jale Richert said. “But hopefully a successful one,” she added, laughing.
Designers Richert and Michele Beil hosted a smaller salon show in what will be their new store and studio in a former 135-year-old pharmacy. Their wares — with a mix of dark humor, handcrafted latex, bondage kink, genderless flavor and on-trend Y2K stylings — could be described as the most quintessentially “Berlin” brand of all those at the event.
By the end of Berlin Fashion Week, it was clear there are still improvements that could be made. Almost every show was delayed (and due to locations spread around the city, this meant missing out on other important shows). Some designers also seemed to think they were opening a nightclub, not putting on a runway show.
“We have lots of homework to do,” Mumi Haiati, founder of Reference Studios, confirmed. “And there’s always the question of how to make it economically relevant. Berlin is building image and buzz, which is a great starting point.” But Haiati can imagine including more direct-to-consumer events in the future. He’d also like to see the largest German brands, like Adidas or Hugo Boss, getting involved somehow.
Isetan buyer Okuda would like to see the focus on business turned up. “From a buyer’s perspective, while many brands showcased impressive creativity, I feel there’s still room for improvement when it comes to the business side,” she argued. The creativity and culture are there, she said. Now Berlin designers need to start thinking more about things like product balance and production infrastructure, Okuda concluded.
Buyers’ Picks
Stavros Karelis, Machine-A: So many highlights but off the top of my head, GmbH, Marke, Sia Arnika, Richert Beil, Buzigahill, Ioannes. The biggest highlight might have been the “Berlin Curated” show though. The industry is going through tough times and a lot of people here were asking, “what’s important about fashion? What should we be doing now?” That show was a great answer. Recent fashion school graduates doing really incredible work, with craftsmanship and design skills and cultural connection — all things the industry is looking for.
Chloe King, Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus: One of the headlines of the week was Ottolinger, who showed a late-night resort collection in between its Paris outings. The brand’s signature sporty-undone-nonchalance looked cooler than ever — especially that rubber goo-dipped bowler bag. Additional highlights include Marke, GmbH, Richert Beil and SF10G. It was also quite special to see Nigeria’s Orange Culture on the schedule… a voluminous black jacquard suit with raffia hat and tie was one of my favorite looks of the week.
Shihoko Okuda, Isetan Shinjuku: Many brands had concepts deeply rooted in culture, showcasing a strong sense of individuality. The collections of Richert Beil, Balletshofer, and Milk of Lime were highly polished, and these brands left a particularly strong impression.
In a chilled lab where temperatures drop close to absolute zero, a speck of magnet hovers in place. This tiny magnet, levitating silently inside a special trap, may hold answers to one of the greatest mysteries in science—dark matter. While no direct signals appeared in this first search, the experiment marks a bold step into a new frontier of physics.
A New Way to Hunt the Invisible
Dark matter doesn’t emit, absorb, or reflect light. You can’t see it, but scientists believe it makes up most of the universe’s mass. Without it, galaxies would spin apart. Yet, after decades of searching, no one has directly detected it.
Now, researchers are turning to an unusual and delicate tool—a magnetically levitated particle. A new experiment led by scientists from Rice University has launched the first search for ultralight dark matter using this technique. The study focuses on a form of dark matter that behaves more like a soft background wave than a single particle.
Christopher Tunnell is an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Rice and Postdoctoral researcher Dorian Amaral. (CREDIT: Jeff Fitlow)
Ultralight dark matter, if it exists, might flow through Earth like a ripple in space. These ripples could tug very gently on certain types of matter. But this force would be incredibly small—so faint that only ultra-sensitive equipment could spot it.
That’s why the team suspended a microscopic magnet inside a cold, superconducting trap. The magnet floated in midair, completely untouched by friction or heat. By creating such a quiet space, the magnet could wiggle if nudged by these ghostly dark matter waves.
“Our approach brings dark matter detection into a new realm,” said physicist Christopher Tunnell, one of the study leaders. “By suspending a tiny magnet in a frictionless environment, we’re giving it the freedom to move if something nudges it.”
Listening for the Quietest Whispers
The experiment used a neodymium magnet less than a millimeter wide. This small piece was placed in a trap cooled to near -459.67°F. That’s almost as cold as anything can get. The setup reduced noise so much that it could detect movements smaller than the size of a single hydrogen atom.
The researchers watched closely, searching for a signal at a specific frequency—26.7 cycles per second. That’s the rate at which ultralight dark matter in a certain mass range would likely cause oscillations, or tiny repeated movements. Despite the incredible precision, they found no signal.
Still, this result helps. It sets a new limit on how dark matter can interact with regular matter. The study focused on interactions based on a property in particle physics known as “B minus L.” This stands for the difference between the number of baryons (like protons and neutrons) and leptons (like electrons). These numbers often stay constant during particle reactions.
The experiment is designed to probe areas of the theoretical landscape that current detectors have not explored. (CREDIT: Rice University)
In this study, the scientists searched for forces that would act differently depending on these numbers. By not finding any effect, they were able to narrow the possible strength of such dark matter interactions. They ruled out a coupling strength higher than 2.98 × 10⁻²¹, which is among the strictest limits ever set in this area.
