Quantum experiments with entangled photons win the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics
Tests of quantum weirdness and its potential real-world applications have been recognized with the 2022 Nobel Prize in physics. At some level we are all…
Category: Physics
Despite a retraction, a room-temperature superconductor claim isn’t dead yet
It may be too soon to mourn the demise of a room-temperature superconductivity claim. On September 26, the journal Nature retracted a paper describing a…
Carlos Argüelles hunts for particles beyond the standard model
If you saw Carlos Argüelles-Delgado’s childhood bedroom — the whiteboard for working out problems, the math textbooks they asked for as birthday gifts — you’d…
How ghostly neutrinos could explain the universe’s matter mystery
The answer to one of the greatest mysteries of the universe may come down to one of the smallest, and spookiest, particles. Matter is common…
Falling objects in orbit show Einstein was right — again
Gravity doesn’t discriminate. An experiment in orbit has confirmed, with precision a hundred times greater than previous efforts, that everything falls the same way under…
50 years ago, physicists got a whiff of what glues together protons
What holds the proton together— Science News, September 16, 1972 An experiment … at the CERN Laboratory in Geneva … gives an important clue to…
Protons contain intrinsic charm quarks, a new study suggests
Protons may be intrinsically charming. The subatomic particles are a mash-up of three lighter particles called quarks: two of the type known as up quarks…
Spiraling footballs wobble at one of two specific frequencies
In American football, some passes are caught and some are dropped — but all wobble as they fly. Spiraling pigskins tend to visibly wobble at…
Physicists spotted rare W boson trios at the Large Hadron Collider
The letters “www” are typically followed by a “dot” — but not in this experiment. Around 270 WWW events, trios of particles called W bosons,…
The Windchime experiment could use gravity to hunt for dark matter ‘wind’
The secret to directly detecting dark matter might be blowin’ in the wind. The mysterious substance continues to elude scientists even though it outweighs visible…
Two black holes merged despite being born far apart in space
Signals buried deep in data from gravitational wave observatories imply a collision of two black holes that were clearly born in different places. Almost all…
This stick-on ultrasound patch could let you watch your own heart beat
Picture a smartwatch that doesn’t just show your heart rate, but a real-time image of your heart as it beats in your chest. Researchers may…
Zapping plastic with a laser forged tiny diamonds
A laser blast produces miniature diamonds from plain-old plastic. That’s right, the same kind used in soda bottles. When squeezed to about a million times…
Physicists dispute a claim of detecting a black hole’s ‘photon ring’
The first image of a black hole may conceal treasure — but physicists disagree about whether it’s been found. A team of scientists say they’ve…
‘Chameleon’ forces remain elusive in a new dark energy experiment
A chameleon-like force that shifts its nature based on its environment could explain a major physics quandary: how the mysterious substance called dark energy is…
Wiggling metal beams offer a new way to test gravity’s strength
In the quest to measure the fundamental constant that governs the strength of gravity, scientists are getting a wiggle on. Using a pair of meter-long,…
A supersensitive dark matter search found no signs of the substance — yet
The next generation of dark matter detectors has arrived. A massive new effort to detect the elusive substance has reported its first results. Following a…
Aliens could send quantum messages to Earth, calculations suggest
An intelligent alien civilization could beam quantum messages to Earth. Particles of light, or photons, could be transmitted over vast, interstellar distances without losing their…
An ‘everlasting’ bubble endured more than a year without popping
If you hate having your bubble burst, you’ll love these “everlasting” bubbles. While soap bubbles are known for their fragile constitutions, the new bubbles can…
Here are the Top 10 science anniversaries of 2022
Even though it’s only even odds that 2022 will turn out to be less of a disaster than 2021 (or 2020), at least 2022 is…
The quantum ‘boomerang’ effect has been seen for the first time
Some quantum particles gotta get right back to where they started from. Physicists have confirmed a theoretically predicted phenomenon called the quantum boomerang effect. An…
Vinegar eels can synchronize swim
Trapped within a bead of water, thousands of tiny worms wiggle in hypnotic synchrony as they stream around the globule’s rim. And at the center…
A century of quantum mechanics questions the fundamental nature of reality
Scientists are like prospectors, excavating the natural world seeking gems of knowledge about physical reality. And in the century just past, scientists have dug deep…
Antiprotons show no hint of unexpected matter-antimatter differences
It’s confirmed: Protons and antiprotons are well-matched. The two types of subatomic particles mirror each other in the ratios of their electric charge to mass,…
The only known pulsar duo sheds new light on general relativity and more
The only known duo of pulsars has just revealed a one-of-a-kind heap of cosmic insights. For over 16 years, scientists have been observing the pair…
