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In an article published in Nature an international team of scientists breaks down the traditional idea of dividing magnetism into two branches – the ferromagnetic one, known for several millennia, and the antiferromagnetic, discovered about a century ago. Researchers have now succeeded in directly experimentally demonstrating a third altermagnetic branch theoretically predicted by researchers in Prague and Mainz several years ago.

The Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences organizes the Physics Photography 2024 competition, which this year is thematically dedicated to "transformation".  The main goal of the competition is to popularize the beauty of physics and to break the stereotypes of the perception of this field of science. The photography competition ends with the announcement of winners and an exhibition of the awarded and selected photos during the Night of Scientists, which is organized by the institute in the Na Slovance facility on Friday, September 27, 2024.

The European Space Agency has approved the so-called adoption of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission with a budget of €1.75 billion. A mission adoption is an important milestone in the development of space projects, where the European Space Agency takes a project from the assessment phase to the actual implementation of concepts and technologies.

At the beginning of his New Year's speech, Director Michael Prouza thanked the employees at all three facilities for coping with the difficult situation in 2023, when owing to their joint efforts FZU managed to overcome all the difficulties.

At the end of the year, we decided to help others – specifically children and “aunts” from “Klokánek” in Prague 8, and cancer patients from the day care centre at the The Institute for the Care of Mother and Child in Prague 4. For their benefit we organized the first Christmas fundraiser at FZU.

The award for the best student lecture at one of the world's most important materials conferences was awarded to Filip Matějka, a PhD student working at the Institute of Physics. At the Fall Meeting of the Materials Research Society in Boston as part of a symposium on plasma technologies, he presented a lecture entitled "Unlocking the Limits of Plasma-Activated Liquids and Plasma Synthesis of Silicon Nanoparticles".

In a ground-breaking discovery, the Telescope Array Collaboration has detected an extremely energetic particle, named "Amaterasu" after the Japanese celestial sun goddess. This cosmic rays event surpasses the energy achieved by artificial particle accelerators by more than a million times. The origins of such high-energy particle remain mysterious, as tracing back the arrival direction does not reveal an obvious source, for example a galaxy.

This year's photography competition, entitled The Charm of Physics, is now open to students as well as current and former FZU employees. Each participant can submit up to 5 photos. The deadline for submissions is 31 December 2023.

The PRO-EURO-DILI Network, an international consortium of scientists investigating drug-induced liver injury, including scientists from the Laboratory of Biophysics, Division of Optics, Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, has presented a revolutionary advance in the development of liver organoids. The results of the research have been published in the prestigious Experimental and Molecular Medicine journal belonging to the Nature family.