Lasers that emit extremely short light pulses are highly precise and are used in manufacturing, medical applications, and research. The problem: efficient short-pulse lasers require a lot of space and are expensive.

Researchers at the University of Stuttgart have now developed a new system in cooperation with Stuttgart Instruments GmbH. It is more than twice as efficient as previous systems, fits in the palm of a hand, and is highly versatile. The research is published in the journal Nature.

80% efficiency is possible
"With our new system, we can achieve levels of efficiency that were previously almost unattainable," says Prof. Harald Giessen, Head of the 4th Physics Institute at the University of Stuttgart. Through their experiments, the researchers demonstrated that achieving 80% efficiency with a short-pulse laser is fundamentally possible.

This means that 80% of the power input can actually be used. "For comparison: current technologies achieve only about 35%—which means they lose much of their efficiency and are correspondingly expensive," explains Giessen.

A lot of energy in an extremely short time
Short-pulse lasers generate light pulses that last only nano-, pico-, or femtoseconds (i.e., a few billionths to quadrillionths of a second). This allows them to concentrate a large amount of energy on a small area within an extremely short time. A pump laser and the laser that emits the short pulses work together. The pump laser supplies a special crystal with light energy. This crystal is the core of the process and transfers the energy from the pump laser to the ultrashort signal pulse. This converts the incoming light particles into infrared light.

This makes it possible to carry out experiments, measurements, or production processes that are not possible with visible light. Short-pulse lasers are used in production—for example, for precise and gentle material processing. They are also used in medical technology for imaging processes or in quantum research for particularly precise measurements at the molecular level.

Branco River 🇧🇷 from space, captured by IrideSpazio constellation.

Ahead of #COP30 in Belém this November, a reminder that rainforests and ecosystems are essential for biodiversity, with the Amazon rainforest alone home to more than a third of Earth’s species.

The Branco River, or Rio Branco, forms north of the area pictured here, near the city of Boa Vista and flows south-west for 775 km before joining Rio Negro, a major tributary of the Amazon River.

Despite its name which means white river, this false-colour image from 30 September 2025 shows the Rio Branco in black. The HEO constellation’s near-infrared channel, used to process this image, makes water appear in dark blue or black and highlights vegetation in bright red.

This band combination has been used to help us better distinguish between vegetated and non-vegetated areas. Numerous patches in various shades of brown can be clearly seen particularly on the left of the image and indicate where vegetation has been cleared.

Forests and ecosystems worldwide are being destroyed or damaged at an alarming rate. This is of great concern because they play a critical role in global climate and are home to a huge variety of biodiversity.

https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2025/11/Earth_from_Space_Branco_River_Brazil

The Hektoria Glacier on the Antarctic Peninsula retreated by at least 8 km in two months, a rate nearly 10 times faster than previously measured for a grounded glacier, according to a study in Nature Geoscience. go.nature.com/4nETBYJ

Octopuses and other cephalopods are masters of camouflage, thanks largely to color-changing skin that can help them seemingly vanish into the background. Now, researchers report a big step towards being able to recreate their superpower.

A team led by UC San Diego was able to mass-produce a key pigment, xanthommatin, that occurs in the psychedelic skin of many cephalopods. Until now, xanthommatin has proven impractical to collect from animals or make in a lab.

The researchers technically didn't make the pigment. They bioengineered bacteria to make it, coaxing microbes to not only produce this rare substance, but to do so with unprecedented efficiency, yielding up to 1,000 times more xanthommatin than previous methods.

Easier access to xanthommatin could aid efforts to study cephalopod camouflage, potentially shedding new light on this wonder of nature – and offering clues to help us mimic it.

Beyond boosting humanity's quest for octopus powers, the new study also has implications for our growing grasp of microbial manufacturing. If bacteria can be similarly persuaded to produce other chemicals, it could lead to major upgrades from current industrial practices.

"We've developed a new technique that has sped up our capabilities to make a material, in this case xanthommatin, in a bacterium for the first time," says senior author Bradley Moore, a marine chemist with Scripps Oceanography and the University of California San Diego.

"This natural pigment is what gives an octopus or a squid its ability to camouflage – a fantastic superpower – and our achievement to advance production of this material is just the tip of the iceberg," Moore says.

You might think trees have been around for a long time, but sharks have been here even longer!

See how sharks have survived and thrived through all five of Earth’s mass extinction events in this week’s Surprising Science.