Physicists have coaxed ultracold atoms into an elusive form of quantum matter
An elusive form of matter called a quantum spin liquid isn’t a liquid, and it doesn’t spin — but it sure is quantum. Predicted nearly…
Scientists finally detected a quantum effect that blocks atoms from scattering light
A cloud of ultracold atoms is like a motel with a neon “no vacancy” sign. If a guest at the motel wants to switch rooms,…
New high-speed video reveals the physics of a finger snap
It all happens in a snap. New high-speed video exposes the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it physics behind snapping your fingers. The footage reveals the extreme speed at which…
A new particle accelerator aims to unlock secrets of bizarre atomic nuclei
Inscribed on an Italian family’s 15th century coat of arms and decorating an ancient Japanese shrine, the Borromean rings are symbolically potent. Remove one ring…
A stunning simulation re-creates how M87’s black hole launches plasma jets
From the maw of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy M87, two enormous jets stream thousands of light-years into space. Scientists…
Neutron star collisions probably make more gold than other cosmic smashups
The cosmic origins of elements heavier than iron are mysterious. One elemental birthplace came to light in 2017 when two neutron-rich dead stars collided and…
A rush to watch a supernova exposed its last gasp before exploding
A mad scramble to observe the moments after a star’s death is helping scientists understand how the star lived out its last year. Astronomers reported…
Doubt cast on theorized ‘sterile’ particles leaves a neutrino mystery unsolved
For decades, physicists have suspected an interloper. A reclusive, hypothetical subatomic particle might be creeping into studies of neutrinos, nearly massless particles with no electric…
Here’s the physics of why ducklings swim in a row behind their mother
There’s physics to having your ducklings in a row. By paddling in an orderly line behind their mother, baby ducks can take a ride on…
An atomic clock measured how general relativity warps time across a millimeter
A millimeter might not seem like much. But even a distance that small can alter the flow of time. According to Einstein’s theory of gravity,…
Scientists are one step closer to error-correcting quantum computers
Mistakes happen — especially in quantum computers. The fragile quantum bits, or qubits, that make up the machines are notoriously error-prone, but now scientists have…
These colorful butterflies were created using transparent ink
You’ve heard of disappearing ink. Now get ready for suddenly appearing ink. Using a clear liquid, researchers can print a full rainbow of colors on…
Whirling maple seeds inspired these tiny flying sensors
Like helicoptering maple seeds, tiny new fliers whirl gracefully as they glide. The miniature aircraft, which can be made as small as a grain of…
One of nature’s key constants is much larger in a quantum material
A crucial number that rules the universe goes big in a strange quantum material. The fine-structure constant is about 10 times its normal value in…
New ‘vortex beams’ of atoms and molecules are the first of their kind
Like soft serve ice cream, beams of atoms and molecules now come with a swirl. Scientists already knew how to dish up spiraling beams of…
Physicists caught protons ‘surfing’ on shock waves
Protons can surf some truly gnarly waves. A new experiment suggests that the subatomic particles can be accelerated by a process akin to surfers catching…
‘Flashes of Creation’ recounts the Big Bang theory’s origin story
Flashes of CreationPaul HalpernBasic Books, $30 The Big Bang wasn’t always a sure bet. For several decades in the 20th century, researchers wrestled with interpreting…
50 years ago, physicists thought they found the W boson. They hadn’t
The W particle may have been found — Science News, August 21, 1971 Physicists distinguish four different kinds of force by which objects in the…
With a powerful laser blast, scientists near a nuclear fusion milestone
With a powerful laser zap, scientists have blasted toward a milestone for nuclear fusion. A fusion experiment at the world’s biggest laser facility released 1.3…
How particle detectors capture matter’s hidden, beautiful reality
At every moment, subatomic particles stream in unfathomable numbers through your body. Each second, about 100 billion neutrinos from the sun pass through your thumbnail,…
A bounty of potential gravitational wave events hints at exciting possibilities
A new crew of potential ripples in spacetime has just debuted — emphasis on the word “potential.” By loosening the criteria for what qualifies as…
Black holes born with magnetic fields quickly shed them
Like a shaggy dog in springtime, some black holes have to shed. New computer simulations reveal how black holes might discard their magnetic fields. Unlike…
With Steven Weinberg’s death, physics loses a titan
Mythology has its titans. So do the movies. And so does physics. Just one fewer now. Steven Weinberg died July 23, at the age of…
These weird, thin ice crystals are springy and bendy
Try to bend an icicle and it’ll snap in two. With its tendency to crack into shards, ice’s reputation for being stiff and brittle seems…
A study of Earth’s crust hints that supernovas aren’t gold mines
A smattering of plutonium atoms embedded in Earth’s crust are helping to resolve the origins of nature’s heaviest elements. Scientists had long suspected that elements…