Physics
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Materials Science
Nanotubes: Knot just for miniature work
A new technique can spin individual nanotubes into durable ribbons and threads visible to the naked eye.
- Materials Science
Nanotubes get as small as they can
Two research teams have created stable carbon nanotubes with the smallest diameter that scientists believe is physically possible, at just 0.4 nanometer across.
- Physics
Silk and soap settle a century-old flap
The leading explanation for why flags flap in the breeze has run afoul of new experimental findings.
- Physics
Piddly Puddle Peril: Little water pools foil road friction
Physicists have proposed an explanation for how even slight wetness can cut road-to-rubber friction.
- Physics
Particle hunt off, collider comes down
Despite tantalizing, last-minute hints of a long-sought, mass-giving particle called the Higgs boson, dismantling of the Large Electron-Positron collider has begun.
- Physics
Hot little levers write beaucoup bits
Arrays of microscopic tips may offer a way to pack digital data more tightly and transfer it more quickly than is possible with magnetic hard disks.
- Physics
Light step toward quantum networks
During the transfer of a quantum data bit from matter to light, a cloud of extremely cold atoms emitted a photon carrying a version of the cloud's quantum state.
- Physics
When all is a spin, calm is dragged in
When laboratory vortices are mixed to create the equivalent of a tornado in a hurricane, the "hurricane" may gobble up spots of calm from the outside world.
- Materials Science
Making Stuff Last
Chemistry and materials science step up to preserve history, old and new.
- Materials Science
Electronics Detox: Leadfree material for ecofriendly gadgetry
Responding to growing concern over the disposal of electronic devices, scientists in Japan have created a lead-free piezoceramic that could replace the toxic components in many of these gadgets.
- Materials Science
Metal Makeover
Metallic glasses with extraordinary strength and corrosion resistance have been known for decades, but only recently have researchers been able to make such alloys on a large scale from inexpensive iron.
- Materials Science
Anyone want to knit a microscopic sweater?
Microscopic polymer tubes can tangle themselves into a new and possibly useful structure—tiny "yarn balls" that flatten out and partly unravel in an electric field.
