All Stories by Andrew Grant
- Physics
3-D printed device cracks cocktail party problem
A plastic disk does what sophisticated computers cannot: solve the cocktail party problem.
- Quantum Physics
Physicists get answers from computer that didn’t run
By exploiting the quirks of quantum mechanics, physicists consistently determined what a quantum computer would have done without actually running the computer.
- Physics
Quest for room-temperature superconductivity warms up
Scientists have demonstrated that a material can conduct electrical current without resistance at temperatures as high as –70° Celsius.
- Particle Physics
Antimatter doesn’t differ from charge-mass expectations
An experiment with unprecedented precision finds that protons and antiprotons have the same ratio of charge to mass, which is consistent with theories but disappoints many physicists.
- Physics
3-D printed device cracks cocktail party problem
A plastic disk does what sophisticated computers cannot: solve the cocktail party problem.
- Planetary Science
New exoplanet: Big Earth or small Neptune?
NASA’s Kepler spacecraft has discovered a “cousin” of Earth 1,400 light-years away. But even though the new planet bears many similarities to Earth, experts say much about it remains a mystery.
- Materials Science
Buckyballs turn on copper’s magnetism
Exposure to buckyballs bestows ironlike magnetic properties onto the normally nonmagnetic metals copper and manganese.
- Quantum Physics
Quantum communication takes a new twist
A three-kilometer transmission of light above the Vienna skyline demonstrates that scientists can use the twistiness of light to encode delicate quantum information.
- Life
Laser light made inside cells
Microscopic beads and oil droplets become lasers when implanted into cells.
- Materials Science
Stretchy fiber lets electrons flow
Folded layers of carbon nanotubes allow an elastic fiber to conduct electrical current when stretched.
- Materials Science
Stretchy fiber keeps electrons flowing
Folded layers of carbon nanotubes allow an elastic fiber to conduct electrical current when stretched.
- Physics
Elusive particle shows up in ‘semimetal’
Weyl fermions, which resemble massless electrons, have been spotted inside tantalum arsenide. Their discovery comes 86 years after they were proposed.
