Scientists at Queen Mary University of London have identified a fresh constraint on the basic numbers that shape the universe. Physicist Kostya Trachenko examined how those numbers control the thickness of liquids. Cells depend on liquids for nearly every function. Molecules must reach reaction sites, waste must leave, and chemical exchanges must continue without interruption. Viscosity decides how freely those movements occur. Water pours easily because its viscosity stays low. Honey moves more slowly, while tar barely moves at all.

Photo credit: 2026 EPFL LMTS CC BY SA 4.0
Engineers in Lausanne have built a motor easy to mistake for a length of heavy sewing thread. FiberMotor, from the Soft Transducers Laboratory at EPFL, measures only 1 to 3 millimeters across and turns electricity straight into a push or a pull. Herbert Shea, who leads the lab, calls it the first fiber-format sliding motor, and the description fits once the inner strand starts to move.

Cosmic rays have been running a slow version of this experiment for as long as air has been thick enough to hit. A fast proton from space strikes a molecule high overhead, the collision throws off short-lived fragments, and some of those fragments decay into muons. A muon behaves a lot like an electron, except it carries about 200 times the mass. Extra mass means the particle sheds energy slowly, so it can cross meters of rock or metal that would stop an X-ray in a thin sheet. Archaeologists already use that natural drizzle to hunt hollow rooms inside pyramids, and engineers use it to look for gaps in ground that drills have not reached. Nature only supplies about one muon per square centimeter each second, which is why a careful scan can take months.

Photo credit: Sara Tan | RMIT
Researchers at RMIT University’s Centre for Additive Manufacturing have printed a titanium lattice that floats while remaining open so water can pass straight through. Lead researcher Dr Jordan Noronha and project leader Distinguished Professor Ma Qian worked with Professors Andrey Molotnikov, Milan Brandt and Martin Leary, along with partners at France’s Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. Their hybrid starts with Ti-6Al-4V, an alloy that normally sits around 4.43 grams per cubic centimeter, more than four times the density of freshwater.

Living cells refuse to pose. Mitochondria pinch apart and fuse back together in seconds. Microtubules slide, overlap, and rearrange. Ordinary light microscopes smear those events once details fall below roughly 200 nanometers, the natural limit set by how light waves spread. Older super-resolution methods beat that blur by stacking hundreds or thousands of frames and combining the tiny brightness changes that appear over time.