Physics writer Emily Conover joined Science News in 2016. She has a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago, where she studied the weird ways of neutrinos, tiny elementary particles that can zip straight through the Earth. She got her first taste of science writing as a AAAS Mass Media Fellow for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. She has previously written for Science Magazine and the American Physical Society. She is a two-time winner of the D.C. Science Writers’ Association Newsbrief award.
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All Stories by Emily Conover
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Astronomy
Record-breaking light has more than a quadrillion electron volts of energy
Hundreds of newly detected gamma rays hint at cosmic environments that accelerate particles to extremes.
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Physics
A newfound quasicrystal formed in the first atomic bomb test
Material formed in the wake of the first atomic bomb test contains a strange material that is ordered but that is not a standard crystal.
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Astronomy
A study of Earth’s crust hints that supernovas aren’t gold mines
Supernovas aren’t the main source of gold, silver and other heavy elements, a study of deep-sea crust suggests.
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Materials Science
Morphing noodles start flat but bend into curly pasta shapes as they’re cooked
Shape-shifting pasta could potentially cut down on packaging and save space during shipping.
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Physics
A clock’s accuracy may be tied to the entropy it creates
A clock made from a thin, wiggling membrane releases more entropy, or disorder, as it becomes more accurate.
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Particle Physics
The thickness of lead’s neutron ‘skin’ has been precisely measured
At 0.28 trillionths of a millimeter thick, the shell of neutrons around the nucleus of an atom of lead is a bit thicker than physicists had predicted.
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Particle Physics
The already tiny neutrino’s maximum possible mass has shrunk even further
At less than an electron volt, neutrinos are by far the most lightweight massive particles known, a new measurement confirms.
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Astronomy
Neutron stars may not be as squishy as some scientists thought
NASA’s NICER X-ray telescope finds that the most massive known neutron star has an unexpectedly large diameter.
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Particle Physics
How matter’s hidden complexity unleashed the power of nuclear physics
In the last century, physicists learned to split atomic nuclei and revealed a complex world of fundamental particles.
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Particle Physics
Muon magnetism could hint at a breakdown of physics’ standard model
After two decades, a new measurement of the muon magnetic anomaly reinforces earlier hints that its value disagrees with standard physics.
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Physics
Uranium ‘snowflakes’ could set off thermonuclear explosions of dead stars
Uranium crystals that settle in the cores of white dwarfs could trigger nuclear chain reactions that blow the dead stars apart, a new study suggests.
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Astronomy
Here’s why humans chose particular groups of stars as constellations
Distances between stars, their brightnesses and patterns of human eye movement explain why particular sets of stars tend to be grouped together.