All Stories by Devin Powell
- Physics
What it means to ‘feel the noise’
Scientists investigating the nexus between sound and touch suggest that the ear arose from skin.
- Physics
Gators go a-courtin’ with fancy physics
Their subsonic mating bellows generate Faraday waves, a phenomenon almost never seen outside the lab.
- Physics
Rogue waves captured
Re-creating tiny versions of these monster swells in a laboratory tank reveals their mathematical underpinnings.
- Physics
New laser is from the birds
Inspired by an optical trick that colors feathers without pigment, physicists come up with a cheap, practical design.
- Space
Gravity Probe B finally pays off
A half century in the making, an orbiting experiment finally confirms Einstein's general relativity.
- Earth
Currents reach deep for seafloor larvae
Surface waters circulate more than a mile down, transporting organisms between distant ocean-bottom habitats.
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Moved by Light
Lasers push everyday objects into the quantum world.
- Physics
Scientists see the one-way light
Nonlinear materials that allow directional discrimination of waves could be used to make components for light-based computers.
- Physics
Time travel nixed in metamaterial world
A desktop universe captures essential properties of the real thing.
- Physics
How bicycles keep the rubber on the road
An international collaboration tries to explain the surprising stability of two-wheeled travel.
- Physics
Screwy symmetry revealed
Math trick that reverses spirals and other shapes that twist and turn should provide new ways to understand and design materials.
- Chemistry
Japan nuke accident seen from Seattle
Radioactive particles retrieved in the Pacific Northwest offer clues to events inside the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant.
