Many plastic products are designed to be used only once, yet the material itself lasts for years. But a new strategy is addressing this problem by creating products that self-destruct on command, known as living plastics. These materials incorporate activatable, plastic-degrading microbes alongside the polymers. One team reporting in ACS Applied Polymer Materials used two bacterial strains that worked together and completely broke down the material within just six days, without making microplastics. 

A century after their discovery, cosmic rays—particles of extreme energy originating from the far reaches of the universe—remain a mystery to scientists. The DAMPE (Dark Matter Particle Explorer) space telescope is tackling this phenomenon, particularly investigating the role that dark matter may play in their formation. This international mission, which includes the University of Geneva (UNIGE), has made a major breakthrough by highlighting a universal feature of these particles. The results are published in the journal Nature.

30 April 2026 / Kiel / Mindelo. Tomorrow, fourteen Master’s students in the West African Master’s programme ‘Climate Change and Marine Sciences’ will begin their two-week training and research voyage aboard the research vessel POLARSTERN. Travelling from Mindelo in Cabo Verde to Bremerhaven, Germany, they will carry out physical, biogeochemical and biological measurements together with ten experienced scientists. This is the fourth time that the Floating University is taking place under the leadership of GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel. This initiative significantly contributes to the goals of the UN Decade of Ocean Science and is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) as part of the WASCAL programme (West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use).

In collaboration with colleagues, experimental and theoretical physicists from Heinrich Heine University (HHU) Düsseldorf and Forschungszentrum Jülich have gained important insights into laser–plasma accelerator technology. As they report in two papers published in Reports on Progress in Physics and High Power Laser Science and Engineering, the polarization state of accelerated particles is preserved during this process. This finding is significant for a range of applications, including controlled nuclear fusion.

A physics-inspired model calibrated on 40 years of US congressional data pinpoints a spending threshold of roughly 1.8 million USD at which campaigns stop influencing who wins and start fueling polarization instead.

Quantum internet 

Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have broken a long standing barrier by managing to send single photons - that can’t be copied or split and thus are secure - in the network of optical fibers we already have. This opens up a broad range of applications relying on secure Quantum information.

Photreon, a start-up project at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), aims to boost the hydrogen economy with mass-produced photoreactor panels that require no electrolyzers, consume no electricity, and do not need a grid connection. With the panels, hydrogen can be produced cost-effectively in a scalable manner from sunlight and water – suitable for both distributed applications and large-scale systems in sunny regions. During the Hannover Messe, April 20–24, 2026, photreon will be presenting at the KIT booth (Hall 11, Booth B06).