Physics

A tabletop gravitational wave detector based around a piece of ringing quartz has recorded two mysterious signals in its first 153 days of operation. It’s unclear exactly what these signals are; they could be from a number of phenomena. But one of those phenomena is exactly what the detector is designed to pick up –

By disrupting the thermodynamic equilibrium of liquids, physicists have made them behave quite differently from how they do in nature – managing to coax liquids into straight-sided squares and hexagons, and patterns of lattices. This is not just fascinating for its own sake, but could help us better understand how liquids behave under different conditions

Physicists have created the first-ever atomic vortex beam – a swirling tornado of atoms and molecules with mysterious properties that have yet to be understood. By sending a straight beam of helium atoms through a grating with teeny slits, scientists were able to use the weird rules of quantum mechanics to transform the beam into a whirling

While quantum computers are already here, they’re very much limited prototypes for now. It’s going to take a while before they’re fulfilling anything close to their maximum potential, and we can use them the way we do regular (classical) computers. That moment is now a little nearer though, as scientists have got three entangled qubits operating together on

Firing beams of neutrons at samples of silicon could lead us to an elusive, unknown ‘fifth force’ of nature, according to researchers. Using a technique called pendellösung interferometry, a team of physicists led by Benjamin Heacock of the National Institute of Standards and Technology have used neutron beams to probe the crystal structure of silicon

Sound waves don’t always hit our ears directly – they can also bounce off other objects and the walls of the space that we’re in, which is why listening to a band play in a cavernous cathedral is a different experience to listening in a small music club. Now scientists have developed a technique for

Given that our first direct detections confirming the existence of black holes only took place in this century, humanity can be forgiven for not knowing a few things about these mysterious cosmic objects. We don’t even know everything we don’t know – a fact that’s been made evident in a new discovery. While running equations for quantum

Nuclear fusion offers the tantalizing prospect of a sustainable energy source that can never be exhausted – and scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have announced what they describe as a “watershed moment” in making the technology viable. Fusion happens when two or more atomic nuclei merge together to create larger elements, releasing

Physicists sifting through old particle accelerator data have found evidence of a highly-elusive, never-before-seen process: a so-called triangle singularity.  First envisioned by Russian physicist Lev Landau in the 1950s, a triangle singularity refers to a rare subatomic process where particles exchange identities before flying away from each other. In this scenario, two particles – called

In metals, electrons are normally expected to be diffusive in their movement, operating as individual particles – in other words, they don’t gain momentum as a group. In a new study, scientists have now discovered a type of metal where electrons actually do flow in a fluid-like way – like water in a pipe –

Many home chefs know that tempering chocolate to achieve a perfect finish and a satisfying ‘snap’ is no easy feat. Small variations in the quality of ingredients, temperature, mixing and timing can all set you up to fail, even when you learn from the best. The results of a new study by food scientists from

Physicists working on a type of fusion reactor called a stellarator are getting closer to actually harnessing the power of nuclear fusion. According to a new paper, the Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Germany is now capable of containing heat that reaches temperatures twice as high as those found in the core of the Sun. This

There’s a storm in your teacup of the likes we barely understand. Water molecules flipping about madly, reaching out to one another, grabbing hold and letting go in unique ways that defy easy study. While physicists know the phenomenon of hydrogen bonding plays a key role in water’s many weird and wonderful configurations, certain details

The possibility of time travel has excited many of us for hundreds of years, inspiring countless books and films. The ability to move not only through space but into the past or future would open a myriad of possibilities for humankind. But is it theoretically even possible to time travel? In the original 1978 Superman

In a significant achievement, physicists have produced a two-dimensional supersolid in the lab for the first time. That may sound incredibly mind-bendy, but it’s a feat researchers have been working towards for more than 50 years. Supersolids are strange materials with atoms arranged in the ordered structure of a solid, yet they can flow without

Nuclear scientists using lasers the size of three football fields said Tuesday they had generated a huge amount of energy from fusion, possibly offering hope for the development of a new clean energy source. Experts focused their giant array of almost 200 laser beams onto a tiny spot to create a mega blast of energy

