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Gravitational waves are ripples in spacetime. The phenomenon can be compared to ripples on a sheet when a heavy ball is placed on it and spun around. In the universe, these "balls" are massive objects such as black holes and neutron stars, which vibrate spacetime as they orbit and eventually merge. These gravitational waves are emitted through space and, although very subtle, can be detected on Earth with the correct equipment.

A team of researchers led by Vincent Pelgrims (ULB) dust off the Galaxy to build the first 3D map of the Universe's magnetic field. A new launch for astronomy, allowing us to explore the depths of the sky like never before. A study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics. The space between stars is "dirty".

From April 15 to 19, Benoit Scheid and his team produced and observed, for the very first time in the world, antibubbles in zero gravity. Their work could lead to advances in water treatment and drug encapsulation . Twice a year, the European Space Agency (ESA) organizes weightlessness (or microgravity) flights.

Researchers from the Department of Chemical Engineering at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Riga Technical University and the MESA+ Institute at the University of Twente have succeeded in arranging very small particles (10 µm to 500 nm, 10 to 100 times thinner than a human hair) in a thin layer without using solvents.

The laws of physics are based on universal principles, often associated with mathematical theorems. Identifying physical phenomena that escape these fundamental rules leads to a paradigm shift, and usually to major discoveries. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, Lucila Peralta Gavensky, Nathan Goldman (Faculty of Science) and Subir Sachdev (Harvard), reveal a fundamental link between the violation of two major rules of solid-state physics: Luttinger's theorem and the classification rule for insulating materials .

Knowing the energy of light absorbed by a molecule enables us to understand its structure, its quantum states, its interaction with other molecules and its potential technological applications. Molecules with a high probability of simultaneously absorbing two low-energy photons of light have a wide range of applications: as molecular probes in high-resolution microscopy, as substrates for data storage in dense three-dimensional structures or as vectors in medicinal treatments.

For the first time, the IceCube Neutrino Observatory has produced an image of the Milky Way using neutrinos - tiny, ghostly astronomical messengers.In a paper published tomorrow in the journal Science, the IceCube project, involving ULB scientists, presents evidence of high-energy neutrino emission from the Milky Way .

Euclid is a telescope of the European Space Agency (ESA) which aims to reveal the properties and nature of dark matter and dark energy - 95% of the contents of the Universe. On the occasion of its launch from Cape Canaveral in early July, Belgian scientists involved in the Euclid mission, notably from the Université libre de Bruxelles, are highlighting their contributions and research projects .

An international team of scientists from the University of Luxembourg, Berlin Institute for the Foundations of Learning and Data (BIFOLD) at TU Berlin and Google has now successfully developed a machine learning algorithm to tackle large and complex quantum systems. The article has been published in the renowned journal Science Advances.

What is behind dark energy - and what connects it to the cosmological constant introduced by Albert Einstein? Two physicists from the University of Luxembourg point the way to answering these open questions of physics. The universe has a number of bizarre properties that are difficult to understand with everyday experience.

What is a perfect fluid - It is a theoretical model of a fluid that allows to assume that the fluid is not viscous, that it does not conduct heat, that it is incompressible and does not create vortices. It is therefore an approximation of reality that simplifies the theoretical predictions of fluid flows.

An interdisciplinary manuscript reporting on a collaboration between physicists and computational engineers from the University of Luxembourg and Padova (Italy) has been published in Physical Review Letters. This work reveals that interactions between many electrons in materials can induce a colossal enhancement of atomic forces at the nanoscale and in large engineering-scale systems.

VUB leads pioneering project to search for cosmic particles from space with radio antennas Researchers from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) are part of a unique installation on the Greenland ice cap that will try to observe almost elusive particles from space. The Radio Neutrino Observatory Greenland (RNO-G) is a pioneering project that uses a new method to detect cosmic neutrinos with very high energy using radio antennas.

In 1960, Nobel Prize winner Sheldon Glashow predicted a process within the Standard Model, the most important model of particle physics. The theory describes the interaction of an antineutrino with an electron producing a new particle. However, no particle accelerator on Earth, not even the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, is able to make this process happen because it requires extremely high particle energy.

The Lasers, Optics and Spectroscopies (LOS) technological platform has just received a new spectrometer. Its particularity? It can be used in many fields and allows the study of phenomena with very high spectral resolution and at very high speed - of the order of a microsecond.

Recent research published by the CMT group in collaboration with Rutgers University uncover a novel way of achieving flat bands in through strain superlattices. An international team led by researchers at Rutgers University in the US has found a way to create "flat? electronic bands - that is, electron states in which there is no relationship between the electrons' energy and velocity - in graphene simply by causing the material to buckle.

Plasma astrophysicists at KU Leuven have created the first self-consistent simulation of the physical processes that occur during a solar flare. The researchers used Flemish supercomputers and a new combination of physical models. Solar flares are explosions on the surface of the Sun that release an enormous amount of energy, equivalent to a trillion 'Little Boy' atomic bombs exploding at the same time.

At the European nuclear and particle physics laboratory CERN, physicists can produce extremely rare short-lived atoms and molecules. Researchers from KU Leuven have shown that these particles lead the way to uncharted territory in nuclear and particle physics. One of the oldest active installations at the Centre for European Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva is the ISOLDE laboratory.

An interdisciplinary team of scientists from KU Leuven, the University of Bremen, the Leibniz Institute of Materials Engineering, and the University of Ioannina has succeeded in killing tumour cells in mice using nano-sized copper compounds together with immunotherapy. After the therapy, the cancer did not return.

Freestanding clusters of twenty gold atoms take the shape of a pyramid, researchers discovered. This is in contrast with most elements, which organize themselves by forming shells around one central atom. The team of researchers led by KU Leuven published their findings in Science Advances . Clusters composed of a few atoms tend to be spherical.