Physics
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Materials Science
Nanotubes form dense transistor array
Researchers have made an array of transistors out of carbon nanotubes.
- Materials Science
Future brightens for carbon nanotubes
Researchers have made a lightbulb that depends on carbon nanotubes for its glow.
- 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.
