Physics

In 1687, Isaac Newton formulated his laws of motion and universal gravity, bringing the movement of distant stars, moons, and planets into focus. With the stroke of his quill, Newton’s pioneering work also triggered a centuries-long search for mathematical solutions to rein in chaotic triple systems, such as the Sun, Moon, and Earth, which researchers

If you saw grains of sand rolling uphill you might be forgiven for thinking you were watching a Christopher Nolan movie. But scientists have recently figured out how a sand-like material can be made to flow back up slopes, without rewinding time. Researchers from Lehigh University in the US engineered tiny particles they call microrollers

The boundaries of science are constantly being pushed and expanded as newer and more advanced technology is developed, and researchers are now promising a “new era” of discovery as the world’s most powerful X-ray laser comes online. The laser in question is the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) II, and it’s able to produce up

For centuries, inventor, scholar, and artist Leonardo da Vinci has been lauded for his precise, well-proportioned drawings and imaginative designs. He grasped gravity’s similarity to acceleration a century before Newton, and his artworks were sheer genius in their perspective and geometry. But on closer inspection, it seems one of the rules da Vinci devised to

A shadowy form of light within a universe of hypothetical particles is getting some serious consideration as a means of discovering the identity of dark matter. According to a comprehensive new analysis under quantum chromodynamics, the dark photon is a much better fit for the observed results of particle collider experiments than the standard model

Quantum behavior is a strange, fragile thing that hovers on the edge of reality, between a world of possibility and a Universe of absolutes. In that mathematical haze lies the potential of quantum computing; the promise of devices that could quickly solve algorithms that would take classic computers too long to process. For now, quantum

The traditional porcelain and ceramic toilet bowls could be on the way out, if a new 3D-printed design from scientists at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in China catches on – with the key benefit being the ultra slippery surface. Poop that clings to the toilet bowl is not only unpleasant for bathroom

Neutrinos, the tricky little particles that just stream through the Universe like it’s virtually nothing, may actually interact with light after all. According to new calculations, interactions between neutrinos and photons can take place in powerful magnetic fields that can be found in the plasma wrapped around stars. It’s a discovery that could help us

When Isaac Newton inscribed onto parchment his now-famed laws of motion in 1687, he could have only hoped we’d be discussing them three centuries later. Writing in Latin, Newton outlined three universal principles describing how the motion of objects is governed in our Universe, which have been translated, transcribed, discussed and debated at length. But

Neutrinos are abundant subatomic particles that have a crucial role in the composition of the Universe. Initially considered massless, these barely-detectable particles ought to weigh something according to updated theories. Exactly what that measurement is has yet to be determined experimentally. An international team of scientists has come up with a new way to solving

Atomic clocks are the most accurate timekeeping instruments we have. A new study proposes a way to use the instruments’ mind-blowing level of precision to detect the tiniest of energy fluctuations, potentially giving scientists a way to observe some types of dark matter. Dark matter continues to prove elusive: though we haven’t observed it directly,

There are several perfectly good reasons why water isn’t a popular medium for calligraphers to write in. Constantly shifting and swirling, it doesn’t take long for ink to diffuse and flow out of formation. An ingenious ‘pen’ developed by the researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Technical University of Darmstadt in Germany,

Scientists have been able to observe a common interaction in quantum chemistry for the first time, by using a quantum computer to shadow the process at a speed 100 billion times slower than normal. Known as a conical intersection, the interactions have long been known about, but are usually over in mere femtoseconds – quadrillionths

A newly observed isotope of oxygen is defying all our expectations for how it should behave. It’s oxygen-28, with the highest number of neutrons ever seen in the nucleus of an oxygen atom. Yet, while scientists believe it should be stable, it decays rapidly – calling into question what we thought we knew about “magic”

A rare type of particle has emerged from proton collisions in the Large Hadron Collider. Between 2016 and 2018, physicists recorded more than 100 rare, unstable hypernuclei – atomic cores that contain an unusual flavor of quark in one of their nuclear particles. It’s a discovery that could help us understand the source of mysterious

Strange loops in the fabric of reality have finally been witnessed forming in a super cold gas, providing physicists with an opportunity to study the behaviors of a rather peculiar kind of one-sided magnetism. Known as ‘Alice rings’ after the Alice of ‘Wonderland’ fame, the circular structures were observed by a collaboration between researchers in

