How do we get people interested in quantum technology? Where do they see and learn about it? And how can we engage people with the communication we use about quantum? 🤔⚛️
These are some of the questions that researchers from the Quantum & Society group of Julia Cramer study. The Centre for Quantum and Society created a series of mini lectures, featuring quantum & society researchers Aletta Meinsma, Marien R., Muhammad Unggul Karami, and Vincent Koeman.
Watch Vincent’s video below or explore the other videos on the YouTube channel of Centre for Quantum and Society! 📽️⬇️
Leiden Institute of Physics - LIONQuantum Leiden
Active matter research by Marine Le Blay, PhD, Joshua Saldi & Alexandre Morin from Leiden Institute of Physics - LION published in Nature Physics!
Link in the comments 👇
❓What if particles don’t slow down in a crowd, but move faster?
Physicists from Leiden University have discovered a new state of matter, where particles pass energy through collisions and generate more movement when packed closely together.
👥 We all know crowds of people, or cars in a traffic jam — when it gets too crowded, all you can do is stand still. Until now, scientists mainly studied cases of large groups just like this, which slow down when they get too close to each other.
🔛 But what if the opposite happens? What if particles could start moving more when packed together? That question hadn’t been studied much — until now.
⚪ Metal beads and electrodes
In their experiments, they worked with tiny, non-moving particles: one millimeter metal beads, placed between two glass plates. ‘These two plates holding the beads are not just simple glass plates; they are also electrodes. Our beads can’t move by themselves, but when we charge them with electricity, they start to jump up and down. They travel back and forth between the two glass plates extremely fast, around 100 times in 1 second. This way, we give energy to our system of beads,’ Saldi explains.
📽️ Morin: ‘While the beads move around, we take 300 to 400 images per second with our high-speed camera. We then make slow-motion videos of these images to discover in detail what is happening. Once we understood how these packed particles power up, we realized that we could even control the collective behaviour of the metal beads. Overall, we could obtain structures analogous to the three well-known states of matter: gas, liquid, and crystal – by simply turning a knob on our power generator.’
🌍 This is an important discovery, because it reveals that there are still many unknown ways in which particles can organize themselves. It opens the door to new types of behavior in particle systems, with possible applications in technology, biology, and materials science.
Read the full article on our website via the link in the comments 👇.
Leiden Science - Universiteit Leiden#physics#activematter
📢 More than 7 million views worldwide: A material that gets shorter when you pull it (and why that’s useful)
When you stretch an elastic band, it gets longer. But imagine a material that actually becomes shorter when you pull on it. Sounds strange, doesn’t it? Yet that’s exactly what physicists from Leiden University, AMOLF, and ARCNL have managed to create.
Listen, watch or read more via the links in the comments:
🎙️Radio 1 interview by martin van hecke.
📽️Veritasium video
📽️Short version of the video
📝 Article on Leiden University website
Real-world uses in the future
We already see snapping mechanisms in nature – like the Venus flytrap that snaps shut when an insect lands on it. Humans have also designed snapping objects, such as pop-up tents and slap bracelets. But countersnapping could open the door to a whole range of smart, adaptable technologies. The team has already come up with several possible applications:
Soft robots with no motors: Imagine a robot that can move forward without sliding back – useful, for example, for medical robots that need to move safely through the body. Countersnapping could convert a back-and-forth motion into movement in just one direction.
Smart materials with adjustable stiffness: Think of an exoskeleton or prosthetic that stays flexible while walking but stiffens instantly during a sudden movement.
Vibration dampers: Structures that absorb vibrations on their own, without needing electronics. This could be valuable in aircraft, wind turbines, or buildings in earthquake-prone areas.
The research was published in the journal PNAST-Proceedings Of The National Acad....
‘Exotic mechanical properties enabled by countersnapping instabilities’, by Paul Ducarme, Bart Weber, martin van hecke and Johannes T. B. (Bas) Overvelde.
Satellite meeting #STATPHYS29 hosted in Leiden
From July 7 to 11 we hosted “From flocking birds to migrating cells: recent advances in active matter and statistical #physics”, which is a satellite meeting of the STATPHYS29 program. The meeting ‘From flocking birds to migrating cells’ was held in the week before the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) International Conference on Statistical Physics held in Florence, Italy from 13th to 18th of July 2025.
Our primary goal was to discuss the most exciting recent developments and to anticipate the most pressing future challenges in the statistical physics of active matter.
The meeting organizing committee:
L. Angheluta-Bauer, Leticia F. Cugliandolo, Luca Giomi, Ramin Golestanian, Julien Tailleur and Julia Yeomans
🎙️Podcast BNR Nieuwsradio met Ivo van Vulpen: Higgs-deeltje is cruciaal voor de mensheid
🌌 Zonder het Higgs-deeltje had de mensheid niet bestaan. In BNR-podcast In De Diepte vertelt hoogleraar Ivo van Vulpen van de Leiden University waarom het zo belangrijk is dat we weten dat alle materie massa heeft.
