The Year in Physics

Video : In 2025, physicists spotted a paradigm-shifting new black hole, doubled down on weakening dark energy, and discovered that the Earth’s deep interior may be more connected than previously thought, reshaping our picture of the planet’s engine.

视频：2025 年，物理学家发现了一个颠覆性的新黑洞，加倍削弱暗能量，并发现地球深处的内部联系可能比之前想象的更加紧密，从而重塑了我们对地球引擎的看法。

I t in no way reflects my feelings toward Quanta staff writer Charlie Wood that my favorite moment of the year in physics happened when he got seasick this summer aboard a ferry full of physicists on the North Sea.

我在物理学领域一年中最喜欢的时刻发生在他今年夏天在北海乘坐满载物理学家的渡轮时晕船时，这绝不反映我对广达特约撰稿人查理·伍德的感情。

Charlie and hundreds of the world’s top quantum researchers were en route to Helgoland, the island birthplace of quantum mechanics, for a historic conference to mark the theory’s centennial.

查理和数百名世界顶级量子研究人员正在前往量子力学发源地赫尔戈兰岛，参加一场纪念该理论一百周年的历史性会议。

In the hundred years since Werner Heisenberg successfully formulated quantum theory while scrambling over Helgoland’s rugged cliffsides, quantum mechanics has transformed the world.

自从维尔纳·海森堡在黑尔戈兰岛崎岖的悬崖边爬行时成功地阐述了量子理论以来的一百年里，量子力学已经改变了世界。

Yet physicists remain confused and divided over the theory’s meaning and what it implies about the nature of reality.

然而，物理学家对该理论的含义及其对现实本质的暗示仍然感到困惑和分歧。

Charlie’s rip-roaring account of the Helgoland conference surveys the tangled web of quantum interpretations that are in play.

查理对赫尔戈兰会议的激动人心的描述调查了正在发挥作用的量子解释的错综复杂的网络。

The heated debate got underway not long after the passengers embarked.

乘客登机后不久，激烈的争论就开始了。

“What do you mean, what do I mean?” one physicist yelled at another, as the boat pitched and rolled and Charlie’s queasiness set in.

“你什么意思，我什么意思？”当船颠簸摇晃时，一位物理学家对另一位物理学家大喊大叫，查理开始感到恶心。

T he biggest news this year in fundamental physics was also the biggest news last year.

今年基础物理领域最大的新闻也是去年最大的新闻。

In April 2024, a map of the cosmos released by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) hinted that dark energy, the repulsive agent that’s driving the expansion of space, has been weakening over time.

2024 年 4 月，暗能量光谱仪 (DESI) 发布的一张宇宙地图暗示，暗能量这种推动空间膨胀的排斥剂随着时间的推移一直在减弱。

It seemed too interesting to be true, but this March, DESI physicists returned to the podium with an even bigger cosmological map (15 million galaxies this time, rather than 6 million) and a stronger conclusion.

这似乎太有趣了，令人难以置信，但今年 3 月，DESI 物理学家带着更大的宇宙图（这次是 1500 万个星系，而不是 600 万个）和更强有力的结论重返讲台。

“We are much more certain than last year that this is definitely a thing,” one DESI member told Quanta .

“我们比去年更加确信这绝对是一件事，”一位 DESI 成员告诉广达。

The same month, a second effort, the Dark Energy Survey, also reported evidence that dark energy is losing steam.

同月，第二项工作“暗能量调查”也报告了暗能量正在失去动力的证据。

Dark energy is spread thinly throughout space, amounting to a few atoms’ worth of mass per cubic meter; it can be thought of as the energy of space itself.

暗能量在整个空间中稀疏地分布，相当于每立方米几个原子的质量；它可以被认为是空间本身的能量。

But where it comes from, and why it is so diffuse, no one can say.

但它从何而来，为何如此分散，无人能说。

If dark energy’s density really is dropping from one gigayear to the next, that points to a totally different explanation than if it were holding steady.

如果暗能量的密度确实从一个千兆年下降到下一个千兆年，那么这将表明与保持稳定完全不同的解释。

The 2025 results are still not statistically strong enough to constitute a discovery.

2025 年的结果在统计上仍然不足以构成一项发现。

More data is needed.

需要更多数据。

Luckily, the Vera C.

幸运的是，维拉 C.

Rubin Observatory, a powerful new telescope in Chile that began operations this summer , will map the locations of 20 billion galaxies over the next decade.

鲁宾天文台是智利的一座强大的新望远镜，于今年夏天开始运行，将在未来十年绘制 200 亿个星系的位置图。

That ought to be enough for researchers to say for sure whether dark energy is varying or not.

