Physics

A group of mathematicians has unveiled a brand new 13-sided shape they’ve simply called ‘the hat’. Don’t let the rather mundane description fool you though. This hat (which looks a bit like a fedora) is next season’s must-have fashion item, able to be tiled across a plane to create patterns that never repeat. Shapes like

The humble proton is a lynchpin of the material Universe. Its characteristics define chemistry, governing teams of electrons that build atoms into molecules, and molecules into dazzling complexity. For all we understand of its behavior, the proton’s internal structure is a chaotic mess of activity scientists are still deciphering. A new experiment conducted at the

Nearly a century has passed since scientists broke the Universe. Through a complex mix of experiment and theory, physicists discovered an engine built on the mathematics of probability ticks away below the façade of reality. Referred to in vague terms as the Copenhagen interpretation, this take on the theory underpinning quantum mechanics says everything can

For the first time, an international team of physicists has successfully manipulated small numbers of light particles – known as photons – that have a strong relationship with each other. That may sound a little obscure, but it’s a fundamental breakthrough in the quantum realm that could lead to technology we currently can’t even dream

The ghost, at long last, is actually in the machine: For the first time, scientists have created neutrinos in a particle collider. Those abundant yet enigmatic subatomic particles are so removed from the rest of matter that they slide through it like specters, earning them the nickname “ghost particles”. The researchers say this work represents

It’s easy to envisage other universes, governed by slightly different laws of physics, in which no intelligent life, nor indeed any kind of organized complex systems, could arise. Should we therefore be surprised that a universe exists in which we were able to emerge? That’s a question physicists including me have tried to answer for

Transferring information from one location to another without transmitting any particles or energy seems to run counter to everything we’ve learned in the history of physics. Yet there is some solid reasoning that this ‘counterfactual communication‘ might not only be plausible, but depending on how it works could reveal fundamental aspects of reality that have

Walk through a maze of mirrors, you’ll soon come face to face with yourself. Your nose meets your nose, your fingertips touch at their phantom twins, stopped abruptly by a boundary of glass. Most of the time, a reflection needs no explanation. The collision of light with the mirror’s surface is almost intuitive, its rays

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. Now scientists have come up with a way of achieving a shutter speed that’s a mere trillionth of a

In 2022, the physics Nobel prize was awarded for experimental work showing that the quantum world must break some of our fundamental intuitions about how the Universe works. Many look at those experiments and conclude that they challenge “locality” – the intuition that distant objects need a physical mediator to interact. And indeed, a mysterious

Few discoveries in science would revolutionize technology as much as a material that achieves superconductivity at room temperature, under relatively mild pressures. A team of physicists led by Ranga Dias, a physicist from the University of Rochester in New York now claims they might have cracked it, demonstrating a rare earth metal called lutetium combined

Is our Universe all there is, or could there be more? Is our Universe just one of a countless multitude, all together in an all-encompassing multiverse? And if there are other universes, what would they be like? Could they be habitable? This might feel like speculation heaped upon speculation, but it’s not as crazy as

Determining the passage of time in our world of ticking clocks and oscillating pendulums is a simple case of counting the seconds between ‘then’ and ‘now’. Down at the quantum scale of buzzing electrons, however, ‘then’ can’t always be anticipated. Worse still, ‘now’ often blurs into a haze of vagueness. A stopwatch simply isn’t going

Chemistry takes effort. Whether it’s by raising the temperature, increasing the odds that compatible atoms will collide in a heated smash-up, or increasing the pressure and squeezing them together, building molecules usually demands a certain cost in energy. Quantum theory does provide a workaround if you’re patient. And a team of researchers from the University

The Standard Model of particle physics is our current best-guess on what the blue-prints for matter looks like. Of all of its predictions, none are as precise as the magnetic moment of the electron. Not only is it precisely predicted, it’s among the most accurately measured of any particle’s properties. And while these two values

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 constantly attempting to get larger and larger objects to behave in a quantum-like way. Back

