All Stories by Peter Weiss
- Physics
Glints from Inner Space: Sensing Earth’s hidden radioactivity
Physicists have observed signatures of radioactivity deep within Earth, enabling measurement of planet-wide thorium and uranium quantities.
- Physics
Why isn’t the sky violet, Daddy?
A new analysis of why the sky looks blue reveals that the reason may be the combined effects of the atmosphere and of our eyes' color-sensing apparatus.
- Physics
In search of the imperfect nanocrystal
Semiconductor nanocrystals can incorporate property-enhancing impurities into their growing structures as long as the crystals have facets onto which such atoms can strongly adhere.
- Tech
Tapping Tiny Pores: Nanovalves control chemical releases
After creating arrays of nanovalves, each made from a single molecule, chemists used them to generate minuscule chemical discharges.
- Physics
Getting Warped
While museum displays such as simulations of warped space-time acquaint visitors with the ideas behind Albert Einstein's scientific discoveries, other galleries of artifacts, letters, and even film footage reveal the multifaceted man that Einstein was.
- Physics
Realistic Time Machine? New design could forgo exotic ingredient
A novel time machine concept may avoid a problem of earlier, less-practical proposals by requiring only normal matter and the vacuum known to exist in space.
- Tech
Wiring up molecules
Minuscule gaps of controlled sizes in gold microwires may serve as test sites for probing properties of specks of material as small as a single molecule and as a basis for novel sensors and circuit components.
- Physics
Dr. Feynman’s Doodles
A new U.S. postage stamp honoring physicist and folk hero Richard P. Feynman sports curious squiggles, invented by Feynman, that were rejected at first but soon became a major tool of physicists everywhere for picturing the behaviors and calculating the properties of matter and energy.
- Physics
Probing chemical signatures in an earthy way
Scientists have performed nuclear magnetic resonance analysis using Earth's magnetic field.
- Materials Science
Whisking Whiskers: Nanobrushes sweep up
Researchers have made microscopic brushes with carbon nanotube bristles.
- Tech
Slick trick snags catalyst
A costly type of catalyst sticks to Teflon, suggesting a new way to recover these chemicals from solutions.
- Tech
Morphing Memory
A promising memory technology for future portable gadgets exploits the same atom-shuffling materials that have already led to rewritable CDs and DVDs.
