Latest Physics Stories
Atoms are famously camera-shy. This dazzling custom rig can catch them.
Need more air in space? Magnets could yank it out of water.
It’s pretty hard to measure nothing, but these engineers are getting close
Nuclear power’s biggest problem could have a small solution
See the first video of solitary solid atoms playing with liquid
What engineers learned about diving injuries by throwing dummies into a pool
Have we been measuring gravity wrong this whole time?
The world’s best dark matter detector whiffed on its first try
What we learned from the Large Hadron Collider on its first day back in business
These 4 problem-solvers just won one of math’s biggest prizes
The green revolution is coming for power-hungry particle accelerators
Earth has more than 10,000 kinds of minerals. This massive new catalog describes them all.
This ghostly particle may be why dark matter keeps eluding us
‘Rogue black holes’ might be neither ‘rogue’ nor ‘black holes’
Popping a champagne cork creates supersonic shockwaves
Volcanic eruptions are unpredictable, but these geologists cracked the code
Physicist Ann Nelson broke barriers—for herself and for those who’d come after her
How to make an X-ray laser that’s colder than space
Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars, but someone else won the Nobel
Racial and economic barriers kept Carolyn Beatrice Parker from realizing her full potential
From the archives: Inside the tantalizing quest to sense gravity waves
Chien-Shiung Wu’s work defied the laws of physics
From the archives: The discovery of electrons breaks open the subatomic era
The souped-up Large Hadron Collider is back to take on its weightiest questions yet
From the archives: The Theory of Relativity gains speed
The standard model of particle physics may be broken
By
Roger Jones / The Conversation
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May 9, 2022
Edward A. Bouchet paved a path for generations of Black students
These levitating beads can teach physicists about spinning celestial objects
This one-way superconductor could be a step toward eternal electricity
The biggest particle collider in the world gets back to work
What MIT’s new ‘Oreometer’ revealed about twisting Oreos
The most distant galaxy we’ve ever discovered might have closely followed the Big Bang
This subatomic particle’s surprising heft has weighty consequences
Manipulating atomic motion could make metals stronger and bendier
Time crystals just got a little easier to make
Meet the mysterious particle that’s the dark horse in dark matter
Rare ‘upside-down stars’ are shrouded in the remains of cannibalized suns
The most precise atomic clocks ever are proving Einstein right—again
Why the quadruple axel jump is nearly impossible to land
Inside the high-powered process that could recycle rare earth metals
Our universe probably isn’t special enough to be in a multiverse
Olympic sledders fly down the ice with a few slick tricks
The future might be filled with squishy robots printed to order
Ice doesn’t always melt the same way—and these visuals prove it
Scientists found a fleeting particle from the universe’s first moments
How the world’s first ‘quantum tornadoes’ came to be
The James Webb telescope could help solve the mystery of dark matter
Physicists close in on the exceedingly short life of the Higgs boson
Astronomers may have found a galaxy that formed without dark matter
Physicists just gifted us ‘quantum spin liquid,’ a weird new state of matter
What makes one pair of headphones better than another?
By
Timothy Hsu/The Conversation
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Nov 26, 2021
These infrared images show just how alive butterflies’ wings are
IBM’s latest quantum chip breaks the elusive 100-qubit barrier
Snapping your fingers is a move worthy of a professional athlete
Physicists want to create energy like stars do. These two ways are their best shot.
When light flashes for a quintillionth of a second, things get weird
NASA images show the sun has had a rough week
X-rays are revealing new clues about a shipwreck from 1545
Amazon’s venture into the bizarre world of quantum computing has a new home base
Chaos is more predictable than you think
By
Mitchell Newberry/The Conversation
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Oct 8, 2021
A key part of the big bang remains troublingly elusive
Use physics to pull off gravity-defying surfing moves
This year’s Physics Nobel honors work on the complex systems underlying climate change
A centuries-old magic trick is helping us make holograms we can feel
By
Ravinder Dahiya/The Conversation
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Sep 20, 2021