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Climate prediction model breaks resolution records and removes ‘popcorn-like’ rain

Two images of Typhoon Omais, shown as a swirl of white and grey off the coast of Japan in the Pacific Ocean. The left image contains a chain of darker spots that resemble rosary beads, and are an example of the "popcorn-like" rain referred to in the article. In the right image these darker spots have been smoothed out.

GenAI: can we get its good side to outweigh the bad and the ugly?

Honor Powrie reflects on what impact AI might have in the future

3D letters "AI" one with a halo, one with horns and a tail.

To detect deepfake videos, researchers turn to the physics of light

New technique claims 97.8% accuracy and uses less energy than digital neural networks with similar performance

Research headlines

Astronomers propose solution for ‘little red dot’ mystery

A glowing gas cloud mainly coloured pink, with areas of blue

Low-level clouds could make wind farms more efficient

An image showing a many-turbined offshore wind farm under a thick haze of low cloud. Streaks of blue-green show how the wind farm takes energy out of the wind, leaving a considerable downwind wake of slower air.

DNA computer settles in thermodynamic equilibrium

Earthquake fault irregularities control rupture speed and influence ground motion

New models show that high-speed rupture propagation produces stronger and longer-duration ground motion

Seismic waves reflected from Earth’s core moved parts of Japan 5 mm east

Shift followed the 2011 Tohoku-Oki earthquake and represents a new type of seismic hazard

AI model helps physics Nobel laureate out of a decade-old mathematical jam

Artificial intelligence is radically changing how researchers in some disciplines work

Physicists find unexpected connection between black hole mergers and thermodynamics

Properties of a merger remnant can be predicted using a simple entropy-maximization principle

AI sniffs out tuberculosis in breath’s chemical signature

Machine learning decodes the complex chemical signatures in human breath to deliver rapid, non-invasive tuberculosis diagnoses

Privacy risks from medical AI are greater than previously thought

Study reveals how sensitive health information about individual patients could be extracted from diagnostic medical AI models

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Opinion and reviews

Demon in the AI machine: bias, bad data and the burden of proof

Chris Pratt in a still from the film Mercy

Knowing through uncertainty: probability and the evolution of our cosmos

In the age of AI, we must double down on the skills that make us experts

Explore more in mathematics and computation

**Open-access journal AI Horizons looks to expand the outlook of artificial intelligence**

Shiyi Chen, the journal’s editor-in-chief, shares his views

History
Blog

When Doi met Peliti: physicists celebrate 50 years of the Doi-Peliti theory

A week-long meeting in Cambridge celebrated Masao Doi’s and Luca Peliti’s pioneering framework to study random processes

Delegates at a meeting about the Doi-Peliti theory

Hofstadter’s butterfly turns 50: a fractal hiding in quantum matter

Indu Satija celebrates the golden anniversary of Hofstadter’s butterfly

Hofstadter’s butterfly diagram in red and black

Finding careers in STEM and the weirdness of AI

Career consultant Alaina G Levine and AI researcher Janelle Shane are our podcast guests

Photos of Alaina G Levine and Janelle Shane

AI dominates the 4th International Congress of Basic Science in Beijing

Subir Sarkar finds that AI was a hot topic among the over 800 delegates

Word wave puzzle no.8

Can you work out the word in this puzzle, which relates to a recent Physics World article?

The physics of novel computation: beyond bits and chips to spikes and spins

Sidney Perkowitz looks into alternative computing methods inspired by physics to improve computational efficiency and power

Word wave puzzle no.6

Can you work out the word in this puzzle?

Solar tower power plants get a data boost

Accessible new database could accelerate research on solar thermal power generation and allow wider deployment

Photo of a solar tower power plant. A green field full of mirrors directs sunlight onto a tower under a blue sky and a white Sun

Large physics models boost the performance of passenger cars

Aerodynamics expert David Wheater is our podcast guest

Visualization of car aerodynamics using the PhysicsX platform interface

AI’s black box problem: discovering physics we don’t understand

Claire Malone wonders what happens if AI produces answers we can’t – or don’t – understand

Cartoon illustration of a man trying to understand an AI robot's output

AI-enhanced rare-event sampling helps predict extreme weather

Combining artificial intelligence with physical climate modelling enables more accurate characterization of rare weather events

‘Back to the future’ messages are more efficient

Closed time-like curves allow greater information capacity when sending messages backwards in time

A photo of a Playmobil model of the Delorean used as a time machine in the film Back to the Future. The car has a California licence plate reading "OUTATIME" and looks like it's on a real road.

How AI is transforming human robots

Honor Powrie considers whether AI can make robots more human

Humanoid robots cross finish line in Beijing E-Town Half Marathon and Humanoid Robot Half Marathon, China, on 19 April 2026

Physics-based models still beat AI for predicting extreme weather events

Artificial intelligence struggles to forecast events with no precedent in training data

A colour plot (red for hot, blue for cold) of temperature anomalies during the 2020 Siberian heat wave, superimposed over a map of west and central Asia. There's a gigantic deep-red blob over Siberia.

Physicists create mechanical memory device from slap-bracelet-like structures

Placing the structures on a variably spinning turntable creates a scalable way of addressing single bits of memory

A still from a video showing six flexible strips of material on a wheel. When the wheel spins, the strips of material snap into left-bent or right-bent configurations depending on the dynamics of the spin.

AI-led solutions of Erdős problems spark debate over the future of mathematics

Problems that defeated human mathematicians for decades are now solved, but for whose benefit?

Thermodynamic computing: noise as a resource, not an enemy

Theoretical physicist Stephen Whitelam is our podcast guest

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Condensed matter | Workshop Hydrodynamic Approaches to Active Matter: Successes and Future Challenges (haam26) 9—13 November 2026 | Dresden, Germany
Materials | Conference SEMICON Europa 2026 10—13 November 2026 | Munich, Germany
Mathematics and computation | Workshop 45th International Workshop on Bayesian Inference and Maximum Entropy Methods in Science and Engineering 20—24 September 2027 | Görlitz, Germany

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