Nobel Prize in Physics

The American Institute of Physics is set to cover the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physics, highlighting the research and researchers recognized by the Nobel Committee. Interest is already building around which breakthroughs in physics will be honored this year.

Researchers report generating quasicrystalline patterns in water waves, bringing the geometry famously seen in solid materials into fluid dynamics. Work on quasicrystals earned the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and reproducing their aperiodic order in waves rather than atomic lattices is a striking demonstration. Physicists are discussing what the finding reveals about wave interference and whether similar ordered-but-non-repeating structures could emerge in other fluid systems.

Anniversaries are being marked for Enrico Fermi, born 125 years ago, the Italian-American physicist behind the world's first nuclear reactor and a key figure in developing quantum theory and nuclear physics. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 and lent his name to the famous Fermi paradox about alien life.