Physics

  1. Chemistry

    Blueprint to repel oil and water

    The texture of surfaces could be designed so that both water and oil can bead up and thus flow off.

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  2. Space

    Half-life (more or less)

    Physicists are stirred by claims that the sun may change what’s unchangeable—the rate of radioactive decay.

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  3. Chemistry

    Silk

    Mimicking how spiders make their complex array of silks could usher in a tapestry of new materials, and other animals or plants could be designed to be the producers.

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  4. Physics

    Book Review: Sun in a Bottle: The Strange History of Fusion and the Science of Wishful Thinking by Charles Seife

    Review by Davide Castelvecchi.

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  5. Physics

    Facts and Speculations in Cosmology by Jayant V. Narlikar and Geoffrey Burbidge

    Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008, 287 p., $60.

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  6. Chemistry

    Long Live Plastics

    With plastics in museums decomposing, a new effort seeks to halt the demise of materials commonly thought to be unalterable.

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  7. Physics

    Magic tape

    Physicists discover an unexpected source of X-rays.

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  8. Life

    Heat sensors guide insects to a hot meal

    Bugs home in on seeds by detecting infrared radiation.

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  9. Physics

    Clean coal for cars has a dirty side

    Getting liquid fuels from coal would likely increase carbon emissions, and certainly not reduce them.

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  10. Tech

    Coal Country’s New Foresters

    New techniques may be shaving a century or two off the recovery of mined mountain tops.

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  11. Tech

    Trading Forests for Coal

    Forested mountain peaks have been giving way to grassy planes in Appalachian coal country.

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  12. Climate

    Eggs, Tea and Mr. IPCC

    Even jet-lagged, the world's lead climate negotiator took time out to brief a few reporters.

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