Nature has retracted a controversial paper1 claiming the discovery of a superconductor ' a material that carries electrical currents with zero resistance ' capable of operating at room temperature and relatively low pressure. The text of the retraction notice states that it was requested by eight co-authors. 'They have expressed the view as researchers who contributed to the work that the published paper does not accurately reflect the provenance of the investigated materials, the experimental measurements undertaken and the data-processing protocols applied,' it says, adding that these co-authors 'have concluded that these issues undermine the integrity of the published paper'. (The Nature news team is independent from its journals team.) It is the third high-profile retraction of a paper by the two lead authors, physicists Ranga Dias at the University of Rochester in New York and Ashkan Salamat at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Nature withdrew a separate paper last year2 and Physical Review Letters retracted one this August3. It spells more trouble in particular for Dias, whom some researchers allege plagiarized portions of his PhD thesis. Dias has objected to the first two retractions and not responded regarding the latest. Salamat approved the two this year....

In the particle world, sometimes two is better than one. Take, for instance, electron pairs. When two electrons are bound together, they can glide through a material without friction, giving the material special superconducting properties. Such paired electrons, or Cooper pairs, are a kind of hybrid particle ' a composite of two particles that behaves as one, with properties that are greater than the sum of its parts. Now MIT physicists have detected another kind of hybrid particle in an unusual, two-dimensional magnetic material. They determined that the hybrid particle is a mashup of an electron and a phonon (a quasiparticle that is produced from a material's vibrating atoms). When they measured the force between the electron and phonon, they found that the glue, or bond, was 10 times stronger than any other electron-phonon hybrid known to date. The particle's exceptional bond suggests that its electron and phonon might be tuned in tandem; for instance, any change to the electron should affect the phonon, and vice versa. In principle, an electronic excitation, such as voltage or light, applied to the hybrid particle could stimulate the electron as it normally would, and also affect the phonon, which influences a material's structural or magnetic properties. Such dual control could enable scientists to apply voltage or light to a material to tune not just its electrical properties but also its magnetism....

When Lauryn Kortman enrolled in Founder’s Journey, MIT’s entrepreneur-based first-year student seminar, she didn’t expect it would lead to a role in fusion research. As part of the program’s arranged visit to the Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC), Kortman learned about SPARC, a new fusion experiment that expects to demonstrate a faster and less-expensive path to carbon-free energy. The project embodied her own entrepreneurial spirit and sparked in her a desire to be part of the team. “I emailed a bunch of PSFC researchers because I didn’t see any Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) listing,” she says. “I wanted to see if I could get involved in the material side of the experiment.” The materials science and engineering major’s request got the attention of PSFC Director Dennis Whyte and postdoc David Fischer, now her direct supervisor, who introduced her to ARC, a follow-up to SPARC. Both machines are conventional tokamaks, with magnets surrounding a toroidal vacuum chamber to confine the hot plasma fuel long enough for self-sustaining fusion to occur. Both will take advantage of a technologically advanced high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tape made of rare-earth barium copper oxide, which will make it possible to design a more compact device. The magnets in SPARC, however, will endure pulses of plasma for only a few seconds, accumulating little damage over time. ARC is expected to run for longer periods, amassing damage that could alter the magnets’ superconducting properties....

Autumn rituals include leaf peeping, apple picking, and pie making. And for 20 years, many members of the MIT community have made time for the MIT Great Glass Pumpkin Patch, held annually on the Kresge Lawn. When Covid-19 forced classes and other activities to stop in March, the staff and students in the W. David Kingery Ceramics and Glass Lab had already made 450 pumpkins out of the planned 1,500 that would be the main fundraiser for lab operations. Over the past few months, Peter Houk, the Glass Lab’s artistic director, and Professor Michael Cima, the faculty director, discussed how to use this time to plan to reopen and to find ways to continue to support the program. While glassblowing isn’t an activity that can be pursued remotely, it is safe to hold a virtual pumpkin patch, so lab staff followed strict safety protocols and came to campus, where they displayed and photographed the pumpkins and then wrapped them individually for shipping. “It’s important to me to be able to try to help create some sense of continuity during this time of great dislocation,” says Houk. “Every year, I get dozens of excited emails from past shoppers and volunteers asking when the next pumpkin patch will be. Over 20 years, this event has created a community of sorts, and beyond the financial necessity of doing the event, I felt there was a kind of social necessity.”...