‘Peter Higgs had gelijk: op elk punt in de ruimte is een Higgs-veld aanwezig dat de deeltjes hun massa geeft’, legt Van Vulpen uit bij BNR. Higgs paste in 1964 de theorie over #deeltjesfysica aan. Volgens hem konden elementaire deeltjes wel degelijk massa hebben.
Pas in 2012 werd het bestaan van het Higgs-deeltje met behulp van ‘s werelds krachtigste deeltjesversneller officieel bevestigd. Sindsdien is het gedrag van het Higgs-deeltje erg belangrijk voor de verdere ontwikkeling van bijvoorbeeld de röntgenfoto, de MRI-scan en de quantumcomputer.
🎧 Beluister de podcast op de website van BNR via de link in de comments 👇
Leiden Science - Universiteit Leiden
❓Hoe quantum is jouw quantumcomputer?
Kunnen we bewijzen of een groot quantumsysteem zich echt gedraagt volgens de vreemde regels van de quantummechanica – of alleen maar doet alsof? Een team van natuurkundigen van de Leiden University en uit China vond in een baanbrekende studie het antwoord op deze vraag.
Je zou het een soort ‘quantum-leugendetector’ kunnen noemen: de Bell-test, ontworpen door de beroemde natuurkundige John Bell. Deze test laat zien of een machine, zoals een #quantumcomputer, écht gebruikmaakt van quantumverschijnselen, of deze alleen nabootst.
Nu #quantumtechnologieën steeds volwassener worden, worden ook steeds strengere tests voor quantumapparaten noodzakelijk. Dit team van onderzoekers brachten quantumtesten een grote stap verder: ze voerden de Bell-test uit in een systeem met maar liefst 73 qubits – de fundamentele bouwstenen van een quantumcomputer.
De studie werd uitgevoerd door theoretisch natuurkundigen Jordi Tura i Brugués, Patrick Emonts en promovendus Mengyao Hu van de Universiteit Leiden, in samenwerking met collega’s van de Tsinghua University (Beijing) en experimentele natuurkundigen van de Zhejiang University uit Hangzhou (China).
Deze studie laat zien dat het mogelijk is om diepgaande quantumverschijnselen aan te tonen in grote, complexe systemen – iets wat nog nooit eerder op deze schaal is gelukt. Een grote stap vooruit omdat we nu onze quantumapparaten kunnen testen, we weten dan hoe ‘quantum’ ze werkelijk zijn.
Lees meer in het artikel in de comments 👇
Leiden Science - Universiteit Leiden
🔬Working in a #physics lab, sometimes you see the most beautiful images!
📸 Our PhD-candidate, Samadarshi Maity from the Group of Alexandre Morin, made this photograph titled: 'Liquid Metal Eyes'.
🧪 Maity explains the making process: 'The image is a collection of Liquid Metal droplets generated using a microfluidic platform called a flow-focusing droplet generator. The "Liquid Metal" was created using an eutectic alloy of Gallium-Indium and Tin, therefore it is liquid at room temperature. The extraordinary metallic luster is a result of a smooth surface oxide of Gallium.'
📏 The tiny droplets are approximately 80 microns in diameter, and are developed by our in-house droplet generator microfluidics. The droplets reflect off each other, yielding an infinite pattern of reflections.
🪶 Maity's research is part of our #ActiveMatter physics: an emerging branch of soft, condensed matter physics. They study fundamental laws that govern the emergence of collective motion in living systems. For example: herds, flocks of birds, and human crowds. 'We particularly develop model experiments that mimic such collective behavior, and this active droplet is one such realization.'
🐾 Maity: 'In this research we try to understand how activity can affect the shape of individual active units. In this case, we particularly look at a collection of metal droplets as active units. Our final goal is to develop a massive collection of such droplets and observe how changes in their shape due to active force yield long-ranged, spatio-temporal behavior.'
🌍 This research will impact future innovations with soft conducting metal drops, like flexible microelectronics. But also this advances microfluidics technology and innovations in drug delivery.
Leiden Science - Universiteit LeidenLeiden University
🚀 𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘄𝗲 𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗸 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗾𝘂𝗮𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗺 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘄 - 𝗯𝗲𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆’𝗿𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲?
Vincent Koeman, PhD researcher at the Quantum and Society Group, Leiden University, explores why early public engagement is crucial as quantum technologies move from theory to potential real-world implementation.
🎥 In his mini-lecture, Vincent discusses the challenges of communicating such a complex and future-facing topic - and why cutting through the hype is essential to shaping responsible innovation.
👉 Watch the video to learn more about the link between hype, public understanding, and the development of quantum technologies.
#QuantumTechnology#ScienceCommunication#QuantumSociety#EthicsInTech
