News archive 2026
11.02.2026freestyle-physics enters its 25th round
Best of anniversary edition
by Janina Balzer
Whoosh! Whoosh! Boom! At freestyle-physics, Happy Birthday sounds a little different. To mark the 25th anniversary of the physics competition for children and young people at the University of Duisburg-Essen, the most entertaining tinkering tasks from previous years are being revisited. Included are water rockets, cardboard catapults and crash tests. The tasks are online, and registration is open until 21 June.
Build a crane that can carry almost half a kilo using shish kebab skewers. Build a boat powered only by a mousetrap. And design a water rocket that stays in the air as long as possible. All of this requires brains. Pupils in grades 5 to 13 who enjoy tinkering can now register for freestyle physics. They have until July to find creative solutions to challenging technical tasks within their teams.
In the final from 6 to 10 July at the Duisburg campus, the teams will present their ideas to physicists from the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE). The three best solutions in each discipline will be awarded prizes, with special prizes for creativity. After all, it's not just good results that count, but also smart and original thinking. ‘Every year, it's amazing to see how creatively the children and young people solve the tasks with simple means,’ says physicist Dr Andreas Reichert from the competition's organising team.
Over 1,500 schoolchildren from North Rhine-Westphalia and beyond are taking part.
Since 2001, the meadow on Forsthausweg has been transformed into a lively meeting place shortly before the summer holidays. Children and young people experiment, glue, adjust and fine-tune the final details.
The tasks at a glance:
Monday: Duisburg harbour crane, shashlik edition
The aim is to construct a stable crane – using only shashlik skewers and rubber bands. The finished crane must be able to bridge a free distance of 40 cm and carry a weight of 400 g. The crane itself should weigh as little as possible.
Tuesday: Mouse trap boat
The task here is to build a boat that can cover a distance of one metre in the water as quickly as possible. To do this, it uses only the mechanical energy from the tensioned spring of a mouse trap as its propulsion.
Wednesday: Crash test
Watch out, wall in the way! For the crash test, the teams build a vehicle that is particularly well protected against a rear-end collision. In the accident simulation, a paper cup filled with water should lose as little of its contents as possible.
Thursday: Cardboard catapult
Paper, corrugated cardboard, paper glue and string – these items must be sufficient to build a catapult that can launch a table tennis ball as far as possible. Another decisive factor is how quickly the students can reload: which team can catapult the ball behind the target board the most times within one minute?
Friday: Water rocket
The annual classic: the rocket is launched using one litre of water and air pressure. The water rocket that stays in the air the longest wins. Wings or parachutes can be added to extend the flight time.
Further information:
If you are not yet familiar with this popular physics competition, you can get a first impression in this short video.
09.02.2026How defects can make magnets even more efficient
SFB/TRR 270 “HoMMage”: Publication in Nature Communication
An international research team from the DFG Collaborative Research Center SFB/TRR 270 “HoMMage” has published new findings on more efficient permanent magnets in the renowned journal Nature Communications. This could lead to the development of more powerful magnets in the future.
Rare earth magnets are indispensable for high-performance electric motors in vehicles, drones, and trains, and form the backbone of modern, environmentally friendly mobility. These are carefully designed materials with a complex internal nanostructure consisting of tiny building blocks called phases. Each phase has its own crystal structure, chemistry, and physical properties. The behavior of magnetization at the interfaces between these phases is crucial for strength and stability, which in turn affects the efficiency and reliability of electric motors.
Researchers from the Collaborative Research Center SFB/TRR 270 “HoMMage” – including scientists from the Faculty of Physics and the Center for Nanointegration (CENIDE) at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) – investigated a particularly stable samarium-cobalt magnet. The Farle working group at the UDE, together with the Ernst Ruska Center (ERC) at Forschungszentrum Jülich, investigated the geometry of magnetic domain walls, which help determine the macroscopic behavior of the magnet.
A key discovery: the strongest magnets have an ultra-thin, copper-rich layer at the boundary of a critical inner phase – only one to two atoms thick. This atomic structure acts as an effective anchoring barrier, suppressing demagnetization and thus enabling reliable operation under extreme conditions.
In addition, it was found that so-called grain boundaries, long considered weak points, have little effect on magnetic performance. The real potential lies rather in the targeted optimization of the internal nanostructure: even the smallest atomic changes in the structure can significantly improve the strength and stability of the entire magnet. By comparing experimental data with micromagnetic simulations, the researchers also identified “ideal defects” that are crucial for maximum stability. These findings enable the targeted development of more powerful magnets and eliminate time-consuming trial and error.
