September 2026
All columns and Brief analyses.
10 results
A falling atom's phase agrees with Einstein to 2.5 per cent
For the first time, physicists have read the quantum phase an atom builds up while it falls. The measurement lands within 2.5 per cent of a prediction written down in 1927, and it does so in a regime far too gentle to touch the question of whether gravity itself is quantum.
CSIRO's orange hydrogen splits the heat between making gas and trapping carbon
A geochemical simulation of the Yilgarn Craton puts the best carbon mineralization between about 150 and 200 degrees Celsius, while the hydrogen reactions keep speeding up above that. One reservoir asked to do both jobs gives something up, and only measurement in rock can say how much.
Lululemon's full-year guide carries 0.86 dollars a share of tariff refunds
Gross margin rose 200 basis points, and a one-off tariff refund supplied 560 of them. The demand problem shows up in the revised guide, and the refund sits inside that guide too.
NATO's burden-sharing moves from budgets to written answers
A Pentagon questionnaire asks NATO members to state in writing whether they publicly back American foreign policy, and ties the answers to a review of the US presence in Europe. Seoul's own deliberation over the Strait of Hormuz shows where that instrument runs out: the size of an ally's contribution is settled by its own legislature.
Pixel Watch 5's best trick needs a Pixel 11, and Melody Flip's needs a workstation
Google's first watch update and Roland's first generative plug-in both put the useful part behind hardware or software the buyer has to supply.
Psilocybin held nerve endings open in mice, and the team's planned trial has about 80 people
The first substance reported to prevent chemotherapy nerve damage arrived this week from mice with tumours and from human neurons in the laboratory. Whether it reaches patients will be settled by the randomised trial of about 80 people the team plans to open in November.
RSA-260's factor checks out, and its method goes unpublished
One factor of RSA-260 was posted as a 130-digit number, and the claim can be checked with a single division. The method — algorithm, hardware, running time — was not published, so the achievement never becomes a readable point on the cost curve of factoring. RSA keys in practice use at least about 2,000 binary bits, more than twice the length of RSA-260.
Russia hit an SBU office, Ukraine stopped NORSI's output
A drone steered at a room in the SBU building in Kyiv, and the NORSI and Ust-Luga plants that have stopped work, show one operational logic: a target that cannot be moved is a target that can be hit again. The first to price that risk was an airline.
The award became a seizure when the ship docked at Barentsburg
An arbitral award records a debt. Moving an asset takes an enforcement court with the hull inside its reach. Norway's order at Svalbard and Washington's revival of prize law run on that one condition.