Fundamental science from Japanese universities and national research institutes.
Researchers in Japan made a four-micrometer sphere of chiral polymer that lases in a flat ring, like Saturn. The molecules self-assembled into a surface swirl that gives the light a direction. A clear look at the first angle-selective lasing from a sphere, driven by its own surface chemistry.
Discovered by accident during a COVID-era experiment, a University of Tokyo and Navarra study found about 65% of people drift counterclockwise when walking freely. Handedness and culture don't explain it, and even five-year-olds do it.
Kyoto and Hiroshima University researchers found that grains Hayabusa2 brought back from asteroid Ryugu begin altering within weeks on Earth. Here is how the decay starts with an iron sulfide, what it means for Bennu and Phobos samples, and how Japan is reacting.
The University of Tokyo's Kono Lab, with Aisin and ARM Technologies, ran the world's first end-to-end demo storing green hydrogen in a room-temperature, non-flammable liquid, moving it between cities in a simple container, and generating power directly. We unpack the efficiency claims against ammonia and MCH, and how it diverges from US, European and Chinese hydrogen-carrier strategy.
RIKEN and Enplas drill 1.1-micron, aspect-ratio-1,000 holes through glass in under a nanosecond, hitting 3,000 holes a second. As the chip race shifts from shrinking to packaging, here's why glass through-glass vias matter, and where Japan's materials and equipment makers fit.
A Japan-US team from Tohoku University and the US NIST built the first working spintronics probabilistic bit (P-bit) on a single silicon substrate using standard chip-fabrication processes. We explain the coin-flip idea, how it differs from quantum computing (room temperature, existing chip lines), and how far it really is from a product.
In 2002, Japan's Kindai University pulled off the world's first full-cycle bluefin tuna farming. Two decades on, the major seafood companies are walking away and commercial output is fading. The irony: the headwind is the recovery of wild tuna stocks. A look at the gap between sustainable and profitable.
Kyoto University's Takuji Hatakeyama and colleagues linked multiple-resonance units to reach a 5.5nm emission band in solution, pushing spontaneous emission toward laser-like color purity. Published in Science, it points to purer, more efficient next-gen displays.
In 1998, Akira Furusawa achieved the world's first unconditional quantum teleportation at Caltech. For two decades, no one knew what it was for. By 2024, that same trick was running an optical quantum computer on the cloud. From the teleportation misconception to the reframe that turned it into a processor, and the startup OptQC's push for a homegrown machine.
The pygmy sweeper glows blue from its belly, yet a full read of its 625-million-letter genome turns up no gene for the light-making enzyme. A Japanese team has now confirmed, at the genome level, that the fish runs entirely on a protein stolen from its prey - the only known case of its kind, with possible payoffs for oral protein drugs.
Sony Semiconductor Solutions is mass-producing the IMX711, a direct-conversion X-ray CMOS image sensor based on a pixel structure invented at Japan's RIKEN institute. With an industry-fastest 26,100fps and noise low enough to measure single X-ray photons, it ends a decades-old trade-off in X-ray imaging. Here's why battery makers, chip fabs and scientists are paying attention.