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All our modern electronics are based on a class of wonder materials called semiconductors. What makes these so valuable is their ability to free electrons when subjected to an electrical current or when hit by light, becoming mobile and eventually routed and switch through a transistor. It’s the very basis of our digital age, be […]
With the help of the most powerful laser in the world, scientists have achieved the highest energies yet in a compact particle accelerator. The tabletop-sized device accelerates electrons to high speeds by firing high power laser pulses in a controlled manner through a plasma tube only 9 centimeters in size. The accelerator ring at the Large […]
The human retina can only detect incident light that falls in waves 400 to 720 nanometers long, so we can’t see microwave or ultraviolet wavelengths. This also applies to infrared lights which has wavelengths longer than visible and shorter than microwaves, thus being invisible to the human eye. Apparently, this isn’t entirely true. In some special conditions, the […]
A team of researchers from University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) has revealed how the atomic structure of proteins changes during photosynthesis using an X-Ray laser which captures snapshops with unprecedented temporal resolution. As if conventional lasers weren’t awesome enough, scientists invented X-Ray lasers – which use stimulated emission to generate or amplify electromagnetic radiation in the near […]
It’s one of England’s better kept secrets – Old Sarum is a hidden gem among gems, one of the most spectacular ancient sites in Europe and in the world. Old Sarum is the site of the earliest settlement of Salisbury in England. The site contains evidence of human habitation as early as 3000 BC, but only […]
Using a pulse of infrared light, physicists at the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter have turned an insulating material into a superconductor even at room temperature, a property that was retained for only a few millionths of a microsecond. Superconductivity is a state where a material can conduct electricity with […]
A team of UK researchers led by none other but Nobel Laureate Andre Geim – one of persons involved in graphene’s discovery in 2004 – has shown that the wondrous two dimensional material graphene can used as a proton exchange membrane in fuel cells. The find took everybody by surprise since no one expected graphene could […]
Christmas came early for physicists as the CERN facility in Switzerland report the discovery of two new baryonic particles from their LHCb experiment. “Today the collaboration for the LHCb experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider announced the discovery of two new particles in the baryon family. The particles, known as the Xi_b’- and Xi_b*-, were […]
Solar cell technology has improved dramatically over the past couple of year, yet it will be a long time before multi-junction cells – then kind that can reach efficiency well over 40% – will become affordable to small home owners or even large scale installation. New methods are always explored, however, each with its own angle […]
For the first time, researchers at the University of Basel used an ultracool atomic gas to cool a very thin membrane to less than one degree Kelvin. The new technique might enable novel investigations of quantum mechanics phenomena and precision measuring devices. Coldest matter in the world lends its freeze In the ultracold world, produced […]
While the LHC at CERN is gearing up for its long-awaited restart, following an overhaul, scientists aren’t standing idle. After analyzing collision data made during 2011-2012, physicists have identified two new baryons, known as the Xi_b‘- and Xi_b*-. The new subatomic particles’ properties match predictions based on the theory of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), a subset […]
Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, have devised a model that projects how climate change affects atmospheric lightning discharges. According to their findings, global warming – particularly through more water vapor gathering in the upper atmosphere – will cause lightning strikes to increase in frequency by 50% during […]
After studying ancient minerals in a meteorite, MIT scientists have gained valuable insights that help explain how the sun, the planets and our entire solar system formed.Their work suggest that a powerful shock wave that rippled through the clouds of dust and gas surrounding the sun billions of years ago played a crucial role in […]
A 20-year-old algorithm that demonstrated the benefit of using quantum mechanics to solve certain problems has finally been run on a quantum computer – a sweet delicious treat, and a sign that serious progress is being made in the field of quantum computing. The Quantum world is weird A quantum computer is a computation system […]
Researchers at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory have devised a particle accelerator that can increase the kinetic energy of particles passing through it hundreds of times faster than the LHC. While the latter is comprised of a 27km ring, the device made by the US scientists is only 30cm in size. This massive leap in miniaturization […]
Austrian researchers at the Vienna Univ. of Technology (TU Wien) made just two photons interact with each other, a major feat that might have profound implications for quantum technology applications – computing, information teleportation and security. Two photons, one interaction In a free medium, light waves – and consequently photons – do not interact between each other. […]
