Physics
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PhysicsTurning magnetic resonance inside out
A new method of manipulating magnetic signals makes it possible to gather useful information about a chemical sample—or perhaps one day a person—without often-claustrophobic confinement inside a magnetic coil.
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Physics
Quantum queerness gets quick, compact
New ways to trap and cool atoms may hasten practical uses of strange ultracold atom clouds known as Bose-Einstein condensates.
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Materials Science
Environment’s stuck with nonstick coatings
Some nonstick coatings such as Teflon break down at high temperatures into undesirable compounds that persist in the environment.
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Materials Science
Titanium dioxide hogs the spotlight
Researchers have created new coatings that break down toxins and keep mirrors from fogging when the materials are exposed to visible light.
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Physics
Antimatter mystery transcends new data
The discovery of a disparity in decays of subatomic particles known as B mesons and anti-B mesons sheds light on how matter and antimatter differ but deepens the mystery of why matter predominates in the universe today.
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Physics
Physics Bedrock Cracks, Sun Shines In
The first data from a new Canadian detector of particles called neutrinos not only resolve a 30-year-old puzzle about how the sun works, but also revise estimates of mysterious "dark" matter in the universe and strengthen a key challenge to the prevailing theory of particle physics.
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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.
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Materials Science
Scientists get a handle on crystal shape
Researchers have discovered how the orientation of amino acid molecules can make a growing crystal take on either a right- or a left-handed form.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.