Physics
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Physics
Some swell materials give up their secret
The discovery of a previously overlooked crystal structure in the best so-called piezoelectric materials may explain their remarkable amount of swelling when zapped by an electric field.
- Materials Science
Crystals step up to a new surface
Researchers have made crystals that reversibly change their surface shape when hit by light.
- Materials Science
SQUID can catch concealed corrosion
A new technology that can detect corrosion deep within aluminum aircraft parts has revealed that high concentrations of salt don't corrode hidden joints any more than low levels of salt.
- Physics
Jiggling the Cosmic Ooze
Spurred by the first tentative sightings after a decades-old search, physicists seeking the universe's mass-giving particle — the Higgs boson — have fired up the world's highest-energy particle collider to join the pursuit.
- Materials Science
Scientists belt out a novel nanostructure
Researchers have used metal oxides to make microscopic ribbonlike structures that could prove useful for developing future nanoscale devices.
- Physics
When warming up causes cooling down
Under the right circumstances, heating a tiny cluster of sodium atoms makes its temperature fall.
- Physics
Physicists get B in antimatter studies
New observations that subatomic particles called B mesons decay differently from their antimatter versions may help explain why the universe is made almost entirely of matter, not antimatter.
- Physics
Run-of-the-mill compound becomes superstar
The discovery that simple, common magnesium diboride can conduct electric current without resistance and does so at a surprisingly high temperature has sent physicists racing to understand its properties and to try to improve upon them.
- Physics
Lasers nudge into nuclear medicine
Using a tabletop laser, researchers produced a medically useful isotope usually made in warehouse-size particle accelerators called cyclotrons.
- Physics
Muffled shots tell a lot about snow
A snowfield muffles gunshots in a way that can now be used to reveal important traits of the snow.
- Physics
Seeming sedate, some solid surfaces seethe
Although they're as orderly as bathroom-floor tiles, surface atoms of copper--and perhaps other solids--actually roam randomly and widely within their grid.
- Physics
The Atoms Family
Dracula doesn’t want to suck your blood. He wants you to enter his online library and learn about the properties of light, waves, and particles. Here at “The Atoms Family” Web pages, created by the Miami Museum of Science, Dracula and four other silver-screen ghouls invite Web surfers into their laboratories to try out physics […]
