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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

Stanford Medicine unveils world’s first ultracompact proton therapy facility 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/stanford-m...

Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Showing off a photo of Google's latest #quantum device, Martinis compares it to a computer circa 1960. “I was proud of this for many years, but now I look at it in horror. All those wires! All those SMA connectors! This is really complicated. How are we going to scale this up?” #APSSummit26 ⚛️(7/n)

John Martinis gestures in front of a slide entitled "Quantum's scaling revolution" showing a Google dilution fridge and comparing it with a snarl of wires in a photo of a 1960s computer

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

John Martinis is up now at #APSSummit26, talking about the first microwave device he and his co-laureates developed. Their first attempt "was a disaster, it didn’t work at all.” But once they got it working, “I’m proud to say that even after 40 years, this is still the technology of choice.” (6/n)

John Martinis in front of a slide showing a photo and a diagram of the team's first experimental device

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Michel Devoret finishes his #APSSummit26 talk with this slide showing a long list of quantum experiments that he says have been done in superconducting circuits that cannot yet be done in natural atoms. Cold atom and ion trapping folks, are you working on any of these? ⚛️🧪

Michel Devoret standing in front of a slide listing "What can you do with artificial atoms that you cannot do with natural atoms (yet)?" The list includes "measure the traversal time of tunneling", "prepare Schroedinger cat state living in two boxes", "observe the finite duration of quantum jumps and reverse them", "perform random circuit sampling beyond classical regime", "correct logical qubit memory beyond break-even", "employ as detectors to perform NMR experiments on single nuclei" and "run verifiable quantum echoes algorithm with practical advantage"

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Next up at #APSSummit2026 #APSMarch, 2025 Nobel laureate Michel Devoret is describing his “lucky break” of being able to launch an experiment with Clarke and Martinis that would test the principles of quantum mechanics by studying currents and voltages in an electrical circuit. (4/n)

Michel Devoret standing in front of a slide entitled "From macroscopic quantum phenomena to superconducting artificial atoms". There's a cartoon of a person in an auto mechanic shop saying "Actually I started in quantum mechanics but somewhere along the way I took a wrong turn."

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

To kick off #APSSummit26, Nobel laureate John Clarke is describing how, after many failed efforts, he created the first superconducting low-inductance undulatory galvometer (SLUG) "between tea and going back to college for dinner a couple of hours later." You can see how it got its nickname. (1/n)

Slide showing John Clarke with his first SLUG, which looks like a silvery slug, and a graph of the voltage

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

Hello #APSSummit26! Our online editor @drmlharris.bsky.social is at the meeting all week and looking forward to hearing about some fascinating physics. We promise to post as many highlights as we can from the packed-out schedule. ⚛️🧪🔭

Photo of people onstage at the APS Global Physics Summit

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

The boundary between liquid and solid phases may not be as clear-cut as previously believed. This new state of matter is a hybrid of both, and the scientists who discovered it say it could have applications in catalysis and other thermally-activated processes. 🧪⚛️ physicsworld.com/a/new-hybrid...

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

We produced this infographic about immigrant physics laureates a few years ago. You can find the article here. physicsworld.com/a/more-than-...

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

The free-to-read Physics World Quantum Briefing on display on the island of Helgoland, just metres from where Werner Heisenberg did his seminal work on quantum mechanics 100 years ago. It includes a great article on quantum Cheshire cats from Iulia Georgescu. 🧪⚛️🔭 physicsworld.com/p/magazine/a...

Photo of Physics World Quantum Briefing on the island of Helgoland.

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

The final after-dinner speaker was science journalist @philipcball.bsky.social who covered how quantum theory developed in 1924/25 shortly before Werner Heisenberg's work on quantum mechanics on the island of Helgoland exactly 100 years ago (as he also discussed in his recent feature for us).🧪⚛️

Photo of Philip Ball in his after-dinner speech at the Helgoland conference in Hamburg.

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Next up was philosopher of science Elise Crull from the City College of New York, who discussed some of the early debates about the philosophical implications of quantum physics and the pioneering contributions of Grete Hermann, who was covered in a recent feature for Physics World. 🧪⚛️

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Douglas Stone from Yale University was the first after-dinner speaker, talking about "stages in the conceptual development of quantum science". 🧪⚛️

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

Delegates gather at the Atlanic Hotel in Hamburg, Germany, ahead of the opening dinner of Helgoland 2025 -- the centrepiece of the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology. #iyq2025🧪⚛️

Photo of delegates at Helgoland 2025 conference in Hamburg.

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Good news! We've tweaked our website so that it's now *even easier* for you to share our stories on Bluesky. Just look for the little butterfly at the top of stories like this one (written for us yesterday by student contributor Sabnam Shrestha) and click away! 💙☁️

Screenshot of an article on the Physics World website. The screenshot shows the headline ("New analysis of M67 cluster helps decode the sound of stars"), a bright yellow image of acoustic waves in the interior of a star and a series of sharing buttons, including the Bluesky butterfly, which is ringed in red

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

CERN's solution is called BASE-STEP, where STEP stands for "Symmetry Tests in Experiments with Portable Antiprotons." Basically they trap the antiprotons, load them onto a truck, and drive it somewhere without loads of stray magnetic fields. So that's what they did (with protons, this time). (3/n)

Photo of the BASE-STEP system sitting on a bright yellow trolley after being unloaded from the transport crane, which is visible above it. A woman in a hard hat and head scarf watches from the ground, while a man in a hard hat stands above her on a set of steps, also watching. (Photo: BASE/Maria Latacz)

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 15/05/2025

The scientists did commission an artist to create an impression of what a better dark-adapted camera on Perseverance might have seen. It's a bit more poetic, but in a world plagued by fake astro photos, we didn't want to imply it was the real thing!

Artist's impression of what an aurora would look like on Mars. The starry sky is greenish and blueish and the Mars rover Perseverance appears, dimly lit, in the foreground

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 27/03/2025

The paper discussed in this article is this one from December 2024, not the 2023 paper cited above. The raw data used in both papers was collected by the JWST in 2022 and 2023. We welcome good-faith requests for clarification and correction, but further insults will be blocked.

Screenshot of an article citation that reads:

Ducrot, E., Lagage, PO., Min, M. et al. Combined analysis of the 12.8 and 15 μm JWST/MIRI eclipse observations of TRAPPIST-1 b. Nat Astron 9, 358–369 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02428-z

Received 04 December 2023

Accepted 29 October 2024

Published 16 December 2024

Issue Date March 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02428-z

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Physics World @physicsworld.bsky.social · 01/11/2023

As physicists, we are unable to determine whether we have a cat or not without doing some complicated measurements. However, we do have a cactus! His name is Brian and he went a bit feral when we were out of the office during the pandemic, but we love him and he's our #ProofOfCat #ProofOfCactus.

A small, upright cactus plant in a brown plastic pot, labelled "Brian", sitting on top of a pile of papers on a desk in an office

The same cactus a few years later, growing out of its pot in a misshapen, sun-seeking way, against a backdrop of other plants on an office window ledge.

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