Jing Liu

A droplet of liquid metal glides along a narrow channel like mercury from a broken thermometer. It needs no motor — the fuel is a chemical reaction with the surrounding liquid. But what happens when the droplet hits a wall? Previously, such machines were studied in open spaces, and in tight channels they behave differently.

An ordinary flash drive stores bits in electron traps, but you can only read them through a separate wire and amplifier. In the new development, the same piece of the semimetal tellurium plays both the role of storage and the light bulb.

A blood clot in a vessel is like a cork stuck in a narrow pipe. Standard drugs dissolve it slowly, like hot water melting a sugar cube. But while the drug works, the cork can shift and block blood flow entirely. The new approach works differently. Instead of slow dissolution, the clot is attacked with micro-explosions.

If a black hole spins quickly, it can hold a cloud of ultralight particles around it, so light that their mass almost vanishes. They arrange themselves in layers, like electrons in an atom, only here gravity does the job instead of electric forces. This structure stores energy, like a coiled spring.