Researchers have designed a groundbreaking drug molecule capable of precisely eliminating TERRA, an RNA molecule that some cancer cells rely on to survive. Using a sophisticated method known as “RIBOTAC” technology, the new compound seeks out TERRA within cells and destroys it while leaving normal molecules untouched.

This advancement could open the door to a new generation of RNA-based cancer therapies that address the genetic causes of the disease rather than only managing its symptoms.

A team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem has created this innovative molecule to specifically target and break down an RNA component connected to cancer development. The study, published in Advanced Sciences, was led by Dr. Raphael I. Benhamou, Elias Khaskia, and Dipak Dahatonde from the university’s Faculty of Medicine. Their research centers on TERRA, a molecule that helps maintain the protective ends of chromosomes, structures that safeguard DNA and support cellular stability.

When TERRA malfunctions, it can interfere with the normal process of cell aging and division. In some cancers, particularly aggressive types affecting the brain and bones, cancer cells exploit TERRA to continue growing and avoiding death.

“We’ve created a tool that acts like a guided missile for bad RNA,” said Dr. Benhamou. “It can find TERRA inside cancer cells and make it disappear — without harming healthy parts of the cell.”

How the RIBOTAC Works
The team built a small molecule using a technology called RIBOTAC, short for Ribonuclease-Targeting Chimera. This molecule can recognize a unique shape that TERRA folds into — known as a G-quadruplex — and then call in a natural cell enzyme, RNase L, to cut the RNA apart.

This is the first time scientists have been able to destroy TERRA so precisely. The molecule only targets TERRA and leaves other, similar RNAs untouched.

When tested in cancer cell lines, including HeLa and U2OS cells (which represent a hard-to-treat type of cancer), the treatment reduced TERRA levels and slowed cancer growth.

The discovery could lead to a new kind of medicine that fights cancer by going after RNA molecules — not just proteins, which most drugs target today.

“This is a new way of thinking about medicine,” said Benhamou. “Instead of focusing only on proteins, we’re now learning how to target the RNA that controls them. That could open the door to treating diseases we once thought were impossible to reach.”

You won't find visits to the dentist at the top of most people's lists of fun activities, but check-ups could be made easier by a gel that repairs and replaces damaged tooth enamel.

This is the work of an international team led by researchers at the University of Nottingham in the UK, and it has the potential to fill a gap in our extremely limited regenerative capabilities: We can't naturally regrow tooth enamel once it has decayed away, but replacing this protective covering on damaged teeth could help prevent tooth decay.

Like some previous attempts to regrow enamel, this new gel mimics how tooth enamel gets laid down in the first place. The new solution can fill in cracks in teeth, and be applied on top of bare, exposed dentine (the bone-like bulk of a tooth, below the enamel).

"When our material is applied to demineralized or eroded enamel, or exposed dentine, the material promotes the growth of crystals in an integrated and organized manner, recovering the architecture of our natural healthy enamel," says pharmaceutical scientist Abshar Hasan of the University of Nottingham in the UK.

When enamel grows for the first time, it does so via a scaffold made by natural proteins called amelogenin. Here, the researchers attempted to replicate that scaffolding using proteins called elastin-like recombinamers or ELRs.

There's an optimal strategy for winning multiple rounds of rock, paper, scissors: be as random and unpredictable as possible. Don't pay attention to what happened in the last round.

However, that's easier said than done.

To find out how brains make decisions in a competitive setting, we asked people to play 15,000 games of rock, paper, scissors while recording their brain activity.

Our results, now published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, found that those who were influenced by previous rounds really did tend to lose more often.

We also showed that people struggle to be truly random, and we can discern various biases and behaviors from their brain activity when they make decisions during a competition.

This balanced heat flow suggests its underground ocean could stay liquid for geological ages, supporting conditions for life. Scientists even used temperature data to estimate ice thickness, preparing the way for future missions to probe its mysterious depths.

Heat From Both Poles – A Game Changer
A study released today (November 7) in Science Advances, led by scientists from Oxford University, the Southwest Research Institute, and the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona, has revealed the first clear evidence of strong heat flow at Enceladus’ north pole. This discovery overturns earlier beliefs that heat loss occurred only in the moon’s active south pole. The results show that Enceladus gives off far more heat than expected from a frozen, inactive world, reinforcing the idea that it has the energy needed to sustain life.

