Physics
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- 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.
- Physics
Maybe this watched pot already boiled
Researchers smashing nuclei in hopes of producing a primordial state of matter called the quark-gluon plasma may have already made the stuff without realizing it.
- Physics
New probe reveals unfamiliar inner proton
Researchers taking one of the closest looks yet into the intact proton have found an unexpectedly complex interior electromagnetic environment.
- Materials Science
Inorganic tubes get smaller than ever
Researchers have created the smallest stable, freestanding inorganic nanotubes yet.
- Materials Science
Novel nanotubes are now made-to-order
Researchers have made nanotubes with specific sizes and traits by designing molecules that self-assemble.
- Physics
Surface reaction recorded in real time
Ultrafast laser pulses may have for the first time revealed the incredibly rapid, step-by-step progress of a complete chemical reaction on a surface, at the actual speed at which it took place.