“Every time we don’t find dark matter, we refine the map,” said Tunnell. “It is like searching for a lost key in your house—when you do not find it in one place, you know to look elsewhere.”
A Dance, a Protest, and a New Path Forward
The idea for this novel experiment began in an unexpected place: a climate protest. Two physicists met there, talked about their ideas, and even danced a traditional dance known as the polonaise. That moment sparked the name for their next project—POLONAISE.
Schematic of the experimental setup inside the dilution refrigerator. (CREDIT: Tunnell, et al.)
This next-generation experiment will improve on the current design in several ways. It will use heavier magnets, which respond more to force. The team also plans to boost the stability of the levitation and scan a wider range of frequencies. That means they’ll be able to look for more types of dark matter than before.
“Our future setup won’t just listen more closely, it’ll be tuned to hear things we’ve never even tried listening for,” said Tunnell. Dorian Amaral, the study’s lead author, helped lay the theoretical foundation for the measurement. He worked closely with other physicists to design this bold test.
“We’re not just testing a theory, we’re laying the groundwork for an entire class of measurements,” said Amaral. “Magnetic levitation gives us a fundamentally new tool to ask the universe big questions.”
This setup isn’t only useful for dark matter. It’s sensitive enough to detect forces as small as 0.2 femtonewtons per square root of hertz. That’s comparable to the weight of a single virus. Reaching this level of sensitivity opens the door to many kinds of future discoveries in physics.
The force-power spectral density. (CREDIT: Tunnell, et al.)
What Comes Next?
The team hopes to improve their system over time. Short-term upgrades will help smooth the levitation and reduce noise. In the medium term, they’ll add better sensors and stronger magnetic materials. In the long run, the final version of POLONAISE could lead the world in dark matter sensitivity across a wide mass range.
Even though this first attempt didn’t spot dark matter, the value of the experiment goes far beyond a single result. The setup proves that magnetic levitation in a superconducting trap works as a quantum sensor. And that opens up new paths in physics, many of which scientists haven’t yet explored.
The research team worked with scientists from multiple universities and received support from the National Science Foundation. Together, they built something not just cutting-edge—but potentially revolutionary.
Each new search like this one brings the world a little closer to understanding the unseen matter that shapes the universe. Whether or not it was found this time, the dark remains a little less mysterious now.
When it comes to Apple’s biggest films, “F1: The Movie” has officially moved to pole position.
“F1” has generated $293 million at the global box office after 10 days of release, overtaking the entire theatrical runs of Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” ($158 million worldwide) and Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” ($221 million) to stand as Apple’s highest-grossing movie to date. That’s not a particularly difficult benchmark to break, since Apple has only released five films theatrically and two of them, “Fly Me to the Moon” ($42 million) and “Argylle” ($96 million), were outright flops.
Yet the ticket sales for “F1” are at least a step in the right direction for the fledgling studio’s theatrical ambitions. After Apple siphoned off a string of commercial misfires (with budgets at or above $200 million, neither “Killers of the Flower Moon” nor “Napoleon” were in danger of turning a theatrical profit), “F1” was considered an inflection point for the tech giant. There was a growing internal sense that if a crowd-pleaser like “F1” didn’t work on the big screen, Apple would be better off abandoning the movie business in favor of television. After all, the company has fielded plenty of small screen successes on AppleTV+ including “Severance” and “Ted Lasso.”
Apple’s future film strategy won’t hinge solely on the success of “F1.” And more importantly, the racing drama isn’t close to climbing out of the red. “F1” cost more than $250 million to produce and roughly $100 million more to market, which means the tentpole will require multiple laps around the track to justify its massive price tag. But these ticket sales, which are encouraging for any adult-skewing original film, at least give Apple a reason to stay the course. Oh yeah, it also helps that Apple has a $3 trillion market cap and doesn’t face the same financial pressure of traditional studios.
Directed by Joseph Kosinski (“Top Gun: Maverick”), “F1” stars Brad Pitt as a has-been Formula One driver who emerges from retirement to coach a rookie driver and save a failing team. The film landed in theaters in late June with $57 million domestically and $146 million worldwide, easily handing Apple its biggest opening weekend to date. Positive word-of-mouth should contribute to the movie’s staying power, even as “F1” endures strong headwinds from “Jurassic World Rebirth” and upcoming blockbuster hopefuls like “Superman” and “Fantastic Four: The First Steps.” Outside of the United States and Canada, where “F1” has revved to $109.5 million, top-earning territories include China ($22 million), the United Kingdom ($17.3 million), Mexico ($12.3 million), France ($11.5 million) and Australia ($9.8 million).
Because the movie was filmed with immersive Imax cameras as the filmmaking team circumnavigated the real Formula 1 global circuit, “F1” has been a huge draw on premium large format screens. So far, Imax alone has fueled $60 million globally, accounting for 20.4% of the film’s worldwide total.
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