In the early universe, moments after the Big Bang and cosmic inflation, clusters of exotic, massive particles could have collapsed to form bizarre objects called cannibal stars and boson stars. In turn, these could have then collapsed to form primordial black holes – all before the first elements were able to form.

This curious chain of events is predicted by a new model proposed by a trio of scientists at SISSA, the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy.

Their proposal involves a hypothetical moment in the early universe called the early matter-dominated (EMD) epoch. This would have lasted only a few seconds after the Big Bang, but could have been dominated by exotic particles, such as the massive, supersymmetric particles predicted by string theory.

“There are no observations that hint at the existence of an EMD epoch – yet!” says SISSA’s Pranjal Ralegankar. “But many cosmologists are hoping that an EMD phase occurred because it is quite natural in many models.”

Some models of the early universe predict the formation of primordial black holes from quantum fluctuations in the inflationary field. Now, Ralegankar and his colleagues, Daniele Perri and Takeshi Kobayashi propose a new and more natural pathway for forming primordial holes via an EMD epoch.

They postulate that in the first second of existence when the universe was small and incredibly hot, exotic massive particles emerged and clustered in dense haloes. The SISSA physicists propose that the haloes then collapsed into hypothetical objects called cannibal stars and boson stars.

Cannibal stars are powered by particles annihilating each other, which would have allowed the objects to resist further gravitational collapse for a few seconds. However, they would not have produced light like normal stars.

“The particles in a cannibal star can only talk to each other, which is why they are forced to annihilate each other to counter the immense pressure from gravity,” Ralegankar tells Physics World. “They are immensely hot, simply because the particles that we consider are so massive. The temperature of our cannibal stars can range from a few GeV to on the order of 10¹⁰ GeV. For comparison, the Sun is on the order of keV.”

Boson stars, meanwhile, would be made from pure a Bose–Einstein condensate, which is a state of matter whereby the individual particles quantum mechanically act as one.

Both the cannibal stars and boson stars would exist within larger haloes that would quickly collapse to form primordial black holes with masses about the same as asteroids (about 10¹⁴–10¹⁹ kg). All of this could have taken place just 10 s after the Big Bang.

Dark matter possibility

Ralegankar, Perri and Kobayashi point out that the total mass of primordial black holes that their model produces matches the amount of dark matter in the universe.

“Current observations rule out black holes to be dark matter, except in the asteroid-mass range,” says Ralegankar. “We showed that our models can produce black holes in that mass range.”

Richard Massey, who is a dark-matter researcher at Durham University in the UK, agrees that microlensing observations by projects such as the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment (OGLE) have ruled out a population of black holes with planetary masses, but not asteroid masses. However, Massey is doubtful that these black holes could make up dark matter.

“It would be pretty contrived for them to make up a large fraction of what we call dark matter,” he says. “It’s possible that dark matter could be these primordial black holes, but they’d need to have been created with the same mass no matter where they were and whatever environment they were in, and that mass would have to be tuned to evade current experimental evidence.”

In the coming years, upgrades to OGLE and the launch of NASA’s Roman Space Telescope should finally provide sensitivity to microlensing events produced by objects in the asteroid mass range, allowing researchers to settle the matter.

It is also possible that cannibal and boson stars exist today, produced by collapsing haloes of dark matter. But unlike those proposed for the early universe, modern cannibal and boson stars would be stable and long-lasting.

“Much work has already been done for boson stars from dark matter, and we are simply suggesting that future studies should also think about the possibility of cannibal stars from dark matter,” explains Ralegankar. “Gravitational lensing would be one way to search for them, and depending on models, maybe also gamma rays from dark-matter annihilation.”

The research is described in Physical Review D.

The post Did cannibal stars and boson stars populate the early universe? appeared first on Physics World.

NASA has selected Northrop Grumman to provide cargo delivery services to the International Space Station once a spacecraft designed to deorbit the station is installed.

The post Northrop Grumman selected to provide cargo services for final phase of ISS appeared first on SpaceNews.

The EPA is prioritizing review of new chemicals to be used in data centers. Experts say this could lead to the fast approval of new types of forever chemicals—with limited oversight.

