Scientists from the Institute of Modern Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with international partners, have synthesized two new isotopes—berkelium-235 and americium-231—at the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou. Their findings provide critical experimental data for researching neutron-deficient actinide nuclei.

In a major step toward self-sufficiency in advanced cancer care, scientists at a premier Chinese research facility say they have the capability to produce medical isotopes known as "nuclear warheads" for their ability to destroy tumors with pinpoint accuracy. The breakthrough at the China Spallation Neutron Source in Dongguan, Guangdong province, targets a critical bottleneck in the country's healthcare system: a long-standing reliance on expensive, unstable imports of alpha isotopes.

Recently, the Large High Altitude Air Shower Observatory (LHAASO) achieved a breakthrough in high-precision, element-resolved measurements of cosmic-ray spectra in the "knee" region. The LHAASO Collaboration has observed unexpected variations in the flux of helium nuclei in cosmic rays as a function of energy per nucleus, along with novel features in the evolution of cosmic ray abundance resulting from these variations.

A research team led by Prof. HAO Ning from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), along with researchers from Anhui University and the University of Science and Technology of China of CAS, has identified two distinct types of unusual low-energy quasiparticle states in the kagome superconductor CsV₃Sb₅ using single-atom impurities as local "quantum probes" and scanning tunnelling spectroscopy.

A research team led by Prof. JIANG Ling and Prof. LI Gang from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences revealed distinct roles of NO_x (NO₂ and NO), as well as their synergistic interactions with sulfur dioxide (SO₂), in secondary organic aerosol (SOA) formation during β-myrcene photooxidation.

A research team from the Stable High Magnetic Field Facility (SHMFF) at the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, led by CAS Member XIE Yi and Professor ZHANG Xiaodong, proposed a surface halogen (Cl, Br, and I) passivation strategy to significantly improve the stability of photocatalysts.

A research team led by Prof. SHENG Zhigao at the High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, successfully manipulated the structure and microwave absorption of CoxSe nanosheets by synthesizing them under a high magnetic field (HMF).

A team of Chinese astronomers has discovered that the Milky Way’s dark matter halo stands upright, suggesting that our galaxy’s disk may have flipped in the past few billion years due to cosmic interactions.

For the first time, researchers from the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Theoretical Physics of CAS, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have introduced a metal-based cooling strategy that does not rely on the globally scarce isotope helium-3. It is expected to provide a self-sufficient, controllable "super refrigerator" that is critical for advancing frontier quantum technologies.

The strontium optical lattice clock NTSC-Sr2, developed by the National Time Service Center was used as a secondary representation of the second to calibrate International Atomic Time (TAI), marking the first time that an optical clock from China has contributed to steering TAI.