Xin Liu

A rubber band is stretched, and suddenly snaps. In the atomic world, a similar picture emerges: the string binding particles can break. In a new study, physicists took a chain of Rydberg atoms and tracked how such a string breaks. Under weak tension, the string breaks completely, and the system splits into several independent pieces, as if a rubber band shattered into segments.

Light from a distant galaxy travels for billions of years, and on its way its path is slightly bent: this is how the invisible mass called dark matter reveals itself. This bending slightly stretches or compresses the galaxy's image, like a reflection in wavy glass.

Seismologists listen to the Earth the way a doctor listens to a heart. Surface waves from earthquakes travel across the planet, and their speed reveals what lies beneath our feet — solid rock, melt, or water. Usually, this requires building complex physical models.

Light from an ordinary bulb seems utterly chaotic: its waves oscillate out of sync, like a crowd where everyone walks in their own direction. Such light is called incoherent. For a long time, it was believed that elegant topological structures (knots, rings, links) could only be created in coherent laser light, where all waves march in step.

A sunspot, a dark island on the fiery surface, lives its own turbulent life. Beneath it, in invisible depths, giant magnetic loops drift like twisted cables. When such a loop emerges, it can discharge as a flare, and hurl clouds of charged particles into space. Scientists have long tried to understand what determines the strength and suddenness of these events.