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Nature has spent millions of years improving the way animals move. Among the best examples are fish, which can swim through water with incredible speed, control, and efficiency. Fish do not simply move their bodies from side to side. They carefully control the flexibility and stiffness of their bodies and fins to create powerful and energy-saving movements. Now, scientists are trying to bring this natural ability into the world of robotics. A research team led by Hu and colleagues has developed a new technology called Programmable Online Stiffness Modulation (POSM) that allows underwater robots to change their stiffness while swimming. This could help future robotic swimmers move more naturally, use less energy, and perform better underwater. Learning From the Swimming Secrets of Fish Fish are among the most efficient swimmers on Earth. Their bodies are designed to work with water instead of fighting against it. One important reason behind their success is their ability to control bod...

Modern medicine is entering an era where surgeries are becoming smaller, more delicate, and more precise than ever before. Procedures that once seemed impossible are now being explored with the help of advanced robotic technology. One of the most challenging examples is microsurgery inside the eye , where doctors must perform extremely careful movements on tiny structures that are far beyond the limits of the human hand. A new development called Origanoid , an origami-inspired robotic manipulator, could change the future of microsurgical procedures by combining tiny size, high precision, and powerful movement. Designed by Suzuki and a research team, this miniature robot aims to solve major problems faced by traditional surgical manipulators and could become an important tool for future treatments such as retinal cell and gene therapies. The Challenge of Microscale Eye Surgery The human hand is remarkably skilled, but even the most experienced surgeons have natural limitations. Small mo...

Robots are becoming more advanced every year, but one major challenge remains: creating machines that are both powerful and gentle . A robot needs enough strength to lift heavy objects, but it also needs the ability to handle delicate things without damaging them. Humans can easily switch between these two abilities with their hands, but robots have struggled to achieve the same balance. Traditional robotic systems usually use motors combined with gears to increase force. Gears help robots become stronger, but they also make them stiff and less flexible. A robot with heavy gearing cannot easily respond to outside forces, making it harder to safely interact with humans or delicate objects. Now, researchers led by Aksoy and their team have developed a new robotic technology that could solve this problem. Their system uses electroadhesive clutches and a smart power-sharing design to create robotic movements that can be both strong and flexible. This breakthrough could help build smaller...

Wormholes are among the most mysterious ideas in modern physics. They are theoretical tunnels in spacetime that could connect two distant points in the universe. Although no wormhole has ever been discovered, scientists continue to study them because they provide a unique way to understand gravity, space, and the deepest laws of nature. A new study has found that a tiny particle near a wormhole could reveal important information about the wormhole’s hidden structure. Researchers discovered that the force acting on a charged particle because of its own field can change depending on the shape and properties of the wormhole. This means that a small particle could act like a detector, helping scientists understand the geometry of spacetime itself. This research focuses on a phenomenon called the self-force — a strange effect where a particle interacts with its own field in a curved spacetime. What is self-force? In normal conditions, we usually think that an object is affected only by out...

For many years, scientists have been fascinated by one of the biggest mysteries in the universe: how can we truly identify the most extreme objects in space? Black holes are famous for their powerful gravity, where nothing — not even light — can escape. But what if some objects that look like black holes are actually something completely different? A new theoretical study has explored a strange possibility: a wormhole could sometimes appear exactly like a black hole depending on where the observer is located. This means that the same cosmic object could be identified differently by different observers. One observer might see a wormhole, while another might believe they are looking at a black hole. The study focuses on a special type of theoretical wormhole called the Harko–Kovács–Lobo wormhole (HKLWH) . Researchers Karimov, Izmailov, and Nandi investigated how this wormhole behaves, how it affects light, and why its appearance could change depending on the observer. What Are Wormhole...

For many years, scientists have believed that the Universe is expanding faster because of a mysterious force called dark energy . This unknown energy makes up nearly 68% of the Universe, but scientists still do not know what it really is. The most accepted explanation is that dark energy is a constant energy of space, known as the cosmological constant (Λ) . This idea is part of the standard model of cosmology called ΛCDM , which successfully explains many observations about the Universe. However, recent observations have started raising an important question: What if dark energy is not constant? What if it changes with time? A new study by Gil-Ocaranza and his team explores a fascinating possibility — that neutrinos, tiny particles that are everywhere in the Universe, may help create a changing form of dark energy. The researchers suggest that interactions between neutrinos and a very light particle called a scalar field could produce a dynamic dark energy effect. This means dark ene...

Imagine a surface that does not just display information but can physically change its shape, respond to your touch, sense its own movements, and show what it is doing in real time. A new breakthrough from researchers at Rice University and Kyung Hee University is bringing this idea closer to reality with the development of a soft, shape-changing mechanical surface that behaves almost like an artificial skin. Published in Science Advances , the research introduces a magnetically levitated mechanical metasurface that can rapidly transform into thousands of different shapes while remaining flexible, soft and durable. The technology combines movement, sensing and visual feedback into a single intelligent platform, creating a new type of interface between humans and machines. Unlike traditional electronic displays and touchscreens that mainly provide visual information, this new surface can physically interact with users. It can move, deform and communicate changes through both touch and s...