Nature, 23 July 2026, Volume 655 Issue 8124

《自然》，2026年7月23日，第655卷，8124期

天文学Astronomy

Planetary-mass exosatellite detected around the substellar companion of a star

科学家探测到系外卫星

▲ 作者：Kevin Hoy, Alice Zurlo, Pablo A , Silvano Desidera, Raffaele Gratton, Cecilia Lazzoni, Simon Petrus, Florian Rodler, Jonathan Smoker, Valentina D’Orazi, Ilaria Carleo & Ilaria Giovannini

▲链接：

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10751-w

▲摘要：

褐矮星的质量介于行星与恒星之间。在同时包含一颗恒星和一颗亚恒星伴星（无论是褐矮星还是系外行星）的系统中，绕伴星运行的第三个天体可称为系外卫星。系外行星的卫星可以很自然地称为系外卫星，但褐矮星伴星的卫星是否也能如此称呼尚不明确，因为该术语缺乏正式定义。

尽管已发现超过6000颗系外行星，但迄今尚未有系外卫星被确凿探测到。虽然存在一些候选体，但它们缺乏确认，且仍存在争议。研究者报告了围绕直接成像的褐矮星伴星CD-35 2722 B运行的一颗系外卫星的证据。他们将用于发现太阳型恒星周围首颗系外行星的径向速度分析技术应用于这颗褐矮星的VLT/CRIRES+光谱数据，发现了至少一个绕转卫星的周期性信号。

研究者表示，这是该技术首次在褐矮星伴星周围产生卫星存在的证据。我们的最佳拟合模型包含一颗最小质量约为0.9倍木星质量、轨道周期约为170天的卫星。尽管这颗系外卫星是否满足目前尚未定义的“系外卫星”标准尚不确定，但这是朝着首次无争议探测迈出的重要一步，因为技术的进步将使得同样的方法能够应用于质量更小的目标。

▲ Abstract：

Brown dwarfs occupy the mass regime between planets and stars. In systems containing both a star and a substellar companion (be it a brown dwarf or an exoplanet), a third object orbiting the companion can be called an exosatellite. Exoplanet satellites can be easily described as exomoons, but it is not clear if satellites of brown dwarf companions can be called the same, as the term lacks a formal definition. Despite more than 6,000 exoplanets being discovered1, no exomoon has ever been confidently detected. Although there are candidates, they lack confirmation and remain controversial. In this work, we present evidence of an exosatellite orbiting the directly imaged brown dwarf companion CD-35 2722 B. Applying radial velocity analysis, the same technique used to discover the first exoplanet around a Solar-type star6, to VLT/CRIRES+ spectra of this brown dwarf, we find what appears to be the periodic signal of at least one orbiting satellite. This is the first time, to our knowledge, this technique has produced evidence of satellites around a companion brown dwarf. Our best-fitting model includes a satellite with a minimum mass of about 0.9 Jupiter masses and a period of around 170 days. Although it is uncertain whether this exosatellite will fulfil the presently undefined criteria for qualifying as an exomoon, it is a marked step towards that first uncontroversial detection, as advancing technology will allow the same method to be applied to less massive targets.

物理学Physics

Quantum statistical plasmonic metacrystals

量子统计等离激元超晶体

▲ 作者：：Chenglong You, Riley B. Dawkins, Jannatul Ferdous, Mohammed Mehedi Hasan, Aadi Singh, Ziang Zhuang, Addison Wilberg, Ian Baum, Benjamin Bertoni, Mingyuan Hong & Omar S.

▲链接：

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10782-3

▲摘要：

调控量子多体动力学的工程材料仍面临挑战，因为多粒子相互作用通常会产生复杂的涌现行为，难以预测。研究者引入量子统计等离激元超晶体——一种结构，其中由光学近场介导的多粒子动力学产生禁戒量子统计能带，从而能够选择性地透射不同类型的光。

这一功能源于由纳米天线作为超原子组成的等离激元结构。统计特性位于允许能带内的多光子场可无畸变地传播，而处于禁戒能带中的场则被抑制或驱向最近的可达统计态。研究者发现这些能带由超原子的几何排布和集体排列决定，从而为量子统计输运的工程化提供了一条确定性路径。

