Fundamental science from Japanese universities and national research institutes.
The Super-Kamiokande collaboration has caught the first-ever evidence of the diffuse supernova neutrino background, the combined glow of every massive star that has died since the universe began. Here is what it could reveal, and the spoonful of gadolinium that made it possible.
Damaged neurons were thought to be beyond repair. A University of Tokyo team led by Noboru Mizushima just challenged that in mice: switch the cell's cleanup system, autophagy, back on, and the protein junk clears, motor skills and memory return. A new angle on neurodegeneration from a disciple of Nobel laureate Yoshinori Ohsumi.
NTT, the University of Tokyo, RIKEN and OptQC squeezed light to a record 10.1 dB, over 90% of its quantum noise gone. How a 1998 teleportation gamble became the core of Japan's optical quantum computer.
Say you can hear plants and people back away slowly. Turns out it's real: researchers at Japan's Institute of Science Tokyo built a transparent 70-nanometer carbon-nanotube electrode that reads a crop's bioelectric stress signals for up to 10 months, even in the rain.
RIKEN unveiled two supercomputers on the same day: RIKYU for AI for Science and ROQUO for quantum-HPC. Both are Japan's first to run GB200 NVL4 and Quantum-X800 InfiniBand. We compare them with US efforts like xAI's Colossus and the DOE Genesis Mission, and China, to read Japan's bet on purpose over scale.
HOKUSHIN-1, a cubesat from three Japanese universities, was deployed from the ISS on June 19. Why it proves deep-space tech in low orbit first, where failure is cheap.
Muon-catalyzed fusion needs no plasma and no 100-million-degree heat, and it is not 1989's discredited cold fusion. A Japan-led team made the first direct observation of muonic-molecule resonance states, closing a long-standing theory-experiment gap.
A Kyushu University team showed for the first time that RPS19, long known as an anemia gene, also suppresses cancer by keeping p53 working. The finding hints at repurposing existing MDM2-inhibitor drugs.
A Tohoku University team grew rice to the heading stage in soil mimicking the Moon's surface, using fertilizer made from nothing but air and electricity via plasma. The unlikely inspiration? Gundam's beam saber. As NASA pushes toward a lunar base, it could become foundational tech for growing food in space.
A Japanese-led team has resolved the first atomic-level structure of a metabolon, the elusive enzyme cluster that hid from biology for 40 years, revealing a new control principle called the GATE mechanism.
A Science Tokyo team finds that the brain runs multiple clocks for elapsed time, shifting between coherence and independence. From M2 and PPC recordings to the Twin-RNN model and a clue for brain-inspired AI, here's what they saw in a mouse.