Never let it be said that scientists don’t have an eye for the sublime. Encoding and deciphering a Chinese symbol for duality and harmony into the quantum states of two entangled photons, physicists recently demonstrated the superior efficiency of a new analytical technique. Researchers from the Sapienza University of Rome and the University of Ottawa

Glass might look and feel like a perfectly ordered solid, but up close its chaotic arrangement of particles more closely resemble the tumultuous mess of a freefalling liquid frozen in time. Known as amorphous solids, materials in this state defy easy explanation. New research involving computation and simulation is yielding clues. In particular, it suggests

Nothing can go faster than light. It’s a rule of physics woven into the very fabric of Einstein’s special theory of relativity. The faster something goes, the closer it gets to its perspective of time freezing to a standstill. Go faster still, and you run into issues of time reversing, messing with notions of causality.

Crafting organic molecules into a bizarre kind of magnet, physicists from Aalto University and the University of Jyväskylä in Finland have created the perfect space for observing the elusive activity of an electronic state called a triplon. Where a garden variety magnet is typically best described as having two poles surrounded by a nest of

Superconductivity promises to transform everything from power grids to personal electronics. Yet getting the low-waste form of power to operate at ambient temperatures and pressures is proving to be easier said than done. A discovery by a team of researchers from Emory University and Stanford University in the US could inform theories that might help

To take a picture, the best digital cameras on the market open their shutter for around around one four-thousandths of a second. To snapshot atomic activity, you’d need a shutter that clicks a lot faster. With that in mind, scientists have unveiled a way of achieving a shutter speed that’s a mere trillionth of a

Using an anvil made of diamond, physicists have successfully squeezed iron into the form we think it has deep in the center of Earth. It’s called hexaferrum, or epsilon iron (ϵ-Fe), and it’s only stable at extremely high pressures. Scientists think the majority of the iron in Earth’s core takes this form, and a detailed

Physicists have provided an elegant solution to the 37-year-old problem of why ‘strange metals’ conduct electricity in exotic ways. This universal theory might help scientists design better superconductors for quantum computers, says physicist and co-author Aavishkar Patel. Strange metals behave in odd ways when electricity passes through them. At very low temperatures, these metals become

Given the right circumstances, it is possible for sound to travel through a perfect vacuum. Now two physicists have worked out what those conditions need to be. Zhuoran Geng and Ilari Maasilta of the University of Jyväskylä in Finland say their findings represent the first rigorous proof of complete acoustic tunneling in a vacuum. To

A recent claim by South Korean researchers that they have created a material which works as a superconductor at room temperature – long a holy grail of physics – has been met with huge excitement on social media but scepticism from scientists. Superconductors can carry electrical currents with zero resistance, unlike traditional materials such as

The protons and neutrons making up atomic nuclei are made up of a trio of even smaller fundamental particles known as quarks. A new study has now mapped out in unprecedented detail the distribution of the different kinds of quark inside a proton, expanding on our understanding of this all-important part of an atom. Although

Experiments on the distinctive wobble of a heavyweight cousin to the electron called the muon are repeatedly finding something isn’t quite adding up, pointing the way towards unknown physics. Nearly 20 years after researchers from Brookhaven Particle Accelerator in New York first provided evidence of an anomaly, hundreds of scientists working with the Muon g-2

Physicists studying an exotic material stumbled across an important quantum phenomenon predicted decades ago. It’s called Pines’ Demon, predicted in 1956 by late physicist David Pines, and its discovery in a material called strontium ruthenate (Sr2RuO4) marks the first time it has been identified in an equilibrium 3D metal. Since Pines’ Demon is predicted to

Weird things happen on the quantum level. Whole clouds of particles can become entangled, their individuality lost as they act as one. Now scientists have observed, for the first time, ultracold atoms cooled to a quantum state chemically reacting as a collective, rather than haphazardly forming new molecules after bumping into each other by chance.

