Physical Sciences

The nominating institution Max-Planck-Gesellschaft on the breakthrough: The quest for unusual materials, such as metallic hydrogen or room-temperature superconductors, has been going on for decades. Mikhail Eremets has pioneered high pressure experiments to induce such states, which brought about innovations in materials science, but also high-pressure technology. The group has…

The dislocation of water masses, e.g. dropping of the groundwater level, ice melting or sea level change, can only be continuously and homogeneously observed using specially tailored satellite missions. GRACE and GRACE-FO, based on ultra-precise distance measurements between twin satellites, has revolutionized the observation of climate-related changes in the Earth…

Deep ocean extreme environments – sites of immense beauty, wonder and intrigue – harbor unique and unimagined microorganisms that thrive at radically different pressure, temperature, salinity, and pH regimes compared to those on land or in the surface ocean. State-of-the-art genomic and computational approaches will guide targeted discovery of unique…

While nature builds all her organic materials from CO₂, the stability and inertness of the CO₂ molecule prevents its use in chemical technology. The team of Leitner searches for catalysts as molecular tools to break through this wall. Together with the company Covestro, they developed a catalytic process to incorporate…

The nominating institution Forschungszentrum Jülich on the breakthrough: With quantum computing we face the beginning of a paradigm shift in computer science and scientific computing, which can considerably change science, industry, economy and our every-day life. The demonstration of quantum supremacy, which required a sufficiently large quantum processor with a…

Two states of matter “solid” and “fluid”, which are mutually exclusive in the classical world, can exist simultaneously in the quantum world. The supersolid was created by dysprosium atoms that behave like tiny magnets and that were cooled down to near absolute zero (-273° Celsius). To generate a supersolid, the…

Ten years ago, Professor Arno Rauschenbeutel was the first to couple laser-trapped atoms with light in glass fibers that are 100 times thinner than a human hair. This achievement was a door opener for the field on quantum nanophotonics. There, one studies the interaction of atoms, molecules, or artificial atoms…

Experts in quantum logic spectroscopy and highly charged ions have teamed up for the first high resolution coherent laser spectroscopy of a highly charged ion. This breakthrough, which has pushed resolution by eight orders of magnitude, enables proposed sensitive tests of fundamental constants and interactions, novel dark matter searches, as…

The nominating institution University of Edinburgh on the breakthrough: New X-ray Free-Electron Lasers allow us to track the motion of atoms and capture the rearrangement of electrons as molecules absorb light or undergo chemical reactions. This powerful imaging technique creates sharp and detailed movies that unveil how molecular machines function,…

While we know from astrophysical observations that dark matter exists, its nature remains a mystery and its detection in the laboratory would be a major breakthrough. While the discovery of dark matter is still outstanding, in 2019 the experiment observed the decay of Xenon-124 atoms for the first time, with…

The nominating institution SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory on the breakthrough: The Higgs boson is a unique particle endowing mass to all other particles. Giant digital cameras are needed to observe its precise properties and probe how the elementary building blocks of matter interact. At SLAC we are constructing the core…

Bohnhoff et al. develop an entirely new scale-invariant and process-oriented approach to unravel earthquake nucleation and rupture physics. This bears enormous potential for future generations of adaptive seismic hazard assessment at major tectonic plate-boundaries and associated risk at colocated population centers. This will also critically improve mitigation of man-made seismic…

The nominating institution Nanyang Technological University on the breakthrough: E-waste is a growing global problem owing to its toxicity and environmental impact. Pioneering “waste-for-waste” approach demonstrated to tackle both food waste and electronics waste towards circular economy of zero waste in which resources are used for long as possible. Unique,…

Dr. Ijjas’ new cyclic theory shows that the observed properties of the universe are best explained by replacing the “big bang” with a “big bounce” – a smooth transition from contraction to expansion. Combining diverse tools from mathematical and numerical relativity, astronomy, and high energy physics, she further showed that,…

With the goal of bringing scientific insights and latest technological advances to real-world applications, Terranigma Solutions GmbH was founded in March 2020 as a spin-off from the Institute for Computational Geoscience and Reservoir Engineering (CGRE) at the RWTH Aachen University. The team has the long-term vision is to become a…