In the image: (a) Microstructure of the magnet, recorded using electron microscopy. (b) Optical Kerr microscopy image; the black areas correspond to the demagnetized part of the magnet. (c, d, e) High-resolution transmission electron microscopy images show the nanostructure of the magnet. (f) Electron holography; different colors correspond to different magnetization directions.
Further information:
Click here for the press release from TU Darmstadt: https://www.tu-darmstadt.de/universitaet/aktuelles_meldungen/einzelansicht_542976.de.jsp
26.01.2026Cosmic Radiation Brought to Light
Researchers Measure Ionisation in Dark Cloud for the First Time
Where starlight doesn't reach, new things are born: For the first time, an international research team has directly measured the effect of cosmic radiation in a cold molecular cloud. The observation shows how charged high-energy particles influence the gas in these lightless regions where stars are formed. Dr Brandt Gaches, head of the Emmy Noether Group ‘Towards the Next Generation in Cosmic Ray Astrochemistry’ at the University of Duisburg-Essen, was part of the effort to propose and observe these effects with the James Webb Space Telescope and provided support through astrochemical models of cosmic-ray chemistry. Nature Astronomy publishes their findings.
Stars and planets form in cold, dense clouds of gas and dust. One such cloud is called Barnard 68, located about 500 light years from Earth in the constellation Ophiuchus. Its interior is 9 Kelvin (−264 °C) cold and so dense (and thus opaque) that light can hardly penetrate it. Cosmic rays play an important role here, as high-energy, charged particles from space ionise* the gas and regulate the chemistry and temperature, enabling the buildup of complex chemistry in these cold and dense regions.
The importance of cosmic rays is encoded in a key parameter, the cosmic-ray ionisation rate – the rate at which cosmic rays ionise molecular hydrogen per second. The cosmic-ray ionisation rate is one of the fundamental parameters in the chemistry of the molecular universe. Until now, estimations of the ionisation relied primarily on estimations through chemical line observations and models. ‘Previously, researchers had to take a roundabout approach by observing rare molecules such as protonated molecular hydrogen or molecular ions and then attempting to calculate the ionisation rate from their concentrations,’ says Gaches. However, such models depend on many assumptions – about density, temperature, electron abundance, and reaction pathways – and lead to highly variable results.
Researchers recently developed the idea of using the new, extremely sensitive James Webb Space Telescope to measure extremely faint infrared lines that arise when cosmic rays directly excite the gas. The theoretical concept of these directly excited lines dates back decades, but direct observations have evaded astronomers. Previous studies, including work by Gaches, used chemical models to show that these near-infrared lines are a reliable tracer of cosmic-ray ionization.
However, an international team led by the Technion Israel Institute of Technology has now clearly detected three of these lines – exactly as theoretical models had predicted for decades. Pointing the spectrometer of the James Webb Space Telescope at Barnard 68, it detected a faint glow of directly stimulated molecular hydrogen (H₂). This is the first time that cosmic rays have been observationally confirmed to directly stimulate measurable infrared lines. A follow up study, now in press, used these observations to directly measure rapidly cosmic rays lose energy in dense interstellar clouds.
These observations open up a new window of observational investigations into cosmic-ray physics and chemistry in star-forming regions. Future observations with the highly sought-after James Webb Space Telescope have also been approved to extend this analysis to another nearby cloud.
* During ionisation, electrons are stripped from atoms and molecules. The resulting ions are positively charged.
Original Publication: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-025-02771-9
Image: Colour composite of visible and near-infrared images of the dark cloud Barnard 68. It was obtained with the 8.2-m VLT ANTU telescope and the multimode FORS1 instrument in March 1999. At these wavelengths, the small cloud is completely opaque because of the obscuring effect of dust particles in its interior.
Further Information:
Dr. Brandt Gaches, Towards the Next Generation in Cosmic Ray Astrochemistry, +49 203/37 9-3327, brandt.gaches@uni-due.de
26.01.2026Publication in Nature – Metal lumps in a quantum state
Can a small lump of metal be in a quantum state that extends over distant locations? A research team at the University of Vienna answers this question with a resounding yes. In the journal Nature, physicists from the University of Vienna and the University of Duisburg-Essen show that even massive nanoparticles consisting of thousands of sodium atoms follow the rules of quantum mechanics. The experiment is currently one of the best tests of quantum mechanics on a macroscopic scale.
