Wei Chen

The quantum network works like a series of turnstiles that open only for a pair of perfectly synchronized photons. The central node tells them which turnstile to go to, but cannot forge the synchronization. 200 users can communicate with each other over distances up to 200 km — about the size of a large city.

A fusion reactor is an attempt to hold a miniature sun in a magnetic cage. To get more energy out of it, you need to squeeze the plasma denser. But tokamaks have an invisible fence: once the density crosses a certain line, the plasma shudders and falls apart. This disruption is one of the main mysteries on the road to clean energy.

On December 31, 2023, the Sun unleashed a flare of the highest class — one that releases the energy of billions of atomic bombs in just a few minutes. Along with it, a huge prominence, a cloud of superheated gas, tore away from the surface and shot outward at nearly 3000 kilometers per second.

A tightly twisted phone cord snaps and scatters sparks. Magnetic fields on the Sun behave the same way: they twist, break, and reconnect, powering flares. For the first time, astronomers have witnessed this process directly. One loop was twisted by 540 degrees — one full turn and then half again. That’s three times more than previously thought possible.

Picture a room where hundreds of people are talking at once while you strain to hear a pin drop. That is essentially how physicists with the PandaX-4T collaboration listened for silence inside 3.7 tonnes of liquid xenon.