All Stories by Peter Weiss
- Physics
Light rambles through room-temperature ruby
Researchers have dramatically slowed light within a solid at room temperature.
- Physics
Attractive atoms pick up repulsive habits
Rubidium atoms intrinsically attract each other, but new experiments near absolute zero have induced the atoms to repel each another instead.
- Physics
Rare Events: Exotic processes probe the heart of matter
Physicists have for the first time unambiguously detected and measured the rates of certain reactions among protons, neutrons, and simple atomic nuclei.
- Physics
Why is antimatter absent? Hunt heats up
Two new particle accelerators built to help discover why there's matter instead of antimatter in the universe are closing in on an answer at record speed.
- Materials Science
A Hard Little Lesson: Squeezed nanospheres grow superstrong
A substance not known for its hardness—silicon—becomes one of the hardest of materials when formed into ultrasmall spheres.
- Computing
Pictures Only a Computer Could Love
New, unconventional lenses shape scenes into pictures for computers, not people, so that computer-equipped microscopes, cameras, and other optical devices can see more with less.
- Physics
Matter’s Missing Piece Shows Up
The first direct evidence of the tau neutrino, the last of the 12 subatomic particles considered the fundamental building blocks of matter, has finally been found.
- Physics
Muon Manna? Particle shower may spotlight loose nukes
Radiation from space may help border guards spot loose nukes stowed in shipping containers.
- Physics
Squirming through space-time
In the exotic realm of curved space, the topography of space itself might provide a propulsion assist—albeit a tiny one.
- Physics
In orbit, water makes the stretch
An astronaut-at-play stumbled upon an unexpected behavior of water in near-zero gravity: The formation of durable films—some as wide as saucers—that would instantly break here on Earth.
- Physics
Bunches of atoms madly morph
While investigating the instability of tiny clusters of atoms, scientists observe ultrasmall salt grains switching shapes at a stupendous rate.
- Physics
New approach smooths wrinkle analysis
A simple new theory of wrinkle formation predicts basic traits of wrinkled surfaces, such as how close together the folds will be, without miring scientists in impossible-to-solve equations.