该平台建立了一种室温量子材料，其本质上对多体光子系统的量子相干性敏感，可实现其鲁棒的操控与输运。研究结果对用于能量收集和可扩展多体量子技术的相干敏感光子材料具有启示意义。

▲ Abstract：

Engineering materials that control quantum many-body dynamics remains challenging, as multiparticle interactions typically produce complex emergent behaviour that is difficult to predict1,2. Here we introduce quantum statistical plasmonic metacrystals, structures in which the multiparticle dynamics mediated by optical near fields produce forbidden quantum statistical bands that enable selective transmission of different types of light. This functionality arises from a plasmonic structure composed of nanoantennas acting as meta-atoms3. Multiphoton fields with statistics within the allowed bands propagate without distortion, whereas fields in forbidden bands are suppressed or driven towards the nearest accessible statistical state. We show that these bands are determined by the geometry and collective arrangement of the meta-atoms, providing a deterministic route to engineering quantum statistical transport. This platform establishes a room-temperature quantum material intrinsically sensitive to the quantum coherence of many-body photonic systems, enabling their robust manipulation and transport4. Our results have implications for coherence-sensitive photonic materials for energy harvesting and scalable many-body quantum technologies.

化学Chemistry

Catalyst-free, microdroplet-mediated waste plastic conversion to diacids

无催化剂、微滴介导的废塑料转化为二酸

▲ 作者：Ruiliang Gao (高瑞良), Liwei Zhang (张立炜), Richard J. Lewis, Hao Wang (王浩), Zhiyan Pan (潘志彦), Yage Zhang(张亚各), Zekai Yu (俞泽楷), Zhiqiang Liu (刘志强), Xiaolin Guo (郭晓琳), Xiangbowen Du (杜向博文), Wencong Liu (刘文聪), Minghang Li (李明航), Shipan Liang (梁世潘), Bing Lu (陆冰), Ichiro Daigo (醍醐市朗), Shanjun Mao (毛善俊), Graham J. Hutchings & Yong Wang (王勇)

▲链接：

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10746-7

▲摘要：

塑料废物的积累对环境和公共健康构成全球性威胁。尽管通过催化升级转化为高值化学品前景广阔，但其工业应用受限于添加剂引起的催化剂失活、原料异质性、工艺缺乏灵活性以及有限的经济可行性。

研究者报道了一种无催化剂的升级利用策略，利用微滴界面原位生成的羟基自由基，在温和条件下实现从聚烯烃到橡胶等多种废塑料的氧化裂解，生成羧酸。通过消除依赖催化剂的路径，该方法规避了催化剂设计与中毒的关键挑战，同时大幅降低了技术门槛和成本。

该方法在相对温和条件下实现了聚乙烯（PE）的完全转化，短链二酸选择性接近69%，并展现出对混合商业塑料的广泛适用性，且可放大至300克规模。自由基中间体分析揭示了H₂O在调控独特氧化降解机制中的关键作用：即羟基自由基依次加成至烷基自由基，这区别于经典的烷烃液相好氧氧化。

这种界面自由基介导的策略实现了可持续的聚合物升级利用，且所需基础设施极少。更广泛地，这项工作为微滴化学的首次工业化实施（据我们所知）提供了一个可扩展的蓝图，对有机酸合成及其他领域的氧化过程具有变革性意义。

▲ Abstract：

Plastic waste accumulation poses a global threat to both the environment and public health1,2,3. Although catalytic upcycling to value-added chemicals holds promise, its industrial adoption is hindered by additive-induced catalyst deactivation, feedstock heterogeneity, process inflexibility and limited economic viability4. Here we report a catalyst-free upcycling strategy that makes use of in situ generation of hydroxyl radicals at microdroplet interfaces5,6,7,8 to enable oxidative cleavage of diverse waste plastics—from polyolefins to rubbers—into carboxylic acids under mild conditions. By eliminating catalyst-dependent pathways, this approach circumvents key challenges of catalyst design and poisoning, while substantially lowering technical barriers and costs9,10. Our method achieves complete conversion of polyethylene (PE) with selectivity to short-chain diacids approaching 69% under relatively mild conditions and demonstrated broad applicability to mixed commercial plastics, with scalability demonstrated up to the 300-g scale. Radical intermediate analysis reveals the crucial role of H₂O in mediating a unique oxidative degradation mechanism: sequential hydroxyl radical addition to alkyl radicals, distinct from classical liquid-phase aerobic oxidation of alkane11. This interfacial radical-mediated strategy enables sustainable polymer upcycling with minimal infrastructure. More broadly, this work provides a scalable blueprint for the first, to our knowledge, industrial implementation of microdroplet chemistry, with transformative implications for oxidation processes in organic acid synthesis and beyond.

