All Stories by Peter Weiss
- Tech
Device fingers chemical thugs at scene
A compact, new instrument exploits quantum mechanics to rapidly identify illegal drugs, pollutants, and other chemicals, on the spot.
- Tech
Robosaur roams with spring in its step
The novel dinosaur robot Troodon takes two-legged walking machines onto new terrain.
- Tech
Polymer takes dim view of explosives
By spraying surfaces with a light-emitting polymer, researchers have taken a step toward making new sensors for traces of common explosives.
- Physics
New probe zooms in on midgets of magnetism
A new microscope for peering at magnetic materials provides the first glimpses of how such materials behave on a scale of only tens of atoms.
- Physics
Pitching Science
A new computer model of baseball pitching helps give pitching robots humanlike abilities and may have enabled engineers to solve a half-century-old puzzle of baseball science.
- Physics
Stretching and twisting a bright idea
A new, stretchy type of liquid-crystal component makes it possible to change a laser's color by simply pulling on the membrane—a much easier, cheaper means of adjustment than that used for today's complex and expensive tunable lasers.
- Physics
In a squeeze, nitrogen gets chunky
Remarkable already for being a semiconductor and, perhaps, an explosive, a new, solid form of nitrogen made by crushing the ordinary gas to the highest pressures ever also stands out because it continues to survive when the pressure is released.
- Physics
Electrons trip on tiny semiconductor steps
A first glimpse of how a semiconductor's surface alters electrons' magnetic fields, or spins, suggests that tiny steps in the surfaces are tripping up efforts to create so-called spintronics circuits from semiconductors.
- Physics
Light shines in quantum-computing arena
A new computing scheme using available technology and only classical physics appears to handle many tasks that researchers thought would be unsuited to any computers except the still-hypothetical ones that would exploit quantum physics.
- Physics
Device shifts molecules into slow motion
Unlike other particle accelerators, which manipulate the speed and energy of charged particles, a new device accelerates neutral molecules such as ammonia.
- Physics
Lead blocks may catch nuclear killer
New measurements of neutron bursts from blocks of lead may help researchers solve a decades-old cosmic whodunit.
- Physics
Maybe this watched pot already boiled
Researchers smashing nuclei in hopes of producing a primordial state of matter called the quark-gluon plasma may have already made the stuff without realizing it.