Vaccine and drug development, artificial intelligence, transport and logistics, climate science – these are all areas that stand to be transformed by the development of a full-scale quantum computer. And there has been explosive growth in quantum computing investment over the past decade. Yet current quantum processors are relatively small in scale, with fewer than

According to theory, if you smash two photons together hard enough, you can generate matter: an electron-positron pair, the conversion of light to mass as per Einstein’s theory of special relativity. It’s called the Breit-Wheeler process, first laid out by Gregory Breit and John A. Wheeler in 1934, and we have very good reason to

Particle accelerators are hugely important in the study of the matter of the Universe, but the ones we think of tend to be gigantic instruments – surrounding cities in some cases. Now scientists have made a much smaller version to power an advanced laser, a setup that could be just as useful as its larger

Pure water is an almost perfect insulator. Yes, water found in nature conducts electricity – but that’s because of the impurities therein, which dissolve into free ions that allow an electric current to flow. Pure water only becomes “metallic” – electronically conductive – at extremely high pressures, beyond our current abilities to produce in a

When Derek Muller took an experimental land yacht for a spin this spring, he wasn’t aiming to stir up scientific controversy. He certainly wasn’t trying to win $US10,000 in a bet. Muller, the creator of the Veritasium YouTube channel, likes to break down funky science concepts for his 9.5 million subscribers. So in May, he

Push materials to their limits, and strange things can occur – such as the discovery of a previously unknown phase of liquid, which has been reported by scientists looking at the development of super-thin, high-density glass. These types of glass are used in a variety of ways, including in OLED displays and optical fibers, but

A new study by scientists has demonstrated how researchers may be able to create an accelerating jet of antimatter from light. A team of physicists has shown that high-intensity lasers can be used to generate colliding gamma photons – the most energetic wavelengths of light – to produce electron-positron pairs. This, they say, could help

A newly developed method of levitating and manipulating tiny objects using sound waves could represent a major step forward for the technology. Engineers in Japan have figured out how to pick up objects from reflective surfaces using acoustic levitation. Although they can’t yet do so reliably, the advance could help unlock the full potential of

‘Magic angle’ twisted trilayer graphene doesn’t only have an impressively exotic name, it might be a particularly rare type of superconductor, according to new research – one that could be useful everywhere from medical equipment to quantum computers. Scientists are finding that stacking single-atom layers of graphene on top of each other at slightly different

A slice of material just a single atom thick is breaking records. The ultra-thin wafer is a magnet that operates at room temperature, opening up avenues for the development of technology, particularly memory devices, and for research into ferromagnetism and quantum physics. It’s a huge step up from previous attempts to make a 2D magnet,

We all know the world desperately needs to transition to renewable power sources – but many of us forget we also need to make our energy systems themselves more efficient. At the moment, an estimated 70 percent of all energy we generate in the world is lost as heat – often in power plants themselves. It’s a

Quantum mechanics deals with the behavior of the Universe at the super-small scale: atoms and subatomic particles that operate in ways that classical physics can’t explain. In order to explore this tension between the quantum and the classical, scientists are attempting to get larger and larger objects to behave in a quantum-like way. In the

A new way of classifying magnetized plasma has led to the discovery of 10 previously unknown topological phases of plasma. Learning more about these phases, and specifically the transitions between them, could help plasma physicists chase down the white whale of energy – plasma fusion. That’s because the transitions between them support edge modes, or

We’ve got another quantum computing milestone to report, with researchers in China unveiling a super-advanced 66-qubit quantum supercomputer called Zuchongzhi, which by one important metric is the most powerful machine of its kind we’ve seen to date. The performance of Zuchongzhi is undoubtedly impressive: it finished a designated quantum benchmark task in around 70 minutes, and

Water ice isn’t exactly known for its flexibility. In fact, it’s quite the opposite: rigid and brittle, easily fracturing and snapping. It’s why avalanches and sea ice fragmentation occur. It’s also why new research is so fascinating. Scientists have just grown microfibers of water ice that can bend in a loop – breaking the previous

Scientists have succeeded in combining two exciting material types together for the very first time: an ultrathin semiconductor just a single atom thick; and a superconductor, capable of conducting electricity with zero resistance. Both these materials have unusual and fascinating properties, and by putting them together through a delicate lab fabrication process, the team behind