Scalable quasi-pure MOF membranes for energy-efficient gas separations

可扩展的准纯MOF膜用于节能气体分离

▲ 作者：Shizheng Song, Dong Fan, Xilin Jia, Zhe Zhou, Alejandro Diaz-Marquez, Zhihao Liu, Lingzhi Huang, Shuo Liu, He Wen, Yanjie Wang, Dahua Yao, Guillaume Maurin, Yu Han, Haihui Wang, Mohamed Eddaoudi & Sheng Zhou

▲链接：

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10655-9

▲摘要：

金属有机框架（MOF）膜在解决高能耗气体分离的能源代价方面具有巨大潜力。制定便捷的可扩展方案对于MOF基膜成功转化为实际应用并实现部署至关重要。研究者报道了一种新型膜结构——准纯MOF膜（MOF体积分数>90%），可采用工业可靠的溶液加工技术实现规模化制造，其分离性能接近相应的纯MOF膜，充分释放了MOF的内在潜力。

这一进展得益于一种融合相方法，将MOF和聚合物融合为单一伪连续相，并使MOF具备类聚合物的表面性质，从而即使在极高固含量下也能形成流变可控的絮凝网络。他们将代表性基准MOF（ZIF-67、CALF-20和CuBDC）制造成准纯膜，并评估了其在丙烯/丙烷、乙烯/乙烷、碳捕集和氢气纯化等关键分离中的应用。

展示工业相关性的是，在工业工厂中实现了（110）取向ZIF-67准纯膜的连续卷对卷制造。对于丙烯/丙烷分离，这些膜的丙烯渗透率约为160 barrer，混合气选择性约为100，足以生产聚合级丙烯，基于技术经济分析，与精馏相比可降低80%的纯化成本。研究解决了结晶态膜在苛刻分子分离中长期存在的性能与可扩展性之间的差距。

▲ Abstract：

Metal–organic framework (MOF) membranes offer great potential to address the energy penalties of energy-intensive gas separations. Deriving convenient scalable protocols is essential for the successful translation and deployment of MOF-based membranes into practical applications6,7,8. Here we report a new membrane architecture, the quasi-pure MOF membrane (>90 vol% MOF), manufacturable at scale using industry-reliable solution-processing techniques and offering separation performance approaching that of associated pure MOF membranes, fully realizing the MOF intrinsic potential. This advance is enabled by a merged-phase approach fusing MOFs and polymers into a single pseudo-continuous phase and proffering MOFs with polymer-like surface properties, allowing rheologically controlled flocculated networks even at extreme solid concentrations. Representative benchmark MOFs (ZIF-67, CALF-20 and CuBDC) were fabricated into quasi-pure membranes and evaluated for essential separations, including propylene/propane, ethylene/ethane, carbon capture and hydrogen purification. Demonstrating industrial relevance, continuous roll-to-roll fabrication of quasi-pure (110)-oriented ZIF-67 membranes was achieved at an industrial plant. For propylene/propane separation, these membranes achieve a propylene permeability of about 160 barrer and mixed-gas selectivity of about 100—sufficient to produce polymer-grade propylene, offering an 80% purification cost reduction compared with distillation based on techno-economic analysis. This study addresses the long-standing gap between performance and scalability of crystalline membranes for demanding molecular separations.

