Tokyo, Japan – Scientists from Tokyo Metropolitan University have created a new model for disordered materials to study how amorphous materials resist stress. They treated groups of atoms and molecules as squishy spheres with varying softness. Putting their model under a load, they discovered unexpected disparities between harder regions and where forces were concentrated, with areas in between such regions “hardening” to produce elongated “force chains”. Their findings promise new insights into designing better materials.

Researchers from the University of Portsmouth have unveiled a quantum sensing scheme that achieves the pinnacle of quantum sensitivity in measuring the transverse displacement between two interfering photons.