The deliberate targeting of scientists in recent years has become one of the most disturbing, and overlooked, developments in modern conflict. In particular, Iranian physicists and engineers have been singled out for almost two decades, with sometimes fatal consequences. In 2007 Ardeshir Hosseinpour, a nuclear physicist at Shiraz University, died in mysterious circumstances that were widely attributed to poisoning or radioactive exposure.

Over the following years, at least five more Iranian researchers have been killed. They include particle physicist Masoud Ali-Mohammadi, who was Iran’s representative at the Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East project. Known as SESAME, it is the only scientific project in the Middle East where Iran and Israel collaborate.

Others to have died include nuclear engineer Majid Shahriari, another Iranian representative at SESAME, and nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who were both killed by bombing or gunfire in Tehran. These attacks were never formally acknowledged, nor were they condemned by international scientific institutions. The message, however, was implicit: scientists in politically sensitive fields could be treated as strategic targets, even far from battlefields.

What began as covert killings of individual researchers has now escalated, dangerously, into open military strikes on academic communities. Israeli airstrikes on residential areas in Tehran and Isfahan during the 12-day conflict between the two countries in June led to at least 14 Iranian scientists and engineers and members of their family being killed. The scientists worked in areas such as materials science, aerospace engineering and laser physics. I believe this shift, from covert assassinations to mass casualties, crossed a line. It treats scientists as enemy combatants simply because of their expertise.

The assassinations of scientists are not just isolated tragedies; they are a direct assault on the global commons of knowledge, corroding both international law and international science. Unless the world responds, I believe the precedent being set will endanger scientists everywhere and undermine the principle that knowledge belongs to humanity, not the battlefield.

Drawing a red line

International humanitarian law is clear: civilians, including academics, must be protected. Targeting scientists based solely on their professional expertise undermines the Geneva Convention and erodes the civilian–military distinction at the heart of international law.

Iran, whatever its politics, remains a member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Its scientists are entitled under international law to conduct peaceful research in medicine, energy and industry. Their work is no more inherently criminal than research that other countries carry out in artificial intelligence (AI), quantum technology or genetics.

If we normalize the preemptive assassination of scientists, what stops global rivals from targeting, say, AI researchers in Silicon Valley, quantum physicists in Beijing or geneticists in Berlin? Once knowledge itself becomes a liability, no researcher is safe. Equally troubling is the silence of the international scientific community with organizations such as the UN, UNESCO and the European Research Council as well as leading national academies having not condemned these killings, past or present.

Silence is not neutral. It legitimizes the treatment of scientists as military assets. It discourages international collaboration in sensitive but essential research and it creates fear among younger researchers, who may abandon high-impact fields to avoid risk. Science is built on openness and exchange, and when researchers are murdered for their expertise, the very idea of science as a shared human enterprise is undermined.

The assassinations are not solely Iran’s loss. The scientists killed were part of a global community; collaborators and colleagues in the pursuit of knowledge. Their deaths should alarm every nation and every institution that depends on research to confront global challenges, from climate change to pandemics.

I believe that international scientific organizations should act. At a minimum, they should publicly condemn the assassination of scientists and their families; support independent investigations under international law; as well as advocate for explicit protections for scientists and academic facilities in conflict zones.

Importantly, voices within Israel’s own scientific community can play a critical role too. Israeli academics, deeply committed to collaboration and academic freedom, understand the costs of blurring the boundary between science and war. Solidarity cannot be selective.

Recent events are a test case for the future of global science. If the international community tolerates the targeting of scientists, it sets a dangerous precedent that others will follow. What appears today as a regional assault on scientists from the Global South could tomorrow endanger researchers in China, Europe, Russia or the US.

Science without borders can only exist if scientists are recognized and protected as civilians without borders. That principle is now under direct threat and the world must draw a red line – killing scientists for their expertise is unacceptable. To ignore these attacks is to invite a future in which knowledge itself becomes a weapon, and the people who create it expendable. That is a world no-one should accept.

The post Academic assassinations are a threat to global science appeared first on Physics World.

After a high-profile malfunction left two astronauts stranded on the International Space Station, NASA is requiring rigorous testing before humans get back on board.

