Physics
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- Physics
Electron breakup? Physics shake-up
A controversial theoretical proposal that challenges more than a century of theory and experiments suggests that loose electrons in liquid helium may break into pieces, dubbed electrinos.
- Physics
One-molecule chemistry gets big reaction
Carrying out a widely used chemical reaction on one molecule at a time, researchers demonstrate unprecedented control of molecular behavior and, possibly, the ability to make novel nanotechnology devices and compounds that can't be created with ordinary chemistry.
- Physics
Fusion Boost: Promising path to heavy nuclei
By using radioactive nuclei as projectiles in accelerator-based nuclear collisions, scientists may be able to produce more readily than expected many exotic heavy nuclei that are impossible to make today but are crucial for future advances in nuclear physics.
- Materials Science
Sopping Up Heavy Metal: Hybrid material removes mercury from water
A hybrid material consisting of a bacterial protein and a temperature-sensitive polymer proves efficient at removing mercury from contaminated water.
- Materials Science
Plastic Chips: New materials boost organic electronics
A new class of electrically conducting organic molecules provides researchers with improved materials with which to fabricate plastic electronic devices.
- Physics
Hydrogen hoops give superfluid clues
Tiny rings of hydrogen molecules show signs of possible superfluid behavior, suggesting that helium might not be the only superfluid after all.
- Physics
Electrons get a crack at the nucleus
As long suspected but never before shown, electrons orbiting an atom can directly excite the atom's nucleus.
- Materials Science
Titanium makes move toward mainstream
Inventors of a new process for producing titanium claim that their method can reduce the metal's cost to one-third its current price.
- Physics
Most-Wanted Particle Appears, Perhaps
Hints of the Higgs boson—the crucial and last undetected fundamental particle predicted by the central theory of particle physics—have cropped up at a particle collider in Switzerland just as the machine is slated to be dismantled to make room for a more powerful collider.
- Physics
Icy telescope spots hot neutrinos
The first sky map from an innovative neutrino telescope indicates that the instrument works properly and is poised to find never-before-seen signals from the universe's most violent events.
- Physics
Electric Foam: Scientists uncover basis of material oddball
Specially treated polypropylene foam can mimic the defining behavior and other desirable properties of ceramic piezoelectric materials, which generate electric signals when squeezed.
