All Stories by Andrew Grant
- Computing
‘The Imitation Game’ entertains at the expense of accuracy
Inaccuracies weaken “The Imitation Game,” an otherwise enjoyable film about Alan Turing breaking the Enigma code during World War II.
- Astronomy
Europa’s geysers play hard-to-see
Follow-up observations of Europa failed to confirm the existence of geysers venting the Jupiter moon’s hidden ocean into space.
- Planetary Science
Rosetta may have spotted comet’s primordial ingredients
Photos taken by the Rosetta spacecraft may show pristine material that formed the solar system’s comets, asteroids and planets roughly 4.6 billion years ago.
- Astronomy
Gamma-ray bursts may repeatedly wipe out life
Brief bursts of high-energy radiation may sterilize most planets across the universe, hampering the chances for widespread intelligent life.
- Particle Physics
Year in review: Neutrinos leave tracks in ice
The IceCube experiment has started to pinpoint the birthplaces of some high-energy neutrinos.
- Math
Math to match pedestrian behavior is all about timing
The best-ever simulation of pedestrians moving through a crowd relies on a new formula that encapsulates people’s ability to anticipate collisions.
- Physics
Assaulting ink drops for science
A pulse of laser light obliterates a free-falling ink drop in an image from the American Physical Society’s 2014 Gallery of Fluid Motion competition. The work may help engineers build the next generation of computer chips.
- Tech
Blu-ray Discs get repurposed to improve solar cells
Polymer solar cells capture more sunlight when they are imprinted with movies’ and TV shows’ Blu-ray Disc etchings.
- Physics
Material borders support unusually warm electronic superhighways
The interface between a conductive wafer and an iron-containing film is a high-temperature superconductor, which transmits electrons without resistance.
- Physics
Negative mass might not defy Einstein
Repulsive matter could have played a role in the early universe, a computational study finds.
- Quantum Physics
Milestone algorithm runs on quantum computer
An algorithm proposed two decades ago that demonstrated the benefit of using quantum mechanics to solve certain problems has finally been run on a quantum computer.
- Materials Science
‘Impermeable’ graphene yields to protons
Graphene sheets, impermeable to all atoms and molecules, can be penetrated by protons, new study shows.