ESA and its supporters will discover in the next two days how successful they have been in convincing European governments to significantly increase investments in space and bolster European autonomy.

The post ESA members to decide on Europe’s future in space at ministerial conference appeared first on SpaceNews.

DNA is a fascinating macromolecule that guides protein production and enables cell replication. It has also found applications in nanoscience and materials design.

Colloidal crystals are ordered structures made from tiny particles suspended in fluid that can bond to other particles and add functionalisation to materials. By controlling colloidal particles, we can build advanced nanomaterials using a bottom-up approach. There are several ways to control colloidal particle design, ranging from experimental conditions such as pH and temperature to external controls like light and magnetic fields.

An exciting approach is to use DNA-mediated processes. DNA binds to colloidal surfaces and regulates how the colloids organize, providing molecular-level control. These connections are reversible and can be broken using standard experimental conditions (e.g., temperature), allowing for dynamic and adaptable systems. One important motivation is their good biocompatibility, which has enabled applications in biomedicine such as drug delivery, biosensing, and immunotherapy.

Programmable Atom Equivalents (PAEs) are large colloidal particles whose surfaces are functionalized with single-stranded DNA, while separate, much smaller DNA-coated linkers, called Electron Equivalents (EEs), roam in solution and mediate bonds between PAEs. In typical PAE-EE systems, the EEs carry multiple identical DNA ends that can all bind the same type of PAE, which limits the complexity of the assemblies and makes it harder to program highly specific connections between different PAE types.

In this study, the researchers investigate how EEs with arbitrary valency, carrying many DNA arms, regulate interactions in a binary mixture of two types of PAEs. Each EE has multiple single-stranded DNA ends of two different types, each complementary to the DNA on one of the PAE species. The team develops a statistical mechanical model to predict how EEs distribute between the PAEs and to calculate the effective interaction, a measure of how strongly the PAEs attract each other, which in turn controls the structures that can form.

Using this model, they inform Monte Carlo simulations to predict system behaviour under different conditions. The model shows quantitative agreement with simulation results and reveals an anomalous dependence of PAE-PAE interactions on EE valency, with interactions converging at high valency. Importantly, the researchers identify an optimal valency that maximizes selectivity between targeted and non-targeted binding pairs. This groundbreaking research provides design principles for programmable self-assembly and offers a framework that can be integrated into DNA nanoscience.

Do you want to learn more about this topic?

Assembly of colloidal particles in solution by Kun Zhao and Thomas G Mason (2018)

The post DNA as a molecular architect appeared first on Physics World.

Proteins are made up of a sequence of building blocks called amino acids. Understanding these sequences is crucial for studying how proteins work, how they interact with other molecules, and how changes (mutations) can lead to diseases.

These mutations happen over vastly different time periods and are not completely random but strongly correlated, both in space (distinct sites along the sequences) and in time (subsequent mutations of the same site).

It turns out that these correlations are very reminiscent of disordered physical systems, notably glasses, emulsions, and foams.

A team of researchers from Italy and France have now used this similarity to build a new statistical model to simulate protein evolution.  They went on to study the role of different factors causing these mutations.

They found that the initial (ancestral) protein sequence has a significant influence on the evolution process, especially in the short term. This means that information from the ancestral sequence can be traced back over a certain period and is not completely lost.

The strength of interactions between different amino acids within the protein affects how long this information persists.

Although ultimately the team did find differences between the evolution of physical systems and that of protein sequences, this kind of insight would not have been possible without using the language of statistical physics, i.e. space-time correlations.

The researchers expect that their results will soon be tested in the lab thanks to upcoming advances in experimental techniques.

The post The link between protein evolution and statistical physics appeared first on Physics World.

Unusually obstructive plumage compromises the vision of two types of pheasants—a first in birds

Bats could form a bridge between marine and terrestrial mammals, scientists say

The Space Systems Command issued multiple awards for space-based interceptor (SBI) prototype demonstrations through competitive Other Transaction Agreements

The post Space Force awards first prototype deals for space-based interceptors under Golden Dome appeared first on SpaceNews.

Learn how a newly detected gamma-ray halo in the Milky Way could mark the first direct glimpse of dark matter.

