Physics
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- Materials Science
Making Stuff Last
Chemistry and materials science step up to preserve history, old and new.
- 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.
- Physics
An electron ruler gauges crystal flaws
Electrons ricocheting through a crystal now make it possible for scientists to discern shifts in crystal lattices as small as a hundredth of an atom's width.
- Materials Science
One-Upping Nature’s Materials
Striving for designer substances that build themselves from individual molecules.
- Materials Science
To make bronze, tin flakes do a wild dance
Upsetting some prevailing ideas about how alloys form, rafts of tin atoms jitterbug madly around on a pure copper surface and leave spots of bronze in their wakes.
- Physics
Signs of mass-giving particle get stronger
The promising search at a collider in Switzerland for the Higgs boson—the crucial and last undetected fundamental particle predicted by the central theory of particle physics—became even more of a cliff-hanger as a new, strong hint of the particle appeared on the eve of the machine's second scheduled demise.
- Materials Science
Crystal puts pressure on diamonds
A new type of synthetic crystal called moissanite allows researchers to study more material at high pressure than is possible with traditional diamond devices.
- Materials Science
Scientists tone down silicon rockers
Researchers have created pairs of silicon atoms that stay level instead of slowly rocking in place, permitting scientists to study silicon-surface reactions in unprecedented detail.
- Materials Science
High-temperature ceramics takes flight
A recent NASA flight test of ultrahigh-temperature ceramic materials might lead to a new aerospace design that would make the space shuttle look downright old-fashioned.
- Physics
Protons may waltz off nuclear dance floor
Detection of proton pairs simultaneously emitted from neon nuclei raises the possibility that a new and long-sought window into the nucleus has been found and unlocked.
- Materials Science
New work improves stainless steel surface
A novel electrochemical method improves the surface of stainless steel without making the metal brittle or prone to corrosion.
