The Universe May Have Never Begun, Physicists Say
In the beginning, there was … well, maybe there was no beginning. Perhaps our Universe has always existed – and a new theory of quantum gravity reveals how that could…
Climate Modelers Win Nobel Physics Prize at Critical Moment in World History
Japanese-American scientist Syukuro Manabe, Klaus Hasselmann of Germany and Giorgio Parisi of Italy on Tuesday won the Nobel Physics Prize for climate models and the understanding of physical systems. The…
Mysterious, Never-Before-Seen Signals Picked Up By New Gravitational Wave Detector
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…
Wild Experiment Coaxes Liquids Into Amazing Square And Hexagonal Shapes
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,…
Physicists Create Swirling Tornado of Helium With First-Ever Atomic Vortex Beam
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…
For The First Time, Scientists Have Entangled Three Qubits on Silicon
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…
Neutron Beams Could Help Reveal The Elusive ‘Fifth Force’ of Nature, Scientists Say
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…
Scientists Built a New Kind of Invisibility Cloak, But It’s Not For Your Eyes
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…
Physicists Just Accidentally Made a New Discovery About Black Holes
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…
MIT Physicists Just Majorly Advanced The Quest Towards Actual Fusion Power
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…
Physicists Glimpse Signs of ‘Triangle Singularity’ in Unexpected First
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…
Scientists Created a New Kind of Metal Where Electrons Flow Like a Fluid
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…
Scientists May Have Just Found a Way to Make Chocolate Tempering Much Easier
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…
Physicists Have Successfully Advanced a Key Device For Producing Fusion Power
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…
For The First Time, Physicists Observed a Quantum Property That Makes Water Weird
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…
Turns Out It’s Not Possible to Time Travel Just by Flying Really Fast
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…
2D ‘Supersolid’ That Flows Without Friction Has Been Made For The First Time
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…
Physicists in California Achieve ‘Historic’ Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough
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…
A Simple Crystal Could Finally Give Us Large-Scale Quantum Computing, Scientists Say
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…
Physicists Detect Strongest Evidence Yet of Matter Generated by Collisions of Light
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…
This Miniature Particle Accelerator Powers a Tiny Laser With Huge Promise
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…
Scientists Have Transformed Pure Water Into a Metal
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…