A study shows that there are almost twice as many risky days for large human-caused fires in the American West as there are for lightning-caused fires, due to differences in the level of heat and aridity under which each type of fire is likely to occur. The discrepancy is not accounted for in most fire early warning systems. In addition, risky days for human-caused fires are growing faster than risky days for lighting-caused fires as the climate warms. 

Triple click chemistry has revolutionized chemical synthesis with its simplicity and efficiency, allowing for the quick and selective assembly of complex molecules. Now, in a recent study, researchers from Japan developed novel trivalent platforms capable of producing highly functional triazoles in straightforward one-pot reactions. These platforms have significant potential in drug development, materials science, and bioengineering, promising advancements in sustainable chemistry and biomedical innovations.

Qubits—the fundamental units of quantum information—drive entire tech sectors. Among them, superconducting qubits could be instrumental in building a large-scale quantum computer, but they rely on electrical signals and are difficult to scale. In a breakthrough, a team of physicists at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) has achieved a fully optical readout of superconducting qubits, pushing the technology beyond its current limitations. Their findings were now published in Nature Physics.

So-called Rayleigh–Bloch waves can release enormous amount of energy that can damage technical systems under certain circumstances. They only exist below a precisely defined cut-off frequency; above this they disappear abruptly. Strangely enough, however, there are isolated high frequencies at which they can also be detected. Mathematicians from the Universities of Augsburg and Adelaide have recently proposed an explanation for this puzzling phenomenon. Together with researchers from the University of Exeter, they have now been able to prove experimentally that their theory is indeed correct. The results improve our understanding of these exotic waves, which could also be of interest for technical applications. The study has just been published in the journal Nature communications physics.

A new study published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP) presents a methodology to test the assumption of cosmic homogeneity and isotropy, known as the Cosmological Principle, by leveraging weak gravitational lensing—a light distortion effect described by general relativity—in astronomical images collected by new observatories such as the Euclid Space Telescope. Finding evidence of anomalies in the Cosmological Principle could have profound implications for our current understanding of the Universe.

SLAC researchers studying laser-driven proton acceleration introduced a self-replenishing water sheet target to address the inefficiency of replacing targets after each laser pulse. The new target had an unanticipated side effect, resulting in a naturally focused, more tightly aligned proton beam.