Physics
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Physics
Model may expose how friction lets loose
Rather than just grinding past each other, sliding surfaces may tremble with minuscule ripples that overcome friction as they move along.
- Materials Science
Materials use nitric oxide to kill bacteria
A novel coating may offer a new way to fend off microbial buildup on catheters, artificial hips, and replacement cardiac valves.
- Materials Science
Speed demon gets hooked on silicon
A method for coating silicon with high-performance semiconductors such as gallium arsenide may make faster, low-power microcircuits both cheaper and more widespread.
- Physics
Caught in a Flash
View the tip of a snapped towel (which moves faster than the speed of sound), then take a look at a bursting water balloon, a collapsing water drop, a tennis ball in mid-collision with a racket, and many other amazing images in this gallery of high-speed photos snapped by high school students. Sorry! This Web […]
- Physics
Window Opens into Strange Nuclei
By creating peculiar atomic nuclei that contain not just protons and neutrons but also pairs of rare nuclear particles with so-called strange quarks inside, researchers are shedding new light on the fundamental structure of matter and how it behaves under extreme conditions, as in neutron stars.
- Physics
Accelerators load some new ammo: Crystals
To make denser accelerator beams that may open new doors in physics, researchers have chilled ions in a miniature test accelerator until the ions coalesced into crystals.
- Materials Science
Chemical sensors gain true portability
Researchers have designed simple new films for indicating the presence of worrisome airborne chemicals.
- Physics
Electrons rock and roll in nanotubes
New probes of tiny carbon nanotubes reveal that the wavelike, quantum nature of electrons plays a role in tube properties and may even make possible novel electronic components that harness quantum effects.
- Physics
Insects in the wind lead to less power
A previously puzzling pattern of power loss in wind turbines results from coatings of insects that were smashed by the blades during low winds.
- Physics
Turning 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.
- 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.
- 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.
