All Stories by Lisa Grossman
- Physics
Reverse engineering a quantum compass
Physicists propose a method that could explain how birds’ magnetic-sensing organs work.
- Physics
Lasing Beyond Light
Laser physicists have set their sights on new types of waves — manufacturing beams of sound, creating plasma swells and looking for ripples in spacetime.
- Space
Life in the sticky lane
Tropical asphalt lake could be analog for extraterrestrial microbial habitat.
- Space
Famous Martian meteorite younger than thought
The famous fragment of Mars, once proposed to hold signs of extraterrestrial life, is still pretty old. But the rock appears to have formed about 400 million years later than earlier analyses indicated.
- Space
Backward planets may have flipped into place
Reversed orbits among ‘hot Jupiters’ decreases chance of Earthlike neighbors.
- Life
Fruit flies turn on autopilot
High-speed video reveals the aerodynamics behind the insects’ maneuverability.
- Health & Medicine
Languages use different parts of brain
Different areas are active depending how the grammar of a sentence conveys meaning.
- Life
Elephant legs bend like ‘big human limb’
Mechanics suggests the creatures are more limber than thought and use all their legs to come to a four-way stop.
- Physics
Bar codes could be next to check out
New radio frequency tags would use nanotechnology to identify and track products.
- Physics
How to hide a bump with some logs
Physicists take a step toward true invisibility with a cloak that makes objects invisible from multiple points of view.
- Science & Society
Intel Science Talent Search spotlights America’s whiz kids
Top winner of the enduring high school science competition takes 2010 prize for work on a space navigation system.
- Chemistry
Pit vipers’ night vision explained
A new study finds the protein responsible for snakes’ sense of heat.