这应该足以让研究人员确定暗能量是否在变化。

Quanta Magazine ; source: JWST/NASA/ESA/CSA and Lukas Furtak

广达杂志；资料来源：JWST/NASA/ESA/CSA 和 Lukas Furtak

S peaking of flagship telescopes, the James Webb Space Telescope yielded a major discovery about the early universe.

作为旗舰望远镜的顶峰，詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜取得了关于早期宇宙的重大发现。

We could barely see anything from the first billion years until the Webb launched a few years ago.

从最初的十亿年到几年前韦伯发射，我们几乎看不到任何东西。

Since then, the telescope has spotted aptly named “little red dots” all over the infant cosmos.

从那时起，望远镜就在整个婴儿宇宙中发现了被恰当命名为“小红点”的物体。

Now physicists have worked out the identity of one of the dots: It’s an enormous black hole weighing 50 million suns , sitting alone in the young universe, shrouded by the thinnest veil of gas.

现在，物理学家已经确定了其中一个点的身份：它是一个重达 5000 万个太阳的巨大黑洞，孤独地坐落在年轻的宇宙中，被最薄的气体面纱笼罩着。

We’ve detected black holes before, but this “naked” one is unique.

我们以前检测过黑洞，但这个“裸”黑洞是独一无二的。

It singlehandedly upends notions about the young universe.

它单枪匹马地颠覆了关于年轻宇宙的观念。

Black holes were thought to have come along only after the formation of galaxies, once stars gravitationally collapsed into black holes that then merged and grew.

黑洞被认为是在星系形成后才出现的，一旦恒星在引力作用下塌缩成黑洞，然后合并并生长。

But this newfound behemoth exists with no galaxy in sight.

但这个新发现的庞然大物却在看不见的星系中存在。

Perhaps a galaxy took shape around it later.

也许后来在它周围形成了一个星系。

How this naked black hole (and any others like it) formed in the early universe — and whether it might even be primordial, originating from the Big Bang itself — has yet to be determined.

这个裸黑洞（以及任何其他类似的黑洞）是如何在早期宇宙中形成的——以及它是否可能是起源于大爆炸本身的太初黑洞——还有待确定。

“It’s terribly exciting.

“这太令人兴奋了。

It’s highly informative,” said one of the physicists who worked out its identity.

它的信息量很大，”一位找出其身份的物理学家说。

I n September, as part of How We Came To Know Earth , Quanta ’s special issue on climate science, Zack Savitsky told the epic story of climate modeling : an account of humanity’s largely successful quest over the past 60 years to build a computer model of Earth in order to ask what the future holds.

9 月，作为广达气候科学特刊《我们如何认识地球》的一部分，扎克·萨维茨基讲述了气候建模的史诗故事：讲述了人类在过去 60 年来为构建地球计算机模型以探寻未来而取得的巨大成功。

The answer is dire.

答案是可怕的。

But the achievement is awe-inspiring.

但取得的成就却令人惊叹。

Climate modeling essentially amounts to solving an enormous set of equations describing how fluids slosh around the globe.

气候建模本质上就是求解一组描述流体如何在全球范围内晃动的庞大方程。

The process of figuring out how to do that — what to put in the model and what to leave out — serves as a synecdoche for science as a whole.

弄清楚如何做到这一点的过程——在模型中放入什么以及省略什么——可以作为整个科学的提喻。

Always, understanding comes from pinpointing the relevant factors and forgetting the rest, from compressing nature’s endless intricacies into a human-readable story about the universe.

理解总是来自于查明相关因素并忘记其余的因素，来自于将大自然无穷无尽的复杂性压缩成人类可读的关于宇宙的故事。

W ith all the attention on AI this year, it’s natural to wonder whether our purportedly clever new machine friends are helping with our headiest human pursuits.

今年人工智能受到了广泛关注，人们很自然地想知道我们所谓的聪明的新机器朋友是否正在帮助我们实现人类最令人兴奋的追求。

In July, Anil Ananthaswamy reported on the impact AI is having on physics so far .

7 月，Anil Ananthaswamy 报告了迄今为止人工智能对物理学的影响。

Notably, the computers seem to have a knack for concocting bizarre physics experiments — designs that humans wouldn’t think of, which nevertheless work.

值得注意的是，计算机似乎有一种编造奇异物理实验的诀窍——这些设计是人类想不到的，但仍然有效。

Another impact of AI is the growing use of chatbots to generate calculations and proofs that look legitimate but are gibberish.

人工智能的另一个影响是越来越多地使用聊天机器人来生成看起来合法但实际上是胡言乱语的计算和证明。

In June, I had trouble telling whether someone really had solved the Yang-Mills mass gap problem — a calculation pertaining to the strong force that’s so difficult, it comes with a $1 million reward — as claimed in a paper posted to the physics preprint site arxiv.org.

