Articles in 2025

This Review explores how cells sense and respond to mechanical signals across timescales. By integrating mechanosensing at membranes, mechanotransduction in the cytoplasm, and nuclear reprogramming, it reveals a role of temporal dynamics in tissue development and disease.

This Expert Recommendation provides tools to help researchers in 2D materials improve reproducibility in their work and practical guidance on how to engage constructively with funders, publishers and industry to create a stronger basis for reproducibility, transparency and trust in the field.

Max Kieker explains how a technique described in a paper from 1994 inspired him to change his research subject.

There is a growing push to host women speakers at conferences, but their talks are often less attended than men’s. We call on our readers to look out for — and go to — talks by women.

20 years ago, the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Roy Jay Glauber, Theodor Wolfgang Hänsch and John Lewis Hall.

40 years ago, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Klaus von Klitzing.

80 years ago, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Wolfgang Pauli.

60 years ago, the Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Sin-Itiro Tomonaga, Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman.

99 years ago, the 1925 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded — one year late — to James Franck and Gustav Ludwig Hertz.

The wings of the Blue Morpho butterfly are natural photonic structures. Saaj Chattopadhyay explains how they can serve as simple and affordable interfaces to increase the colour and birefringent contrast in polarization microscopy.

Particle accelerators are large-scale, complex projects, and they have some unique challenges when it comes to environmental sustainability. A group of particle accelerator researchers and environmental sustainability experts shares how community-specific guidance can help address these needs.

Half a century ago, two theoretical papers were published that together sparked major new directions — conceptual, mathematical and practically applicable — in several previously disparate fields of science. In this Comment, the authors of one of those papers expose key aspects of the thinking behind them, their implementations and implications, along with sketches of several subsequent and consequential developments.

The debate over the regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) is full of comparisons between the rise of deep learning and the dawn of the nuclear age. It is instructive to ask why these comparisons are so popular.

Radiacoustic imaging uses ultrasound waves generated by radiation energy deposition for imaging contrast. This Perspective highlights advances, mechanisms, and biomedical and materials science applications, and outlines challenges and opportunities for this emerging imaging technology.

Artificial gauge fields unlock additional degrees of freedom to manipulating light in structured photonic systems. This Review strives to unify topological, non-Abelian and non-Hermitian photonics using the concept of gauge fields.

Julia Hannukainen reports on the Grete Hermann Network workshop in condensed matter physics that took place at the University of Würzburg, Germany, from 30 June to 2 July 2025.

The Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid framework can be used to describe 1D quantum systems, spanning fermions, bosons and anyons. In this Review, we discuss the various platforms that can host TLL states, including Josephson junctions, cold atoms and topological materials, and discuss the advances TLL theory can provide in quantum criticality, nonequilibrium dynamics and condensed-matter physics exploration.

To celebrate this year’s Ig Nobel Prize, we review some patents that raise a chuckle but are closer to serious research than it may seem at first glance.

Most bacteria exist in dense aggregates, yet this lifestyle is relatively poorly understood compared with planktonic cultures. This Review explores biophysical models of aggregate development, and how models can be extended to account for the complex behaviours of single-species and multispecies colonies.

In the 1990s, the realization that helical beams carry orbital angular momentum started the field of structured light. In 2024, experiments showed that these beams preserve their phase information when traversing a turbid medium, which promises new applications in biophotonics.