Learn about Dunkleosteus, an ancient apex predator that ripped apart large fish with sharp bony blades that lined its mouth. 

Learn how your body uses an immune-to-brain communication line to nudge you away from others when you’re getting sick.

WARSAW, Poland — The European Space Agency and Lithuanian space startup Astrolight are building the first optical ground station (OGS) in Kangerlussuaq, Greenland as a way to bolster ground communications and to help protect against signal interference or piracy. Based on laser technology, the station is to provide greater space-to-ground connectivity than radio frequency (RF), […]

The post Lithuanian space company Astrolight launches Greenland optical ground station project appeared first on SpaceNews.

UK artist Alison Stott has created a new glass and light artwork – entitled Naturally Focused – that is inspired by the work of theoretical physicist Michael Berry from the University of Bristol.

Stott, who recently competed an MA in glass at Arts University Plymouth, spent over two decades previously working in visual effects for film and television, where she focussed on creating photorealistic imagery.

Her studies touched on how complex phenomena can arise from seemingly simple set-ups, for example in a rotating glass sculpture lit by LEDs.

“My practice inhabits the spaces between art and science, glass and light, craft and experience,” notes Stott. “Working with molten glass lets me embrace chaos, indeterminacy, and materiality, and my work with caustics explores the co-creation of light, matter, and perception.”

The new artwork is based on “caustics” – the curved patterns that form when light is reflected or refracted by curved surfaces or objects

The focal point of the artwork is a hand-blown glass lens that was waterjet-cut into a circle and polished so that its internal structure and optical behaviour are clearly visible. The lens is suspended within stainless steel gyroscopic rings and held by a brass support and stainless stell backplate.

The rings can be tilted or rotated to “activate shifting field of caustic projections that ripple across” the artwork. Mathematical equations are also engraved onto the brass that describe the “singularities of light” that are visible on the glass surface.

The work is inspired by Berry’s research into the relationship between classical and quantum behaviour and how subtle geometric structures govern how waves and particles behave.

Berry recently won the 2025 Isaac Newton Medal and Prize, which is presented by the Institute of Physics, for his “profound contributions across mathematical and theoretical physics in a career spanning over 60 years”.

Stott says that working with Berry has pushed her understanding of caustics. “The more I learn about how these structures emerge and why they matter across physics, the more compelling they become,” notes Stott. “My aim is to let the phenomena speak for themselves, creating conditions where people can directly encounter physical behaviour and perhaps feel the same awe and wonder I do.”

The artwork will go on display at the University of Bristol following a ceremony to be held on 27 November.

The post ‘Caustic’ light patterns inspire new glass artwork appeared first on Physics World.

WiFi networks could pose significant privacy risks even to people who aren’t carrying or using WiFi-enabled devices, say researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany. According to their analysis, the current version of the technology passively records information that is detailed enough to identify individuals moving through networks, prompting them to call for protective measures in the next iteration of WiFi standards.

Although wireless networks are ubiquitous and highly useful, they come with certain privacy and security risks. One such risk stems from a phenomenon known as WiFi sensing, which the researchers at KIT’s Institute of Information Security and Dependability (KASTEL) define as “the inference of information about the networks’ environment from its signal propagation characteristics”.

“As signals propagate through matter, they interfere with it – they are either transmitted, reflected, absorbed, polarized, diffracted, scattered, or refracted,” they write in their study, which is published in the Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS ’25). “By comparing an expected signal with a received signal, the interference can be estimated and used for error correction of the received data.”

 An under-appreciated consequence, they continue, is that this estimation contains information about any humans who may have unwittingly been in the signal’s path. By carefully analysing the signal’s interference with the environment, they say, “certain aspects of the environment can be inferred” – including whether humans are present, what they are doing and even who they are.

“Identity inference attack” is a threat

The KASTEL team terms this an “identity inference attack” and describes it as a threat that is as widespread as it is serious. “This technology turns every router into a potential means for surveillance,” says Julian Todt, who co-led the study with his KIT colleague Thorsten Strufe. “For example, if you regularly pass by a café that operates a WiFi network, you could be identified there without noticing it and be recognized later – for example by public authorities or companies.”