Enceladus is an exceptionally dynamic moon with a global, salty ocean beneath its icy surface. Scientists believe this subsurface ocean is the source of the moon’s heat. Because it contains liquid water, warmth, and essential chemicals (such as phosphorus and complex hydrocarbons), this hidden sea is considered one of the most promising environments in our solar system for life beyond Earth.

However, for life to persist, Enceladus’ ocean must stay stable, maintaining a balance between heat gained and heat lost. This equilibrium depends on tidal heating: Saturn’s immense gravity flexes the moon during each orbit, producing internal friction and heat. If the tidal energy weakens, the ocean could gradually freeze. If it becomes too strong, increased activity might disrupt the delicate conditions that allow the ocean to exist.

Finding a fingerprint on the casing of a fired bullet was once a nearly impossible task. But scientists have at last achieved a breakthrough.

Researchers at Maynooth University in Ireland have now shown they can recover human fingerprints from super-heated bullet cases.

Even better, the prints appear at the "highest level of detail", including pores and ridges.

The details could be sufficient to identify a shooter, although in experiments, the bullets weren't actually shot from a gun; they were heated in a furnace.

"The Holy Grail in forensic investigation has always been retrieving prints from fired ammunition casings," claims chemist Eithne Dempsey.

"Traditionally, the intense heat of firing destroys any biological residue. However, our technique has been able to reveal fingerprint ridges that would otherwise remain imperceptible."

Beauty standards have always evolved, but in today's social media age, they shift at lightning speed. From "clean girl" minimalism to the "quiet luxury" aesthetic, each new ideal promises perfection few can reach – fueling comparison and self-doubt.

It isn't just social media trends that fuel these feelings of inadequacy. Our brain also plays a role.

Neuroscience shows us the brain is hardwired to respond to beauty. Seeing an attractive face activates the brain's reward and social circuits – releasing the feel-good hormone dopamine. This hormone is also released when we happen to live up to a specific beauty standard, making this feel biologically gratifying.

But this wiring also makes us vulnerable. Over time, the brain adapts to these ideals, treating them as the new normal.

Our brains' natural ability to change (plasticity), once an evolutionary advantage, is now exploited by a digital world that continually reshapes how we see ourselves.

Understanding this science offers hope, however. If our perceptions can be trained, they can also be retrained – allowing us to reclaim control over what beauty means.

It’s almost become expected that many space telescopes and probes can have “extended missions”. Both Voyagers are still sending data back 40+ years after their 5-year primary mission ended. But figuring out what to do with those spacecraft after their primary mission takes some negotiation. One such craft that will reach its end-of-mission in 2030 is Euclid, which is currently on a mission to map the “dark universe” of dark energy and dark matter. According to a new paper from Luigi “Rolly” Bedin of the Astronomical Institute of Padova, which is available in pre-print form on arXiv, for its second act we could turn Euclid into the most powerful astrometric telescope ever made.

Currently calculations give Euclid an extended life of about 8 years, thanks to the additional fuel the craft has on board. That would more than double the 6-year original mission, which is already well underway. With that additional time, Dr. Bedin suggests Euclid do something completely outlandish - do the exact same thing that it did for the first six-year mission.

Why on Earth would we use Euclid to do the same thing that it had just spent most of its lifetime completing? Because getting a second data point would allow us to see what moved in those six years - an astronomical value called “proper motion”. This is a calculation of how closer objects (such as stars in the Milky Way) move against a background of further objects (like distant galaxies) over time. But the key is that, in order to calculate proper motion, you need a very long time between data points to ensure the motion is significant enough to be calculated. According to Dr. Bedin, about 6 years should do the trick for Euclid.

n a striking new view from space, the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter has given scientists their first close-up glimpse of the sun's magnetic field near its south pole — and it is behaving in surprising ways.

The image above, a composite of eight days of observations taken in March when the spacecraft had its first clear view of the region, shows bright arcs sweeping around the pole — glowing traces left by magnetic structures drifting toward the sun's edge at unexpectedly high speeds. The findings reveal the sun's magnetic field is migrating toward its poles much faster than scientists predicted.

"To understand the sun's magnetic cycle, we still lack knowledge of what happens at the sun's poles," Sami Solanki, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany who co-authored the paper, said in a statement. "Solar Orbiter can now provide this missing piece of the puzzle."

For the first time ever, scientists have monitored the effects of microdosing with LSD at home as a treatment for major depressive disorder. Over the course of eight weeks, 19 people took regular tiny amounts of the psychedelic drug, resulting in a pronounced reduction in symptom severity that persisted for up to six months.