今年 6 月，我很难判断是否有人真的解决了杨-米尔斯质量间隙问题——这是一个与强力有关的计算，非常困难，因此获得了 100 万美元的奖励——正如物理预印本网站 arxiv.org 上发布的一篇论文所声称的那样。

They had not.

他们没有。

The formulas in the paper were AI-generated claptrap, but the paper had slipped through arxiv.org’s automatic filters.

论文中的公式是人工智能生成的噱头，但论文却通过了 arxiv.org 的自动过滤器。

“The rejected-submission rate has risen dramatically since 2023 and has continued spiking upward in recent months, all driven by AI slop from quasi-technical people,” site administrator and physicist Paul Ginsparg told me.

网站管理员兼物理学家 Paul Ginsparg 告诉我：“自 2023 年以来，被拒绝的提交率急剧上升，并且在最近几个月继续飙升，这一切都是由准技术人员的人工智能技术推动的。”

This dreck, he said, “poses an existential threat to arxiv methodology.”

他说，这个烂摊子“对 arxiv 方法论构成了生存威胁。”

“How could this genius, this Einstein of the mind, just vanish into obscurity?” Amanda Gefter asks in her deliciously compelling feature about Peter Putnam.

“这个天才，这个思想界的爱因斯坦，怎么会消失得无影无踪呢？”阿曼达·盖夫特（Amanda Gefter）在她引人入胜的专题片中询问了有关彼得·普特南（Peter Putnam）的问题。

A student of the great physicist John Wheeler who wound up working as a janitor, Putnam “really should be regarded as one of the great philosophers of the 20th century,” according to one physicist who worked with him.

普特南是伟大物理学家约翰·惠勒的学生，后来当了一名看门人，据一位与普特南共事的物理学家说，他“确实应该被视为 20 世纪最伟大的哲学家之一”。

“Turing, Gödel, and Putnam — they’re three peas in a pod.

“图灵、哥德尔和普特南——他们是豆荚里的三颗豌豆。

But one of them isn’t recognized.”

但其中有一个没有被认可。”

Gefter tracked down storage units full of Putnam’s papers and sought to get to the bottom of his “brain calculus” — a theory of the mind that science now seems to be catching up to, and which might potentially help explain and improve today’s powerful AI models.

格夫特找到了装满普特南论文的存储单元，并试图弄清他的“大脑演算”的真相——科学现在似乎正在追赶的一种思维理论，它可能有助于解释和改进当今强大的人工智能模型。

“I might have walked away,” Gefter writes, “if I hadn’t been struck with the same feeling that had taken hold of everyone else: that Putnam was actually onto something.”

盖夫特写道：“如果我没有被其他人同样的感觉所震撼的话，我可能会走开：普特南实际上是在做某件事。”

Quanta didn’t report many breakthroughs in condensed matter physics in 2025, but incremental progress remains steady in that vast subfield, which concerns solids and their dizzying variety of properties and behaviors.

Quanta 并没有报告 2025 年凝聚态物理方面的许多突破，但在这个涉及固体及其令人眼花缭乱的各种性质和行为的庞大子领域中，渐进式的进展仍然稳定。

For a dose of coverage from elsewhere, read Savitsky’s feature article about “strange metals.” In certain crystalline materials, the strange-metal phase is a precursor to high-temperature superconductivity; many specialists suspect they’ll have to crack what electrons are doing in strange metals before they can hope to control superconductors.

有关其他地方的报道，请阅读萨维茨基关于“奇怪金属”的专题文章。在某些晶体材料中，奇异金属相是高温超导的前身；许多专家怀疑，他们必须先破解电子在奇怪金属中的作用，然后才能有望控制超导体。

Several theories have been posited recently about this phase of matter.

最近提出了关于物质这一阶段的几种理论。

It seems that “electrons” might not be the relevant vocabulary.

看来“电子”可能不是相关词汇。

Savitsky quotes the late physicist Jan Zaanen, who said that when it comes to strange metals, “it cannot be emphasized enough how misleading the very idea of a particle is.”

萨维茨基引用了已故物理学家扬·扎宁的话说，当谈到奇怪的金属时，“粒子的概念是多么具有误导性，这一点怎么强调都不为过。”

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获取发送到您的电子邮件收件箱的最重要新闻的摘要

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《Quanta》杂志对评论进行审核，以促进知情、实质性、文明的对话。

Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected.

辱骂、亵渎、自我推销、误导、语无伦次或偏离主题的评论将被拒绝。

Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (New York time) and can only accept comments written in English.

版主在正常工作时间（纽约时间）有工作人员，并且只能接受英文评论。