While Todt acknowledges that security services, cybercriminals and others do have much simpler ways of tracking individuals – for example by accessing data from CCTV cameras or video doorbells – he argues that the ubiquity of wireless networks lends itself to being co-opted as a near-permanent surveillance infrastructure. There is, he adds, “one concerning property” about wireless networks: “They are invisible and raise no suspicion.”

Identity of individuals could be extracted using a machine-learning model

Although the possibility of using WiFi networks in this way is not new, most previous WiFi-based security attacks worked by analysing so-called channel state information (CSI). These data indicate how a radio signal changes when it reflects off walls, furniture, people or animals. However, the KASTEL researchers note that the latest WiFi standard, known as WiFi 5 (802.11ac), changes the picture by enabling a new and potentially easier form of attack based on beamforming feedback information (BFI).

While beamforming uses similar information as CSI, Todt explains that it does so on the sender’s side instead of the receiver’s. This means that a BFI-based surveillance method would require nothing more than standard devices connected to the WiFi network. “The BFI could be used to create images from different perspectives that might then serve to identify persons that find themselves in the WiFi signal range,” Todt says. “The identity of individuals passing through these radio waves could then be extracted using a machine-learning model. Once trained, this model would make an identification in just a few seconds.”

In their experiments, Todt and colleagues studied 197 participants as they walked through a WiFi field while being simultaneously recorded with CSI and BFI from four different angles. The participants had five different “walking styles” (such as walking normally and while carrying a backpack) as well as different gaits. The researchers found that they could identify individuals with nearly 100% accuracy, regardless of the recording angle or the individual’s walking style or gait.

“Risks to our fundamental rights”

“The technology is powerful, but at the same time entails risks to our fundamental rights, especially to privacy,” says Strufe. He warns that authoritarian states could use the technology to track demonstrators and members of opposition groups, prompting him and his colleagues to “urgently call” for protective measures and privacy safeguards to be included in the forthcoming IEEE 802.11bf WiFi standard.

“The literature on all novel sensing solutions highlights their utility for various novel applications,” says Todt, “but the privacy risks that are inherent to such sensing are often overlooked, or worse — these sensors are claimed to be privacy-friendly without any rationale for these claims. As such, we feel it necessary to point out the privacy risks that novel solutions such as WiFi sensing bring with them.”

The researchers say they would like to see approaches developed that can mitigate the risk of identity inference attack. However, they are aware that this will be difficult, since this type of attack exploits the physical properties of the actual WiFi signal. “Ideally, we would influence the WiFi standard to contain privacy-protections in future versions,” says Todt, “but even the impact of this would be limited as there are already millions of WiFi devices out there that are vulnerable to such an attack.”

The post Is your WiFi spying on you? appeared first on Physics World.

Nation was first to legally protect frozen landscapes, a key source of water

Irvine, Calif., November 25, 2025 — Terran Orbital Corporation is pleased to announce that Cheryl Paquete has joined the company full-time as Chief Financial Officer, transitioning from her previous temporary […]

The post Terran Orbital Announces Cheryl Paquete as Chief Financial Officer appeared first on SpaceNews.

The rise of peer adversaries and new offensive weapons is changing communications requirements from military command headquarters to the warfighting edge. That brings an increased need for secure, reliable networking capacity to meet real-time response demands of modern battlefield situations. Rapid communications will also be integral to achieving the vision of the Golden Dome multi-layer […]

The post Making COMSATCOM accessible for large-scale defense requirements  appeared first on SpaceNews.

Earth observation company BlackSky was the confidential customer for the latest Rocket Lab launch, placing into orbit a satellite that has already returned its first images.

The post BlackSky announces latest Gen-3 satellite in orbit after confidential Electron launch appeared first on SpaceNews.

How do standards support the translation of quantum science into at-scale commercial opportunities?

The standardization process helps to promote the legitimacy of emerging quantum technologies by distilling technical inputs and requirements from all relevant stakeholders across industry, research and government. Put simply: if you understand a technology well enough to standardize elements of it, that’s when you know it’s moved beyond hype and theory into something of practical use for the economy and society.

What are the upsides of standardization for developers of quantum technologies and, ultimately, for end-users in industry and the public sector?

