Your Daily Science News Source from Around the Globe
Scientists have observed how a magnetic dipole field can create what looks like a glowing, localised fireball inside a plasma chamber. By placing a regular dipole bar magnet near the…
It’s been exactly 80 years since the theoretical physicist Ettore Majorana predicted that there were neutrally charged particles that were indistinguishable from their own antiparticle. None have been spotted in…
An odd phenomenon in quantum mechanics called backflow has just gotten a little weirder with new research showing not only can particles seem to ignore momentum and leap backwards, they…
Scans taken of fluids moving through rock have shown engineers have had it wrong when it comes to substances flowing through porous materials. For the past century, the movement of…
Not all ice is the same. In distant realms far beyond this world’s Slurpees, melting glaciers, and the Ice Bucket Challenge, water hardens into a solid state in strange ways…
Not long ago, in the early 1990s, scientists only speculated that teleportation using quantum physics could be possible. Since then, the process has become a standard operation in quantum optics…
It’s not something many people think about when they drop a few ice cubes into their beverage of choice, but the tiny ice crystals that go into them are not…
The Large Hadron Collider has once again done what it does best – smash bits of matter together and find new particles in the carnage. This time physicists have come…
One of the weirder aspects of quantum mechanics could be explained by an equally weird idea – that causation can run backwards in time as well as forwards. What Einstein…
Owls have mastered the art of quiet flight in order to glide down on unsuspecting prey, and now scientists think we can follow their lead to quieten down wind turbines…
If you’re feeling as if you’ve lost a bit of weight recently, blame physicists – recent calculations make the mass of the proton 30 billionths of a percent lighter than…
Scientists have discovered that a simple model used to describe the formation an exotic type of quantum particle, an Efimov molecule, is wrong – flipping ten years of experimental data…
A review of three separate experiments has turned up “remarkably similar” results, pointing to what researchers say is a strong possibility that we’ve found hits of a phenomenon that goes…
Since the discovery of graphene in 2004, there’s been a proliferation of strange new two-dimensional materials. In all of them, scientists have been chasing one invaluable property – magnetism, which…
When teachers explain ocean tides, they frequently describe how the Moon’s gravity pulls on Earth and all of its water. This, they often say, leads to a gravitational imbalance, which…
A 30-year debate has just been reignited by a physicist who appears to have found a mysterious new state of matter in an ordinary piece of glass. For decades, this…
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) still has plenty of good work left to do in the field of particle acceleration, but scientists are already starting work on its replacement, set…
Imagine you took all sunlight that hits our planet at any given moment, and focussed it on one (unfortunate) piece of Earth the size of a thumbnail. Now times that…
Our current understanding of the Universe states that it’s governed by four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetic, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. But there are hints of a fifth…
Literature professor Simon John James and physicist Richard Bower were both involved in curating the exhibition, Time Machines – the past, the future, and how stories take us there. Their…
New research has expanded on the discovery of a strange phenomenon called blackbody force, showing that the effect of radiation on particles surrounding massive objects can be magnified by the…
For the first time, physicists have demonstrated that a universe like ours with three spatial dimensions could actually host a naked singularity – an event so intense, the laws of…
Three years after construction started, the most sensitive dark matter detector ever built has served up its first set of results – and it’s working just as its makers intended.…
Researchers have created the strongest organic acid ever – and the team thinks it could revolutionise how we analyse proteins. The strongest acid on record is fluoroantimonic acid – it’s…
Researchers have constructed the world’s thinnest metallic nanowire, creating a stable string of the chemical element tellurium, that measures just one atom thick. The team behind the nanowire says the…
Of the many ‘white whales’ that theoretical physicists are pursuing, the elusive magnetic monopole – a magnetic with only one pole – is one of the most confounding. Compared to…
The first direct detection of gravitational waves, a phenomenon predicted by Einstein’s 1915 general theory of relativity, was reported by scientists in 2016. Armed with this “discovery of the century”,…
If you live in the US, you’re probably used to talking about weight in pounds and ounces (and having to convert things when Australians like us start talking in kilograms…
Scientists have shown for the first time that changes in entropy – the measure of disorder in a system – can accurately predict when a mysterious quantum flip, known as…
Despite the NSA confirming the existence of Skynet, we all should be grateful that technology has not yet advanced to the stage where a liquid metal T-1000 terminator can shape-shift…
For the first time ever, physicists have managed to directly detect a hydrogen bond within a single molecule – meaning we can now observe the smallest and most abundant element…
It’s very early days, but two papers published today have detected hints of elusive dark matter within data collected at the International Space Station (ISS). Dark matter is the hypothetical…
Physicists at CERN have reported an unexplained phenomenon in their giant ion collider device – for the first time ever, particles called ‘strange hadrons’ have been observed in rare proton…
For centuries, people have puzzled over how our Universe began. But the heat just got turned way up on a debate that’s quietly been raging between cosmologists, with 33 of…
For the first time, scientists have subjected quantum entanglement to extreme levels of acceleration, and there’s nothing fragile about this “spooky action at a distance”– it’s way more robust than…
The world’s most accurate timekeepers have brought their powers to bear on the next leap in quantum research – moving from quantum control of single atoms to entire molecules. This…
Don’t let the fact that the objects known as Prince Rupert’s drops are made out of glass fool you – the pretty, tear-drop shaped baubles can withstand some pretty harsh…
Quantum communication is a strange beast, but one of the weirdest proposed forms of it is called counterfactual communication – a type of quantum communication where no particles travel between…
If we want to find extra dimensions lurking within our Universe – something that string theory attempts to explain – gravitational waves could be our key to locating them, physicists…
In case it wasn’t already awesome enough, physicists have found a new way to turn ‘wonder material’ graphene into a ridiculously powerful superconductor, capable of shuttling electricity with zero resistance.…
In one of his videos from earlier this year, YouTuber Joe Scott, host of “Answers With Joe,” takes on the glaring question of the speed of light. In a vacuum,…
Everyone likes a shortcut and a quick trip somewhere cool, which means that everyone loves a wormhole – at least in theory. In actuality, these space-time tunnels are probably not…
For months now, there’s been speculation that researchers might have finally created time crystals – strange crystals that have an atomic structure that repeats not just in space, but in…
For months now, there’s been speculation that researchers might have finally created time crystals – strange crystals that have an atomic structure that repeats not just in space, but in…