Physics
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Space
Misplaced muons either mundane or monumental
During an experiment in Fermilab's Tevatron particle accelerator, a group of elementary particles called muons showed up in a strange place. Physicists are considering the likely implications.
- Physics
Take the time to break quantum encryption
A time-travel scenario permitted by Einstein’s general theory of relativity offers a bit of possibility for breaking quantum encryption.
- 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.
- 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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- 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.
- Physics
Facts and Speculations in Cosmology by Jayant V. Narlikar and Geoffrey Burbidge
Cambridge Univ. Press, 2008, 287 p., $60.
- 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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- Life
Heat sensors guide insects to a hot meal
Bugs home in on seeds by detecting infrared radiation.
- Physics
Clean coal for cars has a dirty side
Getting liquid fuels from coal would likely increase carbon emissions, and certainly not reduce them.
- Tech
Coal Country’s New Foresters
New techniques may be shaving a century or two off the recovery of mined mountain tops.