Standards will, over time, help the quantum technology industry achieve critical mass on the supply side, with those economies of scale driving down prices and increasing demand. As the nascent quantum supply chain evolves – linking component manufacturers, subsystem developers and full-stack quantum computing companies – standards will also ensure interoperability between products from different vendors and different regions.

Those benefits flow downstream as well because standards, when implemented properly, increase trust among end-users by defining a minimum quality of products, processes and services. Equally important, as new innovations are rolled out into the marketplace by manufacturers, standards will ensure compatibility across current and next-generation quantum systems, reducing the likelihood of lock-ins to legacy technologies.

What’s your role in coordinating NPL’s standards effort in quantum science and technology?

I have strategic oversight of our core technical programmes in quantum computing, quantum networking, quantum metrology and quantum-enabled PNT (position, navigation and timing). It’s a broad-scope remit that spans research, training as well as responsibility for standardization and international collaboration, with the latter often going hand-in-hand.

Right now, we have over 150 people working within the NPL quantum metrology programme. Their collective focus is on developing the measurement science necessary to build, test and evaluate a wide range of quantum devices and systems. Our research helps innovators, whether in an industry or university setting, to push the limits of quantum technology by providing leading-edge capabilities and benchmarking to measure the performance of new quantum products and services.

It sounds like there are multiple layers of activity.

That’s right. For starters, we have a team focusing on the inter-country strategic relationships, collaborating closely with colleagues at other National Metrology Institutes (like NIST in the US and PTB in Germany). A key role in this regard is our standards specialist who, given his background working in the standards development organizations (SDOs), acts as a “connector” between NPL’s quantum metrology teams and, more widely, the UK’s National Quantum Technology Programme and the international SDOs.

We also have a team of technical experts who sit on specialist working groups within the SDOs. Their inputs to standards development are not about NPL’s interests, rather providing expertise and experience gained from cutting-edge metrology; also building a consolidated set of requirements gathered from stakeholders across the quantum community to further the UK’s strategic and technical priorities in quantum.

So NPL’s quantum metrology programme provides a focal point for quantum standardization?

Absolutely. We believe that quantum metrology and standardization are key enablers of quantum innovation, fast-tracking the adoption and commercialization of quantum technologies while building confidence among investors and across the quantum supply chain and early-stage user base. For NPL and its peers, the task right now is to agree on the terminology and best practice as we figure out the performance metrics, benchmarks and standards that will enable quantum to go mainstream.

How does NPL engage the UK quantum community on standards development?

Front-and-centre is the UK Quantum Standards Network Pilot. This initiative – which is being led by NPL – brings together representatives from industry, academia and government to work on all aspects of standards development: commenting on proposals and draft standards; discussing UK standards policy and strategy; and representing the UK in the European and international SDOs. The end-game? To establish the UK as a leading voice in quantum standardization, both strategically and technically, and to ensure that UK quantum technology companies have access to global supply chains and markets.

What about NPL outreach to prospective end-users of quantum technologies?

The Quantum Standards Network Pilot also provides a direct line to prospective end-users of quantum technologies in business sectors like finance, healthcare, pharmaceuticals and energy. What’s notable is that the end-users are often preoccupied with questions that link in one way or another to standardization. For example: how well do quantum technologies stack up against current solutions? Are quantum systems reliable enough yet? What does quantum cost to implement and maintain, including long-term operational costs? Are there other emerging technologies that could do the same job? Is there a solid, trustworthy supply chain?

It’s clear that international collaboration is mandatory for successful standards development. What are the drivers behind the recently announced NMI-Q collaboration?

The quantum landscape is changing fast, with huge scope for disruptive innovation in quantum computing, quantum communications and quantum sensing. Faced with this level of complexity, NMI-Q leverages the combined expertise of the world’s leading National Metrology Institutes – from the G7 countries and Australia – to accelerate the development and adoption of quantum technologies.

No one country can do it all when it comes to performance metrics, benchmarks and standards in quantum science and technology. As such, NMI-Q’s priorities are to conduct collaborative pre-standardization research; develop a set of “best measurement practices” needed by industry to fast-track quantum innovation; and, ultimately, shape the global standardization effort in quantum. NPL’s prominent role within NMI-Q (I am the co-chair along with Barbara Goldstein of NIST) underscores our commitment to evidence-based decision-making in standards development and, ultimately, to the creation of a thriving quantum ecosystem.

