Physics

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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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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