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Like Jekyll and Hyde – such condition applies also to some materials. An international team led by Hanus Seiner from the Institute of Thermomechanics has discovered that in some directions the alloy of nickel, manganese and gallium is able to transmit elastic waves faster than steel, but in other directions the pulses propagate more slowly than in air. To describe the alloy's behaviour, scientists had to analyse every single atom. The study was published in the prestigious Advanced Materials journal.

In the presence of Her Excellency Ms Jarmila Povejšilová, Ambassador of the Czech Republic to Argentina, her deputy Filip Kanda and the Head of Unit for Research Infrastructures of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic Marek Vyšinka, the Director of the Institute of Physics Michael Prouza signed an agreement to extend the operation of the Pierre Auger Observatory for another 10 years.

As part of the Week of the Academy of Sciences the staff of the Institute of Physics present groundbreaking research to students and the curious public. This year was no exception. The opportunity to get a glimpse into the world of scientific experiments and cutting-edge technologies that scientists work with on a daily basis has been taken by 1348 visitors. 

Did you know that the displays of the future could be brighter and more colourful, yet more energy efficient? This technological advancement is made possible by quantum dots – objects so small that they behave according to the laws of quantum physics that govern the behaviour of the microworld.

Researchers from the Department of Dielectrics at FZU together with their colleagues from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University have succeeded for the first time in observing an electrical analogue of the spin liquid in EuAl₁₂O_19. 

Where does science end and art begin, and vice versa? This is the question posed to visitors by the new exhibition Reflections, which brings together the works of four leading Czech and Polish artists, scientific perspectives on their artworks and new works inspired by these scientific analyses. Science turns its gaze to art, which returns it, and the cycle of inspiration unfolds.

It is our sad duty to announce to the physics community and the wider public that the eminent plasma theorist and research organizer Karel Jungwirth has passed away. 

On 29 September this year, CERN, a European laboratory for particle physics, the place where the web was born in 1989 and the Higgs boson was discovered in 2012, celebrated its 70th anniversary. The impetus came from Louis de Broglie, a French theoretical physicist and 1929 Nobel Prize winner in Physics, who proposed the establishment of a European physics laboratory in 1949 to prevent the outflow of talented physicists to the US. 

This year's photo competition of the Institute of Physics surprised the jury not only by the number of images submitted, but also by the variety of topics chosen by the contestants. This year's main theme was physical phenomena.