Ever heard of “tears of wine” or the phrase “the wine caught legs”? It’s common when you pour wine in a glass to see a ring of clear liquid that forms near the top the glass above the surface of wine. These drops continuously form and fall in rivulets back into the liquid and are influenced […]
A team of scientists has managed to develop a tractor beam which can pull and push objects over 20 cm – 100 times more than previous records. There are a myriad of potential applications for this kind of research, including studying atmospheric pollutants or retrieving delicate particles of material for examination. “Recent advances in lightwave technology […]
Geologists have known for quite a while that the Earth’s magnetic field has flipped many times throughout the planet’s history. Its dipole magnetic field, like that of a bar magnet maintains the same intensity, but for unknown reason(s), it sometimes becomes weaker and changes polarity. Now, a new study has showed that this phenomenon could happen much […]
In Lewis Caroll’s Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), the sequel to the classic Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice again enters a fantastical world, this time by climbing through a mirror into the world that she can see beyond it. Though far from Alice’s spectacular feat, scientists at the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, […]
A team at University of Cambridge have harvested so-called ‘dark’ spin-triplet excitons with close to 100% efficiency, a breakthrough achievement which could vastly improve the efficiency of hybrid solar cells that use both organic and inorganic semiconductor junctions. An exciting solar future Excitons are basically electrons coupled to a hole (they’re attracted to each other and […]
While robots today have become more adapted, they’re still essentially stupid – limited to a particular pre-programmed series of tasks, slow to respond to complex environments and unable to learn from past experience. The future belongs to machine learning and cognitive computing, a new field that’s set to have a great impact on our lives, […]
An innovative research posits that cancer may actually be a sort of 'safe mode' mechanism, akin to how a computer's operating system reverts back to safe settings to preserve itself, which evolved shortly following the first single celled organisms. The research was made by an unlikely team of scientists: an oncologist, an astrobiologist and a cosmologist. If the findings are right, then cancer may be fought off more effectively using oxygen treatments and infection with viral or bacterial agents.
Nobel prizes, international press coverage, awards – these were all promises and cheers thrown about all over the web after a team of physicists trumpeted during a conference at Harvard that they’ve made one of the biggest discoveries in science: gravity waves. Some theories claim that these waves were generated brief moments following the Big Bang, […]
Inspired by the properties of the human eye, physicists have created a processor that can analyze sub-atomic particles 400 times faster than the current state of the art
In the cult blockbuster Terminator 2 we’re introduced to a new series of killing bots – the T-1000. More than just “cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton”, the T-1000 could turn into liquid metal then morph into any shape, be it another person or an oversized man-spike. It also made the T-1000 freaking hard […]
Most quantum research is focused on studying interactions between light and atoms, a field known as quantum optics. Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden took an alternate route and demonstrated for the first time that acoustic waves could be used to communicate with an atom. The findings could provide an important stepping stone for […]
I’m not sure what’s on with Stephen Hawking and his pessimistic view of the world. He’s been known for audacious, panic-inflicting claims like the world is going to be destroyed either by aliens or artificial intelligence, all if we don’t destroy ourselves in the meantime since humans only have 1,000 years left on this planet […]
Some atoms are more stable than others, and the same goes for their isotopes – elements that have the same number of protons in the nucleus, but different number of neutrons. For instance, some decay in a trillionth of a second, while others can live on for billions of years. Actually, using isotopes (thorium and […]
Feynman was at times called "The Great Explainer" because of his skill at making complex subjects accessible to students, and while still a professor at Caltech he released his now famous Feynman Lectures on Physics. The three-volume collection has since become the most popular physics text book. Now, the whole collection is available for free, online for your personal consideration.
Chile is one of the most seismically active countries in the world. In 2010, it was struck by a powerful 8.8 earthquake which produced temblors throughout the entire country, as well as in Peru and Argentina. But a new study concluded that its effects were felt even further, in Antarctica, where several seismic stations recorded “icequakes,” probably […]
No one has ever studies this before, even though anyone can replicate the experiment in a bathtub. Researchers have developed a water tractor beam for which no mathematical model exists yet.
Scientists have found a way to transform cigarette buds into a material which stores energy cheap and efficiently. The material outperforms both commercial and prototypical materials made from graphene and carbon nanotubes and may be eventually added into computers, smart phones or wind turbines.