For a second time since its landmark fusion event in 2022, the US National Ignition Facility (NIF) has squeezed enough energy out of a diamond capsule packed with hydrogen to keep the fusion reaction running. Though still far short of producing a reliable, self-sustaining source of power for the community, the repeat achievement is bound

Last week, a group of South Korean physicists made a startling claim. In two papers uploaded to the arXiv preprint server, they say they have created a material that “opens a new era for humankind”. LK-99, a lead-based compound, is purportedly a room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor. Such a material, which conducts electricity without any resistance under

Decades ago, regulations for laboratory maintenance were not quite as stringent as they are today. This, we assume, is at least partially what led the great minds at what was then the US National Accelerator Laboratory, now Fermilab, to an ingenious solution for cleaning a particle accelerator back in 1971. It was February. The Main

File this under ‘That’s not supposed to happen!’: Scientists observed a metal healing itself, something never seen before. If this process can be fully understood and controlled, we could be at the start of a whole new era of engineering. A team from Sandia National Laboratories and Texas A&M University was testing the resilience of

Footage of thousands of tiny metal spheres set jiggling in a shallow tray has revealed an arrangement of particles once considered impossible. A team of physicists from the University of Paris-Saclay in France has observed an unusual combination of order and chaos known as a ‘quasicrystal’ emerging spontaneously in a granular material on a millimeter-scale

The ancient Romans were master builders and engineers, perhaps most famously represented by the still-functional aqueducts. And those architectural marvels rely on a unique construction material: pozzolanic concrete, a spectacularly durable material that gave Roman structures their incredible strength. Even today, one of their structures – the Pantheon, still intact and nearly 2,000 years old

Theoretical physicists have a lot in common with lawyers. Both spend a lot of time looking for loopholes and inconsistencies in the rules that might be exploited somehow. Valeri P. Frolov and Andrei Zelnikov from the University of Alberta in Canada and Pavel Krtouš from Charles University in Prague probably couldn’t get you out of

Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) continue to discover exotic particles that we’ve never seen before. The latest to be spotted in experiments is the first pentaquark to contain a strange quark. If you’re new to quarks, they’re the subatomic building blocks that make up matter, and the strange quark is one of six

Scientists experimenting with some of the most fundamental laws of physics have found more evidence of what they’re calling photonic time crystals (PTCs): materials in which the speed at which light moves (the refractive index) oscillates very quickly. We already know much more about photonic crystals, where a repeating pattern in a material creates a

Three objects spotted lurking in the murk of the Cosmic Dawn could be powered by collisions between particles made not of normal star stuff but the enigmatic material known as dark matter. Using data from the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of theoretical astrophysicists has determined that three galaxies – named JADES-GS-z13-0, JADES-GS-z12-0, and

University of Colorado scientists have set the tightest constraints yet on the potential size of separation in electrical charges within an electron, or its electric dipole moment (EDM). While it doesn’t mean we know what that size is or if it even truly exists, it could help weed out ideas explaining why the Universe isn’t

When you turn on a lamp to brighten a room, you are experiencing light energy transmitted as photons, which are small, discrete quantum packets of energy. These photons must obey the sometimes strange laws of quantum mechanics, which, for instance, dictate that photons are indivisible, but at the same time, allow a photon to be

Superconducting quantum technology has long promised to bridge the divide between existing electronic devices and the delicate quantum landscape beyond. Unfortunately progress in making critical processes stable has stagnated over the past decade. Now a significant step forward has finally been realized, with researchers from the University of Maryland making superconducting qubits that last 10

Progress towards fully capable and practical quantum computers isn’t slowing down, and researchers from Google are the latest to announce a significant step forward in the capabilities of today’s machines. While we call these devices quantum computers, they’re more like prototypes of what quantum computers can be: At present they require super-specific, extreme conditions to

Because of a peculiar effect velocity has on the appearance of the passage of time, our observations make it seem like time ran slower when the Universe was just a baby. At least, that’s how it appears to us, at a light travel time of nearly 13 billion years away. This is called time dilation,

We’ve just identified a brand new isotope of the rarest element in our planet’s crust. With 85 protons and 105 neutrons, 190astatine is the lightest isotope of astatine discovered yet, and could help physicists better understand the process of alpha decay, and the structure and limitations of atomic nuclei. “The studies of new nuclei are

You’re familiar with the states of matter we encounter daily – such as solid, liquid, and gas – but in more exotic and extreme conditions, new states can appear, and scientists from the US and China just found one. They’re calling it the chiral bose-liquid state, and as with every new arrangement of particles we

A new quantum processor built on silicon will soon be made available to a select few universities and other institutions across the US, potentially giving more researchers an opportunity to tinker with quantum computing hardware first hand. Crafted by the computer chip manufacturer Intel, it’s hoped that the new processor – offering twice as many