Physics
42 articles in this section.
Interstellar solar sails hit a strange problem at 75% of light speed
Diffractive solar sails, depicted in this conceptual illustration, could enable missions to hard-to-reach places. Credit: MacKenzi Martin Reaching another star within a practical amount of time will require…
50 years ago, physicists found the speed of light
A New Figure for the Cosmic Speed Limit – Science News, December 2, 1972 A group at the National Bureau of Standards at Boulder, Colo., now reports an…
The standard model of particle physics passed one of its strictest tests yet
No one has ever probed a particle more stringently than this. In a new experiment, scientists measured a magnetic property of the electron more carefully than ever before,…
World-first photonic time crystal opens a new era of light control
A THz electromagnetic wave induces strong, fast temporal modulations that realize a photonic time crystal: a crystal lattice in time for photon. Credit: B. Schröder/HZDR An international research…
Muons unveiled new details about a void in Egypt’s Great Pyramid
A nebulous void in Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza has been unveiled thanks to strange subatomic particles called muons. Scientists first identified the void in 2016 using muons,…
‘Ghost Particle’ chronicles the neutrino’s discovery and what’s left to learn
Ghost ParticleAlan Chodos and James RiordonMIT Press, $32.95 We live in a sea of neutrinos. Every second, trillions of them pass through our bodies. They come from the…
There’s a new measurement of muon magnetism. What it means isn’t clear
Muons might not behave as expected. But scientists can’t agree on what to expect. By taking stock of how the subatomic particles wobble in a magnetic field, physicists…
Scientists finally detected oxygen-28. Its instability surprised them
A “magic number” of physics might not be so magic after all. Using a powerful particle accelerator, researchers have spotted an elusive variant of oxygen for the first…
Scientists twist crystal layers and reshape matter from within
Scientists can now twist and bond large oxide layers with atomic precision, opening a promising new frontier for customizable electronics. Credit: Jie Sun Researchers have developed a way…
Forests might serve as enormous neutrino detectors
Neutrino detectors don’t grow on trees. Or do they? Forests could one day be used to spot ultra-high-energy neutrinos, a physicist proposes. Trees could act as natural antennas that pick…