Research Highlights in 2021

Forty years ago saw the introduction of stochastic resonance — the counter-intuitive idea that noise may help a nonlinear system respond to a weak signal.

In 1961, Rolf Landauer noted that erasing one bit of information has a thermodynamics cost. This observation explained Maxwell’s demon paradox and was influential in the early days of quantum computing.

Fifty years ago saw a breakthrough in the study of vertex models, which are statistical mechanics models that have applications to ice, among other systems.

Menghao Wu looks back on a century of research in ferroelectricity.

The OPERA experiment should be remembered for its scientific legacy not for the superluminal neutrinos report 10 years ago.

Elliot Leader recounts the theoretical prediction and recent discovery of the odderon.

A collaboration between art and science shows how to overcome the limits of traditional weaving techniques as reported in a recent article in Physical Review Letters.

Marija Drndić reflects on 20 years of solid-state nanopores.

A paper in Nature Machine Intelligence reports a deep-learning-based approach for measuring fluid flows using particle image velocimetry.

Launched 2 years ago, the Deep-Space Atomic Clock (DSAC) mission has exceeded expectations for the first mercury ion clock in space, demonstrating a long-term stability beyond the current performance of other space clocks.

Sergey Borisenko reflects on 99 years of angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES), a technique widely used today to understand the electronic structure of materials.

A table-top experiment, reported in Physical Review Letters, simulates a shockwave propagating through a solid and provides evidence that continuum models do not capture all the relevant physics.

A paper in Science Advances presents a model of how pasta deforms as it cooks and suggests designs for “flat pack” pasta.

A paper in Soft Matter reports new measurements of the anatomy and fluid dynamics of a leg joint of jumping spiders, which use a hydraulic system to move.

In May 2011, the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02) arrived on the International Space Station. Despite the difficulties of running a particle physics experiment in space, AMS-02 has produced exciting results related to dark matter and cosmic rays.

10 years since the completion of the IceCube neutrino detector, it has made a number of exciting discoveries, including the recent observation of W boson decay, a process known as the Glashow resonance.

Antihydrogen was first produced in the lab in 1995 and in 2011 it was successfully trapped for longer periods. From there, one step at a time, physicists have been overcoming technical challenges to recently achieve a milestone: the laser cooling of antihydrogen.

A paper in Science Advances reports a new approach to simultaneously detecting the colour and polarization of light, based on the eyes of mantis shrimps.

Two papers in Nature Physics and Physical Review Letters show topological phases forming in twisted van der Waals structures.

A paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reports on how an aquatic worm forms entangled blobs that move collectively, without the need for centralized control or even communication between the worms.