By sampling and analyzing sewage in and around Burlington, NC, researchers traced "forever chemicals" to a local textile manufacturing plant, whose emissions had remained hidden for years because the facility was releasing solid nanoparticle PFAS “precursors” that degrade into the chemicals that current tests are designed to detect. The findings provide both a warning and playbook for others worried about the worldwide spread of these forever chemicals.

AIP and the National Society of Black Physicists give the Joseph A. Johnson Award to early-career scientists who demonstrate scientific ingenuity and passion for mentorship and service, and this year they congratulate Stacyann Nelson as the winner of the 2025 Award and Christian Aganze as an Honorable Mention. They are honoring Nelson for the study of gluon dynamics in gold nuclei and for instilling confidence in her students to aspire to become leaders in physics research and Aganze for his dark matter research and community outreach.

The riddle of rising extreme heat days in Europe: Remote “triggers” and local “amplifiers”

A groundbreaking new study has made significant contributions to the long-running vision of “materials that compute,” a concept that has evolved from the pioneering collaborations between researchers Balazs and Levitan. This vision aims to create materials capable of processing information in a manner similar to traditional computing systems, but with the added benefits of flexibility and adaptability inherent in physical materials.

MIT astronomers used the Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer to identify key features in the innermost region of a white dwarf system called an intermediate polar. This extremely energetic environment has been inaccessible to most telescopes until now.

An international study, involving researchers from the University of Tartu Institute of Chemistry, was recently published in Chemical Society Reviews. It provides the most comprehensive theoretical description to date of electrocatalysis and how its current limitations can be addressed. The research establishes a framework that helps design more efficient fuel cells, electrolysers, and other clean energy conversion devices.