Physics

  1. Agriculture

    Green Living, Chinese-Style

    Chinese is developing eco-cities to take their citizens straight from the agricultural to the ecological age.

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  2. Chemistry

    Kavli Awardees Named

    Norwegian Academy awards three novel and hefty prizes to three teams of scientists.

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  3. Physics

    Tight deadline

    Light behaves like waves or particles, but it doesn’t know what it will do in advance.

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  4. Animals

    How they shine

    Iridescence could be pretty meaningful—or maybe just pretty.

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  5. Astronomy

    When Worlds Collide

    Parallel universes aren’t supposed to be observable, but a cosmic crash might leave a visible sign of their existence.

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  6. Chemistry

    Slippery when dry

    Surfaces that mimic the back of an African beetle can collect water from fog.

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  7. Physics

    Catching the cell in action

    A light microscope with high resolution may enable scientists to view the 3-D structures within living cells.

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  8. Chemistry

    Phlegmatic molecules

    Time-lapse snapshots of molecules show that they change shapes less often than theory predicted.

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  9. Materials Science

    Like the Nobel, Only Norwegian

    Two weeks from now, an astrophysicist, neuroscientist, and nanoscience researcher will each be named to receive $1 million Kavli Prizes.

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  10. Space

    Neutron tie-dye

    Neutrons can produce 3-D scans of a magnetic field, even inside a solid.

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  11. Physics

    John Wheeler (1911-2008)

    SN Editor in Chief Tom Siegfried remembers the late physicist John Wheeler, who coined the term "black hole" in 1967, with excerpts from conversations the two had engaged in over the past two decades.

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  12. Math

    Less is more

    Researchers have shown that a grip that’s too tight can be counterproductive, especially on a microscopic object — but the findings could apply to fields ranging from ecology to sociology.

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