EurekAlert! News by Subject: Chemistry & Physics - News by Subject: Chemistry & Physics

Chemistry & Physics

Updates every hour. Last Updated: 12-Jan-2026 19:11 ET (13-Jan-2026 00:11 GMT/UTC)

New study reveals microbial network restructuring mitigates long-term soil carbon emissions from warming

Chinese Academy of Sciences Headquarters
Peer-Reviewed Publication

A research team led by Prof. LIU Juxiu at the South China Botanical Garden of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has conducted a decade-long study that uncovered a previously unrecognized buffering mechanism in subtropical forest soils mitigating the effects of climate warming.

Journal: Science Advances

Unique shape of star’s explosion revealed just a day after detection

ESO
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Swift observations with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (ESO’s VLT) have revealed the explosive death of a star just as the blast was breaking through the star’s surface. For the first time, astronomers unveiled the shape of the explosion at its earliest, fleeting stage. This brief initial phase wouldn’t have been observable a day later and helps address a whole set of questions about how massive stars go supernova.

Journal: Science Advances

U.S. Air Force awards Illinois Grainger Engineering $4.8M to investigate loss in superconducting quantum hardware

University of Illinois Grainger College of Engineering
Grant and Award Announcement

Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) has awarded four years of funding ($4.8 million) to The Grainger College of Engineering at University of Illinois Urbana‑Champaign. The award supports a multidisciplinary effort to identify and understand two-level system (TLS) defects in superconducting quantum hardware, a major source of error in qubits used for quantum computing. Researchers from physics, materials science, and electrical engineering will combine growth, fabrication, characterization, and atomic-scale simulation to trace the origin of TLS defects. The goal: establish a recipe for reducing these defects and thereby improve the performance and scalability of superconducting quantum processors.

The Pleiades is part of an enormous stellar complex birthed by the same star-forming event

Carnegie Institution for Science
Peer-Reviewed Publication

New analysis shows that the Pleiades cluster constitutes the core of a much larger structure of related stars that are distributed over more than 1,950 light-years.

Journal: The Astrophysical Journal

First confirmed sighting of giant explosion on nearby star

European Space Agency
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Astronomers using the European Space Agency’s XMM-Newton space observatory and the LOFAR telescope have definitively spotted an explosive burst of material thrown out into space by another star – a burst powerful enough to strip away the atmosphere of any unlucky planet in its path.

Journal: Nature

New lightweight polymer film can prevent corrosion

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Peer-Reviewed Publication

MIT researchers developed a lightweight polymer film that is nearly impenetrable to gas molecules, raising the possibility that it could be used as a protective coating to prevent solar cells and other structures from corrosion.

Journal: Nature
Funder: Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, Center for Enhanced Nanofluidic Transport-Phase 2, National Science Foundation

First graphene-based solar cells used to power temperature sensors first graphene-based solar cells used to power temperature sensors

University of Arkansas
Peer-Reviewed Publication

Researchers at the University of Arkansas and the University of Michigan have reported the first use of ultra-low power temperature sensors using graphene-based solar cells. The test is the first hurdle in developing autonomous sensor systems that draw power from multiple sources in the environment — solar, thermal, acoustic, kinetic, nonlinear and ambient radiation.

Journal: Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology