MIT physicists observed key evidence of unconventional superconductivity in magic-angle graphene. The findings could lead to the development of higher-temperature superconductors.

For decades, scientists have generally thought that rivers emit more carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, than they take in. But a new analysis of every river network in the contiguous United States — including underrepresented rivers in deserts and shrublands — challenges this assumption, uncovering hints that many Western waterways may be soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The findings were published in Science and led by Taylor Maavara, an aquatic biogeochemist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies.

A team of Florida State University-based physicists, including National High Magnetic Field Laboratory Dirac Postdoctoral Fellow Aman Kumar, Associate Professor Hitesh Changlani and Assistant Professor Cyprian Lewandowski, have shown the conditions necessary to stabilize a phase of matter in which electrons exist in a solid crystalline lattice but can “melt” into a liquid state, known as a generalized Wigner crystal.

The impact of water expulsion into the open ocean from formerly ice-covered areas means that sea levels will change world-wide. Ambarish Karmalkar in the University of Rhode Island's Climate Dynamics Lab recently collaborated on a project to simulate and predict ice sheet-climate interactions in the coming decades, to better understand Antarctica’s potential sea level contributions.

Tulane University researchers have discovered why some regions of Earth’s crust remain strong while others give way, challenging long-held ideas about how continents break apart. The study, published in Nature, reveals that ancient heating and dehydration made parts of the East African Rift’s crust more resistant to future rifting and volcanism.

Materials scientists at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities have found a way to create and control tiny “flaws” inside ultra-thin materials. These internal features, known as extended defects, could give next-generation nanomaterials entirely new properties, opening the door to advances in nanotechnology.

Climate change is changing the size of fishes in Michigan's inland lakes, leaving the young and old of many species more vulnerable to predation

Ancient trees may have played a key role in regulating Earth’s climate during the last ice age — by breathing less efficiently. A new study, led by a researcher at Penn State and published today (Nov. 5) in the journal Nature Geoscience, examined chemical fingerprints in subfossil wood, or preserved trees, from across North America to understand how plants responded to the low carbon dioxide (CO2) levels and cooler temperatures of the last glacial period, about 20,000 years ago.