Over the past decade or so, numerous studies have highlighted the potential of psychedelic compounds like psilocybin to combat depression, though the exact mechanisms behind this effect are still being investigated. Recent years have also seen an explosion of interest in psychedelic microdosing, which involves taking tiny, “sub-perceptual” doses of mind-altering substances in the hopes of boosting creativity, improving mood, and even treating mental health disorders.

However, very little proper research into the safety or efficacy of microdosing has been conducted, and there’s a great deal of uncertainty over whether or not the practice has any benefits.

To provide some solid data, the authors of the new study gave LSD to a group of patients in New Zealand, and instructed them to take minuscule doses at home twice a week. “This is the first trial to investigate the effects of repeated microdoses of a psychedelic in a naturalistic setting as a treatment for depression,” they write in their paper.

“Patients in this trial experienced a pronounced, long-lasting reduction in depressive symptoms evident from two weeks after the commencement of microdosing until at least the end of the regimen. The reduction of symptoms continued at four weeks of treatment, which stabilised and lasted up to six months after the end of treatment,” explain the researchers.

Prior to starting treatment, participants had an average depression score of 23.7 on the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS) – a clinically-verified measure of the severity of depressive symptoms. After eight weeks of microdosing, this had dropped to 9.59, representing a 59.52 percent reduction, while nine of the 19 patients were classified as in remission.

The authors also confirm that no major adverse events were reported during the trial, illustrating the safety of microdosing with LSD – although one participant did leave the study after experiencing anxiety. This research is also the first to assess the effects of repeated psychedelic doses on the function of the heart’s valves, with no issues observed.

Scientists have developed an entirely new kind of microchip that uses microwaves instead of conventional digital circuitry to perform operations.

The processor, which can perform faster than conventional CPUs, is the world's first fully functional microwave neural network (MNN) that can fit on a chip, scientists reported in a study published Aug. 14 in the journal Nature Electronics.

High-bandwidth applications, such as radar imaging, demand high-speed processing. Microwaves that operate in the analog spectrum can meet the processing needs of these applications, which is why scientists have pursued this new approach to computing.

A new discovery suggests gravitational fields can enable matter to become quantum entangled — and that's even if the concept of quantum gravity does not exist. The idea comes from two London-based physicists who are challenging the way we think about quantum fields and how classical gravity operates.

The search for quantum gravity is the next big step in physics, as researchers seek to unify the physics of the very small with that of the very large. Quantum mechanics explains the former while general relativity theory — which famously describes how gravity works — explains the latter. Both quantum physics and the theory of general relativity were products of the first quarter of the 20th century, but 100 years later, scientists are still none the wiser as to how the two can be unified. As it stands, the theories contradict one another.

More evidence has emerged to support the natural origin of comet 3I/Atlas. After several weeks of conspiracy theories, social media debates, and speculation on popular podcasts such as Joe Rogan's, this interstellar object is still a comet. The most recent confirmation came from an observatory in South Africa that detected the first radio signal from 3I/Atlas.

But how? A radio signal? That would have to confirm the object is technlogical in nature, wouldn't it? The thing is, this isn't a radio signal like a transmission emitted by a spacecraft. It's instead a radio frequency pattern detected by MeerKAT, a radio telescope composed of 64 antennas—each with a diameter of 13.5 meters—operated by the South African Radio Astronomy Observatory. And what did it detect? "OH absorption was detected on the 1665 MHz and 1667 MHz lines," according to the researchers.

What MeerKAT specifically detected were lines of radio absorption by hydroxyl radicals, that is, OH molecules, a pattern that would be consistent with typical comet activity. The lines appear as absorption because 3I/Atlas was very close to the sun and the observing geometry favors absorption over emission. This is the phenomenon explained in WIRED a few days ago when the controversy about non-gravitational acceleration arose: When comets reach their closest point to the sun, they sublimate ice into space and receive a greater amount of radiation. This also causes them to alter their trajectory.

The hydroxyl radical (OH) can absorb or emit radiation at specific frequencies (such as the 1665 and 1667 MHz lines) due to transitions in its energy levels. These OH spectral lines have been detected in nebulae, comets, and star-forming regions. OH helps astronomers map the star- and water-born regions of the universe because it can "glow" brightly at radio frequencies under certain conditions.

We’re used to seeing our planet with land at the center.
But what if we shift our perspective?

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