In quantum mechanics, not only light but also matter can behave both as a particle and as a wave. This has already been proven several times for electrons, atoms and small molecules, through diffraction at a double slit or through interference experiments. However, we do not see this in everyday life: marbles, stones and dust particles have a well-defined location and a predictable trajectory; they follow the rules of classical physics.
Scientists at the University of Vienna and Prof. Dr. Klaus Hornberger from the University of Duisburg-Essen have now demonstrated for the first time that the wave nature of matter is also preserved in massive metallic nanoparticles. The scale of the particles is impressive: the clusters have a diameter of around 8 nanometres, which is comparable to the size of modern transistor structures. With a mass of more than 170,000 atomic mass units, they are also more massive than most proteins. Nevertheless, quantum interference can be detected in these nanoparticles.
Original publication: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09917-9
In the image: Matter wave in the spotlight: AI-generated interpretation of the wave properties of matter. A blurred cluster composed of many atoms floats in the cone of light. The blur represents a delocalised quantum state: the cluster has no fixed location but is spatially extended as a wave function. Beneath it, a grid spans out, reminiscent of several possible interferometer paths. The cone of light symbolises the measurement process: only when the particle enters the ‘spotlight’ during measurement is the cluster clearly determined at a specific location.
20.01.2026New insights into vibrational properties of 2D Materials
Scientists from Grenoble, Bordeaux and the University of Duisburg-Essen have unlocked fresh understanding of two-dimensional material that could shape tomorrow’s high-performance devices. They have synthesized high-quality Ti₃C₂Cl₂ MXenes, an atomically thin metal carbide with chlorine surface groups, and used cutting-edge techniques to peer deep into how its atoms vibrate and conduct heat.
How lattice vibrations, tiny quantum mechanical ripples called phonons, move through 2D crystals differ from well-explored 3D materials. These vibrations influence everything from thermal conductivity to electrical behavior, but until now, scientists have struggled to measure them accurately in MXenes because of stacking disorder and non-uniform surface terminations.
By carefully growing MXene sheets with uniform chlorine terminations, the team captured exceptionally clear vibrational “fingerprints” using polarized Raman spectroscopy and combined these measurements with theoretical calculations. This revealed how different vibrational modes behave and how they change with temperature giving an unprecedented picture of optical phonon behavior in this 2D material.
In parallel, precise measurements of specific heat and corresponding calculations exposed how MXenes’ heat capacity responds to temperature, uncovering tell-tale signs of their two-dimensional character at very low temperatures which is often hidden in other materials.
Understanding and controlling phonons in MXenes is a key step toward designing faster electronics, better thermoelectric materials, and improved energy-storage systems. This work lays solid scientific groundwork for tuning thermal and vibrational properties in 2D materials, bringing next-generation technologies a step closer.
The authors acknowledge financial support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the Agence Nationale de la Recherche in the bilateral ANR-DFG project.
Reference:
M. Riabov, M. Vanselow, A. Champagne, et al. Phonon properties of 2D Ti3C2Cl2 MXenes. npj 2D Mater Appl 9, 114 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41699-025-00625-6
05.01.2026buddy@school digital 2026 - Information for prospective students interested in studying energy science or physics
An important decision will soon have to be made for all those finishing school this year: the decision for or against a course of study and the choice of degree program.
The Faculty of Physics at the University of Duisburg-Essen is happy to provide support and information. We will present our Energy Science, Physics and Physics Teacher Training degree programs via video conference on the following dates
- Wednesday, February 25th 2026, 5-6 p.m.
- Saturday, March 28th 2026, 2-3 p.m.
Afterwards, questions can be asked in a relaxed round. Contact persons are at least two students and one full-time lecturer. The students are part of our buddy system. Within the Buddy System, we offer all-round advice for future students before the start of their studies and during the first two semesters. Further information on the Buddy System can be found on the Buddy System homepage and in the flyer.
If you would like to take advantage of this offer (buddy@school digital 2026), please register simply and briefly (at least one week before the desired date) via the online form at https://udue.de/bas26. The offer is of course also available to those who will not be finishing school until the next few years but would like to find out more today.
We look forward to seeing you!