Inside a vacuum chamber in Hefei, China, a thread of glowing plasma hangs in space. Argon gas feeds into the device at five milligrams per second — barely a trickle. Electromagnetic forces tear the gas apart into ions and electrons, then hurl it backward at extraordinary speed. The thrust produced is, on its face, modest: … Read more
The quantum state exists in one place. Then it exists in another. Nothing physical moved between them — not an electron, not a photon carrying the information. Just the spooky correlations of entanglement doing what Einstein famously refused to believe they could do. Quantum teleportation is, in this sense, genuinely strange every time it works. … Read more
The Chinese suanpan has been around for roughly 1,000 years. Slide a bead up, slide a bead down — each rod operates independently, and the number it represents depends only on where the beads sit. Break one rod and the rest carry on just fine. It is, in a sense, the world’s most fault-tolerant calculator. … Read more
THE MICRONEEDLES dissolve within minutes, but not before they’ve done something conventional acne treatments struggle with: deliver three entirely different drugs exactly where they’re needed. One drug floats in water. Another repels it. The third sits somewhere between. For decades, that incompatibility has frustrated dermatologists trying to treat the 85 per cent of teenagers who … Read more
In a laboratory at Nanjing Agricultural University, a common soil fungus is doing something chemical engineers have struggled with for decades. Aspergillus niger, the same organism that helps ferment soy sauce and produces citric acid for fizzy drinks, is quietly dissolving phosphorus from one of the world’s most problematic industrial wastes. The waste is phosphogypsum, … Read more
Gene therapy just leapt past a barrier that’s held it back for years. Researchers in China have worked out how to pack oversized genes into the viral delivery vehicles that doctors use to treat genetic diseases, a trick that could unlock treatments for hundreds of conditions previously considered untreatable. The breakthrough centres on adeno-associated viruses, … Read more
Eight million tonnes of cigarette butts are tossed onto streets and into bins worldwide each year. Most decompose glacially slowly, leaching toxins as they go. But what if this ubiquitous waste could power your phone? Researchers in China have transformed discarded cigarette filters into carbon supercapacitors with performance that rivals commercial activated carbon. The trick … Read more
Families watching Alzheimer’s take hold have heard promises before. But what if the answer wasn’t a drug or surgery, but a sound—a low, steady drone at the pitch of a refrigerator hum? Inside a research lab in China, nine aged rhesus monkeys sat near speakers emitting 40-hertz tones for an hour each day. After just … Read more
Stroke patients grinding through repetitive arm exercises know the look: a therapist checking the clock, mentally calculating how many more patients need attention before shift end. That glance, however brief, changes the room. Healthcare systems worldwide are hemorrhaging staff faster than training programs can replace them, and researchers are asking whether machines might fill not … Read more
For years, the price of clean hydrogen has stubbornly remained three to five times higher than the carbon-heavy version made from natural gas. That gap has kept the hydrogen economy theoretical rather than practical. A new solar-powered system that replaces half the chemistry in water splitting has just closed that gap entirely, producing green hydrogen … Read more