All Stories by Peter Weiss
- Tech
Laser beam powers flying machine
Caught in a laser's glare on its maiden launch, a lightweight drone with a solar panel demonstrated that continuous flight powered by ground-based lasers is possible.
- Physics
New type of material that heat can’t bloat
A newfound material exhibits the desirable property of not expanding when heated over a wide temperature range, but from an apparent cause never seen before—electrons changing positions inside the new compound's crystal structure.
- Physics
A Spin through Space-Time
After 40 years of preparation, satellite Gravity Probe B is scheduled to launch next month and test the prediction that massive bodies, such as Earth, twist space itself as they rotate.
- Physics
Super Spinner: Seven-atom speck acts like superfluid
Scientists have for the first time directly observed the onset in liquid helium of superfluidity—a quantum-mechanical state in which liquids flow without friction—as helium atoms accumulated one by one to form a droplet of liquid around a gas molecule.
- Tech
Sweet-toothed microbe tapped for power
Using a newly discovered bacterium that both frees electrons from sugars and injects those charges straight into electric circuits, scientists have created a fuel cell that converts carbohydrates to electricity with extraordinary efficiency.
- Physics
New Quarktet: Subatomic oddity hints at pentaparticle family
Evidence for the second particle ever found to include five of the fundamental building blocks known as quarks and antiquarks suggests that a whole family of such so-called pentaquarks exists.
- Humans
Nobel prizes go to scientists harnessing odd phenomena
The 2003 Nobel prizes in the sciences were announced early this week.
- Physics
Hot Crystal
In seeming violation of one of the laws of physics, a new type of metal microstructure promises to lead to far more efficient incandescent light bulbs and also to boost the development of light-based microcircuits and heat-to-electricity generators.
- Tech
The Daily Flicks: Morphing ink may bring video to newspapers
New types of electronic-paper pixels may eventually make it possible to view full-color video clips in your morning newspaper.
- Physics
One-Atom Laser: Trapped atom shoots steady light beam
A single, ultracold cesium atom sandwiched between two mirrors yields the most orderly beam of laser light ever.
- Tech
Channeling light in the deep sea
Light-conducting fibers that naturally sprout from certain deep-sea sponges may hold lessons for makers of optical fibers for telecommunications.
- Physics
Particle decays hint at new matter
A surprising disagreement between particle-physics theory and a Japan-based research team's measurement of decay rates of matter and antimatter hints that unknown, heavy subatomic particles may exist.