Scientists have managed to make the coloring of a butterfly species evolve from brown to purple in just six generations. This study shows that even complex coloring mechanisms can undergo fast rearrangements, potentially adapting quickly to outside stimuli.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle makes quantum physics nasty. There's no reason why we can't get all along, though. A novel technique explores how it may be possible to know both position and momentum for a particle. No laws of physics were broken. I promise!
Designs for a device called a “microwave thruster” were proposed in 2006. While the device was physically sound and followed the principles of relativity, it has been dismissed by researchers who claimed that such a functioning device would defy the law of conservation of momentum. A team from NASA set out to trial the device and see […]
Some people become in love with physics because they’re secretly in love with the truth. Physics never lies, if you care to think in absolute terms, so there must be a great deal of comfort. The reason modern civilization works they it does today is because of our faith in physics and other sciences. If […]
Austrlian researchers have successfully developed transparent, ultra-thin, foldable solar cells.
A newly developed technique by researchers at University of Cambridge might revolutionize metamaterial manufacturing and help make a complete invisibility cloak.
Promising results are reported by physicians who incorporate magnetic stimulation in their treatments for depression. Typically, this kind of treatment takes a long time until changes in mood are seen or, in some cases, causes unwanted side effects. McLean Hospital researchers report a new treatment that uses low field magnetic stimulation that immediately improves mood and […]
A group of Chinese physicists, working with international collaborators, have announced their plans of building a 52-kilometre underground particle accelerator that would smash together electrons and positrons to unravel the fundamental building blocks of life. The project would offer means of probing these sort of fundamental questions that are unavailable to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, an oval-shaped […]
Some applications require such a degree of precision that everything needs to be in exact order at the atom-scale. In an awesome feat of atomic manipulation, physicists from the University of Basel, in cooperation with team from Japan and Finland, have placed 20 atoms atop an insulated surface in the shape of a Swiss cross. Such […]
We’ve mentioned on numerous occasions the growing problem of space debris and voiced our concerns that, if left unchecked, the thousands of metal junk fragments currently out there could seriously affect space missions and even threaten lives. In Earth’s orbit, even a tiny metal fragment could potentially wreak havoc upon impact with a spacecraft or satellite because of […]
Nanofluids, fluids containing nanometer-sized particles, show immense potential for future engineering. Even water flowing through nanotubes flows much faster than traditional mechanics says it should be possible. Now, researchers have found a way to directly image nanofluids. Researchers at Caltech have applied a new imaging technique called four-dimensional (4D) electron microscopy to the nanofluid dynamics problem. The technique […]
Researchers have detected the smallest force ever recorded – 42 yoctonewtons – using a system of super-cooled atoms. Yocto-what? The Newton, named after sir Isaac Newton, is the international unit of measure for force. 1 Newton is equal to 1 kilogram times 1 meter over 1 second square (1N = 1 kg * 1 m […]
The tropical rainforests of Central and South America aren’t threatened only by deforestation – they are also overrun by lianas, parasitic woody vines that clamber up trees and smother the forest canopy as they reach for sunlight. But the vines may actually help the trees in a way – scientists suspect they may in fact act as […]
When people think of teleportation, inevitably a Star Trek reference like “beam me up, Scotty’ comes to mind. You’ve got to admit though, it’s a really cool idea – how many times did you think about instantly traveling to some place distant? I used to wish for teleportation every single day of my life when […]
Three physicists involved with fusion research have found an elegant way to convert light to matter. And, it can be accomplished with current technology. Demonstrating the process would round out a critical set of theories about energy and matter, so a race may soon be on to test it. The Einstein relationship, E= mc2, states […]
The humongous grey whale and the skipjack tuna, though of contradicting sizes, both employ similar propelling mechanisms through water. Pound per pound, however, which of the two animals is most energy efficient? Engineers at Northwestern University have developed a new metric for analyzing such problems and found that the two marine animals are almost just as […]
Researchers working in the Greek island of Crete have developed the world’s most powerful atom laser – fully seven times stronger than any developed to date. What’s an atom laser? Optical lasers not really top notch technology anymore, but atom lasers are relatively new – the first one was demonstrated in 1996 at MIT. But like […]
