Physics
We summarize the week's science breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Physics
For quantum computer, add a dash of disorder
Flawed crystals could help couple light to matter and may compete with more perfectly ordered materials.
- Chemistry
Polymer shifts shape with changing temperature
Common material’s ‘memory’ could be exploited for smart fabrics or other gadgets.
- Physics
Aluminum superatoms may split water
Metal clusters could create hydrogen for fuel, simulations suggest.
- Chemistry
Plasticizers kept from leaching out
‘Chemicals of concern’ may be made safer in new materials.
- Health & Medicine
Chip of tooth tells radiation dose
A two-milligram dot of tooth enamel serves as a radiation dosimeter.
-
- Physics
Hogan’s noise
A cosmologist suggests a novel way to uncover the nature of spacetime on the smallest scales.
- Chemistry
Naming an atomic heavyweight
More than a decade after its debut in a German lab, element 112 is officially named copernicium.
- Tech
Leasing car batteries to the power company
Most people, on average, drive their cars only an hour or two a day. The rest of the time, those pricey vehicles sit parked on the street or in some garage. But if those cars had a big bank of batteries – typical of today’s gasoline hybrids or soon-to-hit-the-road plug-in hybrids – they could be earning their owners money while sitting parked. Maybe $5 to $10 a day, just by serving as a back-up energy-storage system for the electric-utility grid.
- Quantum Physics
Higgs and his particle prove elusive
Peter Higgs and colleagues receive particle theory prize; scientists still hunting the proposed boson
- Physics
Hot and heavy matter runs a 4 trillion degree fever
Protons and neutrons melted in collisions of gold atoms have created the hottest matter ever made in a lab
- Materials Science
A charge for freezing water at different temperatures
Experiments use positive and negative forces to control ice formation at temperatures well below the normal freezing point.