Researchers have demonstrated how to keep a network of nanowires in a state that’s right on what’s known as the edge of chaos – an achievement that could be used to produce artificial intelligence (AI) that acts much like the human brain does. The team used varying levels of electricity on a nanowire simulation, finding

The mineral pyrite was historically nicknamed fool’s gold because of its deceptive resemblance to the precious metal. The term was often used during the California gold rush in the 1840s because inexperienced prospectors would claim discoveries of gold, but in reality it would be pyrite, composed of worthless iron disulfide (FeS₂). Ironically, pyrite crystals can

Very rarely is anything completely still. All normal matter in the Universe is made of humming particles, minding their own business and vibrating at their own frequencies. If we can get them to slow down as much as possible, the material enters what is known as the motional ground state. In this state, physicists can

Smashing together lead particles at 99.9999991 percent the speed of light, scientists have recreated the first matter that appeared after the Big Bang.  Out of the wreck came a primordial type of matter known as quark-gluon plasma, or QGP. It only lasted a fraction of a second, but for the first time, scientists were able to

A two-dimensional material with similar physical properties to graphene has now turned out to blow graphene out of the water in terms of toughness. The material is called hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), and it’s so resistant to cracking that scientists are gobsmacked. The finding flies in the face of the fundamental description of fracture mechanics

For the first time, scientists have been able to accurately measure the mass of the human chromosome. Using a powerful X-ray source at the UK’s national synchrotron science facility, the Diamond Light Source, physicists were able to determine the individual masses of all 46 chromosomes in human cells. The masses were found to be significantly

The legacy of one of the brightest stars in the physics firmament has been secured. Around 10,000 pages of the writings and other papers of legendary theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking will be preserved in a special archive by the Cambridge University Library in the UK. This will include a digitization project, to be made freely

Sailing through the smooth waters of vacuum, a photon of light moves at around 300 thousand kilometers (186 thousand miles) a second. This sets a firm limit on how quickly a whisper of information can travel anywhere in the Universe. While this law isn’t likely to ever be broken, there are features of light which

What’s the price of an accurate clock? Entropy, a new study has revealed. Entropy – or disorder – is created every time a clock ticks. Now scientists working with a tiny clock have proven a simple relationship: The more accurate a clock runs, the more entropy it generates. “If you want your clock to be

At 5:29 am on the morning of 16 July 1945, in the state of New Mexico, a dreadful slice of history was made. The dawn calm was torn asunder as the United States Army detonated a plutonium implosion device known as the Gadget – the world’s very first test of a nuclear bomb, known as

Over the past five years, a sensor keeping count of neutron emissions deep within the rubble of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant has kept track of a gradual spike in activity. The rising count might be nothing. It might even drop back down again, given time. Scientists aren’t exactly keen on taking any chances, as

Quantum entanglement is the binding together of two particles or objects, even though they may be far apart – their respective properties are linked in a way that’s not possible under the rules of classical physics. It’s a weird phenomenon that Einstein described as “spooky action at a distance“, but its weirdness is what makes

Scientists have discovered a new type of uranium that is the lightest ever known. The discovery could reveal more about a weird alpha particle that gets ejected from certain radioactive elements as they decay. The newfound uranium, called uranium-214, is an isotope, or a variant of the element, with 30 more neutrons than protons, one fewer neutron

In a major milestone for quantum physics, thousands of molecules have been induced to share the same quantum state, dancing together in unison like one huge super molecule. This is a goal long-sought by physicists, who hope to harness complex quantum systems for technological applications – but getting a bunch of unruly molecules to work

There’s been a fabulous new achievement in particle physics. For the first time, scientists have managed to image the orbits of electrons within a quasiparticle known as an exciton – a result that has allowed them to finally measure the excitonic wave function describing the spatial distribution of electron momentum within the quasiparticle. This achievement

The problem starts with Brazil nuts. The large edible seeds are a common fixture in mixed nut bags, but they’re not to everyone’s liking – especially since they get dry and bitter once past the peak of freshness. And to make matters worse, they always rise to the top. The phenomenon, colloquially known as the