What are the attractions of NPL’s quantum programme for early-career physicists?

Every day, our measurement scientists address cutting-edge problems in quantum – as challenging as anything they’ll have encountered previously in an academic setting. What’s especially motivating, however, is that the NPL is a mission-driven endeavour with measurement outcomes linking directly to wider societal and economic benefits – not just in the UK, but internationally as well.

Further reading

Performance metrics and benchmarks point the way to practical quantum advantage

End note: NPL retains copyright on this article.

The post Why quantum metrology is the driving force for best practice in quantum standardization appeared first on Physics World.

 

In proton exchange membrane water electrolysis (PEMWE) systems, voltage cycles dropping below a threshold are associated with reversible performance improvements, which remain poorly understood despite being documented in literature. The distinction between reversible and irreversible performance changes is crucial for accurate degradation assessments. One approach in literature to explain this behaviour is the oxidation and reduction of iridium. Iridium-based electrocatalyst activity and stability in PEMWE hinge on their oxidation state, influenced by the applied voltage. Yet, full-cell PEMWE dynamic performance remains under-explored, with a focus typically on stability rather than activity. This study systematically investigates reversible performance behaviour in PEMWE cells using Ir-black as an anodic catalyst. Results reveal a recovery effect when the low voltage level drops below 1.5 V, with further enhancements observed as the voltage decreases, even with a short holding time of 0.1 s. This reversible recovery is primarily driven by improved anode reaction kinetics, likely due to changing iridium oxidation states, and is supported by alignment between the experimental data and a dynamic model that links iridium oxidation/reduction processes to performance metrics. This model allows distinguishing between reversible and irreversible effects and enables the derivation of optimized operation schemes utilizing the recovery effect.

Tobias Krenz is a simulation and modelling engineer at Siemens Energy in the Transformation of Industry business area focusing on reducing energy consumption and carbon-dioxide emissions in industrial processes. He completed his PhD from Liebniz University Hannover in February 2025. He earned a degree from Berlin University of Applied Sciences in 2017 and a MSc from Technische Universität Darmstadt in 2020.

 

Alexander Rex is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Electric Power Systems at Leibniz University Hannover. He holds a degree in mechanical engineering from Technische Universität Braunschweig, an MEng from Tongji University, and an MSc from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). He was a visiting scholar at Berkeley Lab from 2024 to 2025.

The post Reversible degradation phenomenon in PEMWE cells appeared first on Physics World.

Ramy Shelbaya has been hooked on physics ever since he was a 12-year-old living in Egypt and read about the Joint European Torus (JET) fusion experiment in the UK. Biology and chemistry were interesting to him but never quite as “satisfying”, especially as they often seemed to boil down to physics in the end. “So I thought, maybe that’s where I need to go,” Shelbaya recalls.

His instincts seem to have led him in the right direction. Shelbaya is now chief executive of Quantum Dice, an Oxford-based start-up he co-founded in 2020 to develop quantum hardware for exploiting the inherent randomness in quantum mechanics. It closed its first funding round in 2021 with a seven-figure investment from a consortium of European investors, while also securing grant funding on the same scale.

Now providing cybersecurity hardware systems for clients such as BT, Quantum Dice is launching a piece of hardware for probabilistic computing, based on the same core innovation. Full of joy and zeal for his work, Shelbaya admits that his original decision to pursue physics was “scary”. Back then, he didn’t know anyone who had studied the subject and was not sure where it might lead.

The journey to a start-up

Fortunately, Shelbaya’s parents were onboard from the start and their encouragement proved “incredibly helpful”. His teachers also supported him to explore physics in his extracurricular reading, instilling a confidence in the subject that eventually led Shelbaya to do undergraduate and master’s degrees in physics at École normale supérieure PSL in France.

He then moved to the UK to do a PhD in atomic and laser physics at the University of Oxford. Just as he was wrapping up his PhD, Oxford University Innovation (OUI) – which manages its technology transfer and consulting activities – launched a new initiative that proved pivotal to Shelbaya’s career.

