All Stories by Peter Weiss
- Physics
Icicle waves go with the flow
A new model of icicle growth may explain the strange fact that ripples often found on those icy spikes typically sit about 1 centimeter apart, whether the icicles themselves are big or small.
- Physics
Light pulses flout sacrosanct speed limit
Faster-than-light firsts: Restless laser pulse leaves before it arrives, while merging microwaves send out a superluminal scout.
- Tech
Deadly Bubble Bath: Ultrasound fizz kills microbes under pressure
A modest pressure increase on a liquid agitated by ultrasound dramatically boosts the microbe-killing power of those high-frequency sound waves.
- Tech
Resistancefree wire takes long jump
A wire-making company has demonstrated a process that yields potentially inexpensive, high-current superconducting wires about 10 times longer than previous prototypes.
- Computing
Loony Tunes: Bugs blare in software set to music
A novel way of converting computer programs into familiar-sounding music helps programmers locate errors in their code.
- Physics
Spectrum deftly takes visible light’s pulse
A rainbow path to more precise measurements of visible-light frequencies may become an express lane to unprecedented accuracy in everyday measurements for all the sciences.
- Physics
Cold War Conductor: Ultracold plutonium compound shows no resistance
Researchers studying the crystalline properties of radioactive plutonium have discovered the first plutonium-based superconductor.
- Earth
Warm band may have girdled snowball Earth
A swath a liquid ocean may have hugged the planet's midriff even during the most frigid global climatic episodes between 800 million and 600 million years ago, allowing life to survive.
- Physics
Speedy impacts send microwave distress calls
Laboratory smash-ups mimicking those between fast-moving space debris and satellites appear to emit microwave bursts, suggesting that microwave detectors might someday prove useful for monitoring the health of spacecraft.
- Tech
Hot Flashes, Cold Cuts
By obliterating matter in a never-before-seen way, a new breed of lasers cuts everything from eyeballs to diamonds with unprecedented precision.
- Physics
Laser links segue to chemical bonds
Light can knit matter together until other bonds take over, providing a potentially useful approach to building nanometer-scale structures and materials.
- Physics
Electron cycling in quantum confines
A lone electron zips around in the tightest circle allowed by quantum mechanics in an extraordinarily small, frigid cyclotron, potentially allowing scientists to nail down some fundamental constants of physics more precisely than ever before.
