All Stories by Peter Weiss
- Tech
Fields of Beams: Carbon nanotubes crop up for big-screen TV
Carbon nanotubes serve as the electron emitters that light up the screen of a new experimental, high-definition television display.
- Tech
Morphing wheels for beginner bikers
A new bike design for kids morphs from tricycle into bicycle as the rider gets moving, possibly easing the often-fearful starts at riding two-wheelers.
- Tech
Nuke batteries get more practical
Nuclear batteries that will last for decades may have moved closer to reality with the demonstration of a silicon chip riddled with radioactive, tritium-filled pits where radiation is efficiently converted to electricity.
- Physics
Molecular Anatomy Revealed
Using ever-faster lasers to zap the electron clouds in atoms and molecules, scientists are making major strides toward observing and controlling the elementary quantum transformations that underlie all of chemistry.
- Physics
Quantum Bull’s-Eye: Particle-mass prediction hits the mark
By precisely predicting the mass of a subatomic meson, physicists have demonstrated they have the computational know-how to calculate real-world details from quark basics.
- Tech
In Its Own Image: Simple robot replicates itself block by block
A robot made by stacking identical, cubelike modules has demonstrated that it can copy itself.
- Physics
Galactic data shore up a constant
Alpha, a constant of nature found to vary in some astrophysical studies, actually holds steady, according to the first survey of galaxies used to evaluate alpha's constancy.
- Physics
Scales tilt against five-quark particles
Studies that fail to find purported five-quark particles, or pentaquarks, are stacking up quicker than studies that claim to have found such particles, suggesting that they might not really exist.
- Physics
Test puts pedal to heavy metal
Stellar explosions forge heavy elements such as gold more quickly than scientists had predicted, as indicated by the first measurement of the half-life of a rare form of nickel that's a key link in the chain of element formation.
- Tech
Radio-a-Wreck
Radio transmitters broadcasting from imploding buildings are informing engineers about how such collapses disrupt radio communications and how rescuers might overcome those disruptions.
- Physics
Extreme Matter: Mother of all material flows into view
By making an extremely hot and dense state of matter that, surprisingly, is a liquid, physicists say they may have finally created a sample of matter much like the primordial stuff that permeated the newborn universe and gave rise to all other matter.
- Physics
Built for Speed: Novel transistor design spurns limits
The novel design of what's now the world's fastest transistor opens the possibility of even speedier devices that could operate as fast as a trillion cycles per second.
