An international team of physicists says it has found the strongest evidence yet for the glueball, a mysterious particle made almost entirely of gluons. Researchers at the Beijing Spectrometer III collaboration presented their results at the International Conference on High Energy Physics in Brazil. The particle, known as X(2370), was first detected in 2011. The team says it has no quark flavors, behaving exactly as predicted for a particle built from pure force. Glueballs were predicted in the early 1970s but had never been confirmed. Researchers from 15 countries spent 15 years on the search.
Hong Wang, a mathematician at New York University, has become the third woman to win the Fields Medal, one of the highest honors in mathematics. Wang was recognized for helping solve a geometry problem that had stood for decades, combining tools from harmonic analysis and geometric measure theory in a new way. The Fields Medal is awarded every four years to mathematicians under 40. Wang joins Maryam Mirzakhani, who won in 2014, and Maryna Viazovska, who won in 2022. Colleagues said her proof was elegant and opened new research directions. The award is being celebrated as a milestone for diversity in mathematics, where women remain a minority at the highest levels. Wang said she hopes the prize encourages young students to pursue the field.
Physicists say they have found strong evidence for a particle called a glueball, which is made entirely of the strong force and contains no matter. The particle was predicted more than 50 years ago but had never been confirmed. Researchers observed the candidate in the debris of high-energy particle collisions at a major accelerator, and its mass and decay patterns match theoretical predictions. The team used a new analysis technique to separate glueball candidates from ordinary particles with similar properties. If confirmed, the discovery would deepen our understanding of the strong force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature. Independent teams are now working to reproduce the result, and physicists caution that a single experiment is rarely enough to settle the question.
Mathematician Hong Wang of New York University has won the 2026 Fields Medal, becoming the third woman ever to receive mathematics' most prestigious prize. The International Mathematical Union announced the award at the opening of the International Congress of Mathematicians. Wang was honored for solving a decades-old geometry problem tied to the Kakeya conjecture, work that opened new links between harmonic analysis and number theory. The Fields Medal is awarded every four years to mathematicians under the age of 40. Wang, 37, said she hopes the award will encourage more young women to enter mathematics. The union also named three other medalists for 2026.
Physicists at China's BES III experiment have found the strongest evidence yet for glueballs, exotic particles made entirely of gluons, the force carriers of the strong nuclear force. The results, presented at the International Conference on High Energy Physics and posted on arXiv, center on a particle called X(2370) observed in J/psi decays at the Beijing Electron Positron Collider II. Its mass matches lattice quantum chromodynamics predictions for a pseudoscalar glueball, and its decay patterns show the expected flavor-singlet properties. Physicists have searched for glueballs for more than 50 years. Independent verification could come from China's proposed Super Tau-Charm Facility or the Electron-Ion Collider under construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the US.
Physicists say they have found the strongest evidence yet for a glueball, a particle made entirely of force. Unlike ordinary particles, a glueball contains no matter. It is built only from gluons, the carriers of the strong nuclear force that hold atomic nuclei together. The candidate particle was spotted in data from high-energy particle collisions. Researchers compared the mass and decay patterns of an observed particle with theoretical predictions. If confirmed, the discovery would settle a decades-old question in physics and deepen our understanding of how matter holds together.
Astronomers have released the largest two-dimensional map of the universe ever created. The map charts nearly 4 billion stars, galaxies, and other objects across about 75% of the sky. It was built as part of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, which combined data from telescopes in the United States and Chile. The map is free to view online through the Legacy Survey Sky Viewer. Researchers say it could help scientists find gravitational lenses, supernovae, and new clues about dark matter and dark energy. The map also gives other telescopes a detailed guide for where to point. Astronomers called the release a milestone for public science, since anyone with an internet connection can now explore a large slice of the cosmos.
A total solar eclipse swept across Europe on August 12, the first to cross the continent in decades. Millions watched as the moon blocked the sun along a path that stretched from the Arctic toward the Mediterranean. Cities along the path filled with visitors, and eclipse glasses sold out in many places. Scientists used the rare moments of totality to study the sun's corona and its magnetic field, hoping to learn what triggers solar flares and storms that can disrupt satellites and power grids. Observers in remote spots, such as cliffside islands, gained a few extra seconds of darkness. The next total eclipse visible from much of Europe will not come for years.
Astronomers using the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope in Hawaii have detected small swirling plasma vortices on the surface of the sun for the first time. The whirlpool-like patterns, known as Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities, appear at the edges of magnetic field concentrations in the photosphere. Researchers believe these vortices mix plasma and may transport energy into the sun's million-degree corona, helping explain why the outer atmosphere is far hotter than the surface. The team combined the highest-resolution images of the sun ever taken with computer simulations. The findings were published in the journal Nature on August 5, 2026.
Researchers trained an artificial intelligence model on large libraries of DNA and asked it to design viral genomes. Sixteen of the designs produced working viruses in the lab, creating pathogens not known to exist in nature. The team says the work could help scientists prepare for future outbreaks and speed up the discovery of treatments for drug-resistant bacteria. Some of the viruses created in the study infect bacteria rather than human cells. Safety experts are divided, with some praising the research and others warning about biosecurity risks. The study adds to a growing debate over AI's power to design biological agents. The researchers say they followed existing guidelines and shared the work with safety reviewers before publication.