Physics
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Particle Physics
Antimatter doesn’t differ from charge-mass expectations
An experiment with unprecedented precision finds that protons and antiprotons have the same ratio of charge to mass, which is consistent with theories but disappoints many physicists.
- Physics
3-D printed device cracks cocktail party problem
A plastic disk does what sophisticated computers cannot: solve the cocktail party problem.
- Materials Science
Buckyballs turn on copper’s magnetism
Exposure to buckyballs bestows ironlike magnetic properties onto the normally nonmagnetic metals copper and manganese.
- Quantum Physics
Quantum communication takes a new twist
A three-kilometer transmission of light above the Vienna skyline demonstrates that scientists can use the twistiness of light to encode delicate quantum information.
- Physics
Revamping the metric measure of mass
The units of the metric system are on track for a 2018 makeover.
- Materials Science
Stretchy fiber lets electrons flow
Folded layers of carbon nanotubes allow an elastic fiber to conduct electrical current when stretched.
- Materials Science
Stretchy fiber keeps electrons flowing
Folded layers of carbon nanotubes allow an elastic fiber to conduct electrical current when stretched.
- Physics
Elusive particle shows up in ‘semimetal’
Weyl fermions, which resemble massless electrons, have been spotted inside tantalum arsenide. Their discovery comes 86 years after they were proposed.
- Particle Physics
LHC reports pentaquark sightings
Two particles discovered at the Large Hadron Collider are composed of five quarks, not two or three like nearly every other known quark-based particle.
- Astronomy
Source of blazars’ super brightness comes into focus
Astronomers take a close look at a blazar, a galaxy whose central black hole emits gamma rays and other high-energy material toward Earth.
- Physics
Swimming bacteria remove resistance to flow
The collective motion of swimming bacteria can virtually eliminate a water-based solution’s resistance to flow.
- Physics
The arrow of time
Gravity may explain how time always runs forward, even though the laws of physics should permit it to run backward.
