Interactions between two laser beams in a plasma allow for precise control over the light’s velocity. Light has a strict speed limit, but under certain conditions, this boundary can be broken for individual pulses of light. So far, light has…
Keeping time accurately comes with a price. The maximum accuracy of a clock is directly related to how much disorder, or entropy, it creates every time it ticks. Natalia Ares at the University of Oxford and her colleagues made this…
A new study says leaving middle seats open could give airline passengers more protection from the virus that causes COVID-19. Researchers said the risk of passengers being exposed to the virus from an infected person on the plane could be…
Why is sugar not transparent? Because light that penetrates a piece of sugar is scattered, altered and deflected in a highly complicated way. However, as a research team from TU Wien (Vienna) and Utrecht University (Netherlands) has now been able…
A potential chink in physicists’ understanding of fundamental particles and forces now looks more real. New measurements confirm a fleeting subatomic particle called the muon may be ever so slightly more magnetic than theory predicts, a team of more than…
Size of raindrops can help identify potentially habitable planets outside our solar system One day, humankind may step foot on another habitable planet. That planet may look very different from Earth, but one thing will feel familiar — the rain.…
A new announcement from the European Organization for Nuclear Research “CERN” revealed that analyzing the results of 10 years of data from a collider indicates the presence of a new unknown cosmic force, which may change the physics we know,…
PULLMAN, Wash. –Nature’s strongest material now has some stiff competition. For the first time, researchers have hard evidence that human-made hexagonal diamonds are stiffer than the common cubic diamonds found in nature and often used in jewelry. Named for…
White dwarfs could go supernova in response to nuclear fission caused by uranium crystals Tiny crystals of uranium could set off massive explosions within a dead star, physicists propose, making for a cosmic version of a thermonuclear bomb. Expired stars…
Galileo’s approach has made a comeback with Dragonfly, a telescope in New Mexico built from two fly-eye arrays of 24 Canon telephoto lenses. This month, the Dragonfly team announced it would add 120 more of the lenses in a $3.65…