OUI had noted that the university generated a lot of IP and research results that could be commercialized but that the academics producing it often favoured academic work over progressing the technology transfer themselves. On the other hand, lots of students were interested in entering the world of business.

To encourage those who might be business-minded to found their own firms, while also fostering more spin-outs from the university’s patents and research, OUI launched the Student Entrepreneurs’ Programme (StEP). A kind of talent show to match budding entrepreneurs with technology ready for development, StEP invited participants to team up, choose commercially promising research from the university, and pitch for support and mentoring to set up a company.

As part of Oxford’s atomic and laser physics department, Shelbaya was aware that it had been developing a quantum random number generator. So when the competition was launched, he collaborated with other competition participants to pitch the device. “My team won, and this is how Quantum Dice was born.”

Random value

The initial technology was geared towards quantum random number generation, for particular use in cybersecurity. Random numbers are at the heart of all encryption algorithms, but generating truly random numbers has been a stumbling block, with the “pseudorandom” numbers people make do with being prone to prediction and hence security violation.

Quantum mechanics provides a potential solution because there is inherent randomness in the values of certain quantum properties. Although for a long time this randomness was “a bane to quantum physicists”, as Shelbaya puts it, Quantum Dice and other companies producing quantum random number generators are now harnessing it for useful technologies.

Where Quantum Dice sees itself as having an edge over its competitors is in its real-time quality assurance of the true quantum randomness of the device’s output. This means it should be able to spot any corruption to the output due to environmental noise or someone tampering with the device, which is an issue with current technologies.

Quantum Dice already offers Quantum Random Number Generator (QRNG) products in a range of form factors that integrate directly within servers, PCs and hardware security systems. Clients can also access the company’s cloud-based solution –  Quantum Entropy-as-a-Service – which, powered by its QRNG hardware, integrates into the Internet of Things and cloud infrastructure.

Recently Quantum Dice has also launched a probabilistic computing processor based on its QRNG for use in algorithms centred on probabilities. These are often geared towards optimization problems that apply in a number of sectors, including supply chains and logistics, finance, telecommunications and energy, as well as simulating quantum systems, and Boltzmann machines – a type of energy-based machine learning model for which Shelbaya says researchers “have long sought efficient hardware”.

Stress testing

After winning the start-up competition in 2019 things got trickier when Quantum Dice was ready to be incorporated, which occurred just at the start of the first COVID-19 lockdown. Shelbaya moved the prototype device into his living room because it was the only place they could ensure access to it, but it turned out the real challenges lay elsewhere.

“One of the first things we needed was investments, and really, at that stage of the company, what investors are investing in is you,” explains Shelbaya, highlighting how difficult this is when you cannot meet in person. On the plus side, since all his meetings were remote, he could speak to investors in Asia in the morning, Europe in the afternoon and the US in the evening, all within the same day.

Another challenge was how to present the technology simply enough so that people would understand and trust it, while not making it seem so simple that anyone could be doing it. “There’s that sweet spot in the middle,” says Shelbaya. “That is something that took time, because it’s a muscle that I had never worked.”

Due rewards

The company performed well for its size and sector in terms of securing investments when their first round of funding closed in 2021. Shelbaya is shy of attributing the success to his or even the team’s abilities alone, suggesting this would “underplay a lot of other factors”. These include the rising interest in quantum technologies, and the advantages of securing government grant funding programmes at the same time, which he feels serves as “an additional layer of certification”.

For Shelbaya every day is different and so are the challenges. Quantum Dice is a small new company, where many of the 17 staff are still fresh from university, so nurturing trust among clients, particularly in the high-stakes world of cybersecurity is no small feat. Managing a group of ambitious, energetic and driven young people can be complicated too.

But there are many rewards, ranging from seeing a piece of hardware finally work as intended and closing a deal with a client, to simply seeing a team “you have been working to develop, working together without you”.

For others hoping to follow a similar career path, Shelbaya’s advice is to do what you enjoy – not just because you will have fun but because you will be good at it too. “Do what you enjoy,” he says, “because you will likely be great at it.”

The post Ramy Shelbaya: the physicist and CEO capitalizing on quantum randomness appeared first on Physics World.