If a nuclear bomb were dropped in your city tomorrow, would you know where to take cover? Nuclear war is a terrifying thought, but for a team of researchers at the University of Nicosia in Cyprus, it’s top of mind. In a recent study, the researchers calculated how the blast from a nuclear explosion could

Ghost imaging is a sophisticated and incredibly useful set of techniques that scientists deploy to photograph light-sensitive objects in surprisingly high resolution. By making use of a mix of quantum and classical phenomena to pull visual information from just one of a pair of entangled photons, the method can capture images where energetic rays of

Scientists have produced a sensor that converts light into an electrical signal at an astonishing 200 percent efficiency – a seemingly impossible figure that was achieved through the weirdness of quantum physics. Such is the sensitivity of the device known as a photodiode, the team responsible for its innovation says it could potentially be used

Two newly discovered forms of frozen salt water could help scientists resolve a mystery concerning the Solar System’s ice-encrusted moons. When subjected to higher pressures and lower temperatures than can be found in nature on Earth, the atoms in hydrated sodium chloride – more commonly known as salt water ice – arranged themselves in never-before-identified

Isaac Newton is credited with first formulating a theory of gravity in the latter half of the 17th century – apparently inspired by an apple falling from a tree – but fundamental aspects of gravity’s pull were also recognized by Leonardo da Vinci more than a hundred years earlier, a new study explains. The study

Scientists rattling normal frozen water around in a jar of ultracold steel balls have discovered a previously unknown form of ice, closer to liquid water than any other ice yet. This is amorphous ice, a form not found in nature on Earth. That’s because its atoms are arranged not in a neat repeating crystalline pattern,

It’s not every day you get to rediscover the words of a world-famous thinker, an influencer of Albert Einstein himself. A nearly 20-minute video interview with the ‘father of the Big Bang‘ was found in the archives of a public-service broadcaster called Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie (VRT), located in the Flemish region of Belgium. Watching

‘Spin’ is a fundamental quality of fundamental particles like the electron, invoking images of a tiny sphere revolving rapidly on its axis like a planet in a shrunken solar system. Only it isn’t. It can’t. For one thing, electrons aren’t spheres of matter but points described by the mathematics of probability. But California Institute of

Physicists have just set a new record confining a self-focused laser pulse to a cage of air, down the length of a 45 meter-long (148 foot-long) university corridor. With previous results falling well short of a meter, this newest experiment led by physicist Howard Milchberg of the University of Maryland (UMD) breaks new ground for

Tractor beams make intuitive sense. Matter and energy interact with each other in countless ways throughout the Universe. Magnetism and gravity are both natural forces that can draw objects together, so there’s sort of a precedent. But engineering an actual tractor beam is something different. A tractor beam is a device that can move an

Don’t try this at home, but beaming a laser into the sky could avert lightning strikes, according to a new study from a team of scientists who experimented with the lasers atop a Swiss mountain where a great big metal telecommunications tower stands. Physicist Aurélien Houard, from the French National Center for Scientific Research’s Applied

Silently churning away at the heart of every atom in the Universe is a swirling wind of particles that physics yearns to understand. No probe, no microscope, and no X-ray machine can hope to make sense of the chaotic blur of quantum cogs whirring inside an atom, leaving physicists to theorize the best they can

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

Italians are notoriously – and understandably – protective of their cuisine, as regular arguments about the correct toppings for pizza or the appropriate pasta to use with a Bolognese ragu will attest. So it was hardly surprising that, when a Nobel Prize-winning Italian physicist weighed in with advice about how to cook pasta perfectly which

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.

