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On the night of June 19-20, 2021, visible light from a source 10 billion light-years away from Earth was captured by three telescopes. Two of them – robotic telescopes – are operated by Czech institutions – the D50, located in Ondřejov, is managed by the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, while the other, FRAM-ORM, is located on the Spanish island of La Palma. The third telescope, Mini-MegaTORTORA, is installed in Nizhny Arkhyz, Russia. An international team has published a study of this extraordinary source in the May issue of Nature Astronomy.

The whole professional life of Zdeněk Šimša was connected with the Institute of Physics (formerly Institute of Technical Physics of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences), where he started working after the graduation from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University. In the then Department of Ferrites he was involved in experimental research on the structural, electrical and magnetic properties of magnetic oxides. In this way, he contributed significantly to a better understanding of the properties of magnetic materials, especially ferrites and garnets. He also developed a methodology for studying the optical and magneto-optical properties of films suitable for magneto-optical recording of information.

Networking experts from around the world discussed the current status and development of data transfers from the LHC accelerator at CERN and other scientific experiments requiring large data transfers. During the LHCOPN-LHCONE meeting at the Institute of Physics on 18-19 April, more than 70 experts met physically and virtually and agreed on the need to expand the use of IPv6 and strengthen network connections to meet the needs of large projects.

Swapping your left shoe for the right one while putting them on is unpleasant, but swapping molecules in the same way when making medicines can be fatal - instead of a drug poison is produced. A new method invented by a team of international scientists led by Lukas Palatinus from the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences will help prevent this. The unique procedure for determining the position of atoms in crystals was published last week in the Nature Chemistry journal.

In an ambitious project, Tim Verhagen, a Dutch scientist at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, aims to create a new type of material that will have simultaneously ferromagnetic and ferroelectric properties at room temperature. The project, which is funded by the European Research Council (ERC), involves the deposition of very thin, single-atomic layers of different materials on top of each other to create so called “2D sandwich".

Water pollution is endangering more lives annually than all forms of violence and war. Accessible sources of clean water are limited. Less than 1 percent of the planet's freshwater is available to us. The international Aqua3S project proposes innovative solutions to water facilities, as well as the standardization of current existing sensor technologie.

Renowned physicist Luca Volpe recently gave a lecture at FZU, discussing the latest breakthroughs in nuclear fusion with lasers and related science. The lecture, entitled “From the recent breakthrough at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) to a new European Pathway for Laser-Fusion in EU,” covered two main topics.