生命科学Life Science

A critical initialization for biological neural networks

生物神经网络的一种临界初始化

▲ 作者：Marius Pachitariu, Lin Zhong, Alexa Gracias, Amanda Minisi, Crystall Lopez & Carsen Stringer

▲链接：

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10528-1

▲摘要：

内在产生的全脑神经活动显示出大群神经元之间的宏观协调性，这种协调性持续的时间超越了单个神经元的生物物理时间尺度。目前尚不清楚这些宏观行为如何从神经元对之间微观、短程的相互作用中涌现出来。

研究显示小鼠大规模神经记录的特征值谱和动力学特性，与由临界归一化的随机对称矩阵所支配的线性动力学产生的特征相似。一个例外是海马CA1区的群体活动，它类似于一种高效的、不相关的神经编码，可能为信息存储容量而优化。

高维全局活动模式在临界归一化的人工网络中涌现，并在稀疏、簇状或空间连接性下持续存在。这些动力学在解决时间依赖任务（如零样本工作记忆任务）中具有实用性。

▲ Abstract：

Intrinsically generated, brainwide neural activity displays macroscopic coordination among large populations of neurons that persists beyond the biophysical timescales of individual neurons1,2,3. It is not well understood how these macroscopic behaviours arise from microscopic, short-lived interactions between pairs of neurons. Here we show that the eigenvalue spectrum and dynamical properties of large-scale neural recordings in mice are similar to those produced by linear dynamics governed by a random symmetric matrix that is critically normalized. An exception was population activity in hippocampal area CA1, which resembled an efficient, uncorrelated neural code that may be optimized for information storage capacity. High-dimensional, global activity modes emerged in critically normalized artificial networks and persisted under sparse, clustered or spatial connectivity. These dynamics were useful for solving time-dependent tasks such as a zero-shot working memory task.

A synaptic locus of song learning

鸣唱学习的突触位点

▲ 作者：Drew C. Schreiner, Samuel Brudner, Amanda Li, John Pearson & Richard Mooney

▲链接：

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-026-10510-x

▲摘要：

模仿学习是语言和音乐表达的基础，但其神经基础尚不明确。幼年雄性斑胸草雀通过模仿成年导师的多音节鸣唱来学习，这一过程依赖于一个鸣唱特化的皮质-基底节回路，为识别模仿运动学习的突触底物提供了强大的研究体系。假设认为，特定一组皮质-基底节突触的可塑性驱动了学习过程中鸣唱的快速变化，随后这些变化在下游回路中得以巩固。然而，这一假设尚未经过验证，且学习初始发生的突触位点仍不清楚。

研究者通过将量化鸣唱学习的计算框架与皮质-基底节回路内部及下游的突触特异性光遗传学和化学遗传学操作相结合，鉴定了在幼鸟鸣唱学习过程中驱动快速声音变化的获取与表达的特定皮质-基底节突触，并刻画了这些变化巩固所持续的数小时时间尺度。

此外，短暂增强基底节中突触后活动可短暂加速学习速率，并持久改变鸣唱，表明基底节活动与快速学习之间存在直接联系。这些结果定位了使幼年鸣禽学会唱歌的特定皮质-基底节突触，并揭示了这一模仿学习范式的回路逻辑和行为时间尺度。

▲ Abstract：

Learning by imitation is the foundation for verbal and musical expression, but its neural basis remains unclear. A juvenile male zebra finch imitates the multisyllabic song of an adult tutor in a process that depends on a song-specialized cortico-basal ganglia circuit, affording a powerful system to identify the synaptic substrates of imitative motor learning. Plasticity at a particular set of cortico-basal ganglia synapses is hypothesized to drive rapid learning-related changes in song before these changes are subsequently consolidated in downstream circuits5. Nevertheless, this hypothesis is untested and the synaptic locus where learning initially occurs is unclear. Here, by combining a computational framework to quantify song learning with synapse-specific optogenetic and chemogenetic manipulations within and downstream of the cortico-basal ganglia circuit, we identified the specific cortico-basal ganglia synapses that drive the acquisition and expression of rapid vocal changes during juvenile song learning and characterized the hours-long timescale over which these changes consolidate. Furthermore, transiently augmenting postsynaptic activity in the basal ganglia briefly accelerates learning rates and persistently alters song, demonstrating a direct link between basal ganglia activity and rapid learning. These results localize the specific cortico-basal ganglia synapses that enable a juvenile songbird to learn to sing and reveal the circuit logic and behavioural timescales of this imitative learning paradigm.