When you stop and think about bubbles, you realize that they’re everywhere: in the dishwasher, on the top of your beer, on the crests of waves, in the saliva between your teeth, and, of course, in bubble gun toys. That means the physics of bubbles are important in all kinds of scenarios. With that in

Ordinarily, to measure an object we must interact with it in some way. Whether it’s by a prod or a poke, an echo of sound waves, or a shower of light, it’s near impossible to look without touching. In the world of quantum physics, there are some exceptions to this rule. Researchers from Aalto University

Fractal patterns can be found everywhere from snowflakes to lightning to the jagged edges of coastlines. Beautiful to behold, their repetitive nature can also inspire mathematical insights into the chaos of the physical landscape. A new example of these mathematical oddities has been uncovered in a type of magnetic substance known as spin ice, and

No one has yet managed to travel through time – at least to our knowledge – but the question of whether or not such a feat would be theoretically possible continues to fascinate scientists. As movies such as The Terminator, Donnie Darko, Back to the Future and many others show, moving around in time creates

Scientists have made a “breakthrough” in their quest to harness nuclear fusion. The US Department of Energy officially announced the milestone in fusion energy research on Tuesday. For the first time, researchers created a nuclear fusion reaction that produced more energy than they put into it. The experiment, conducted on December 5 at Lawrence Livermore

The US Department of Energy said Sunday it would announce a “major scientific breakthrough” this week after media reported a federal laboratory had recently achieved a major milestone in nuclear fusion research. The Financial Times reported Sunday that scientists in the California-based Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) had achieved a “net energy gain” from an

An alloy of chromium, cobalt, and nickel has just given us the highest fracture toughness ever measured in a material on Earth. It has exceptionally high strength and ductility, leading to what a team of scientists has called “outstanding damage tolerance”. Moreover – and counterintuitively – these properties increase as the material gets colder, suggesting

For the first time, scientists have created a quantum computing experiment for studying the dynamics of wormholes – that is, shortcuts through spacetime that could get around relativity’s cosmic speed limits. Wormholes are traditionally the stuff of science fiction, ranging from Jodie Foster’s wild ride in Contact to the time-bending plot twists in Interstellar. But

Physicists have long struggled to explain why the Universe started out with conditions suitable for life to evolve. Why do the physical laws and constants take the very specific values that allow stars, planets, and ultimately life to develop? The expansive force of the Universe, dark energy, for example, is much weaker than theory suggests

Say hello to ronnagrams and quettameters: International scientists gathered in France voted on Friday for new metric prefixes to express the world’s largest and smallest measurements, prompted by an ever-growing amount of data. It marks the first time in more than three decades that new prefixes have been added to the International System of Units

Scientists and government representatives meeting at a conference in France voted on Friday to scrap leap seconds by 2035, the organization responsible for global timekeeping said. Similar to leap years, leap seconds have been periodically added to clocks over the last half century to make up for the difference between exact atomic time and the

A new kind of black hole analog could tell us a thing or two about an elusive radiation theoretically emitted by the real thing. Using a chain of atoms in single-file to simulate the event horizon of a black hole, a team of physicists has observed the equivalent of what we call Hawking radiation –

Ice isn’t always ice all the way through. Even at temperatures well below freezing, its surface can be coated in a film of quasi-liquid atoms, with its thickness usually only a few nanometers. The process of its formation is known as premelting (or ‘surface melting’), and it’s why your ice cubes can stick together even

Everything in the Universe has gravity – and feels it too. Yet this most common of all fundamental forces is also the one that presents the biggest challenges to physicists. Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity has been remarkably successful in describing the gravity of stars and planets, but it doesn’t seem to apply perfectly

Quantum mechanics, the theory which rules the microworld of atoms and particles, certainly has the X factor. Unlike many other areas of physics, it is bizarre and counter-intuitive, which makes it dazzling and intriguing. When the 2022 Nobel prize in physics was awarded to Alain Aspect, John Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger for research shedding light

The simple mention of the word “radiation” often evokes fear in people. For others, it’s fun to think a little exposure to radiation could turn you into the next superhero, just like the Hulk. But is it true basically everything around us is radioactive, even the food we eat? You may have heard bananas are

For the better part of a century, quantum physics and the general theory of relativity have been a marriage on the rocks. Each perfect in their own way, the two just can’t stand each other when in the same room. Now a mathematical proof on the quantum nature of black holes just might show us