Physics
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Computing
Building ‘The Matrix’
Simulating new materials could help in building them — but only quantum simulators could fully model reality. A team reports a first step in realizing quantum simulation.
- Chemistry
Oil magnets
Featured blog: Nanomagnets and wires point to a potentially better mousetrap — or crude trap — for dealing with oil spills.
- Physics
Watching the northern lights form
Scientists may have solved the mystery of what triggers the events that spark the northern and southern lights.
- Chemistry
Quantum physics makes water different
The length of bonds connecting water molecules could demonstrate quantum effects and help explain some of water’s weirdness.
- Physics
Decoding the Quantum Mystery
An essay by Tom Siegfried, SN's Editor in Chief, explores how signals from space to Earth could establish the reality of Einstein's worst fear.
- Health & Medicine
Insightful Light
Raman spectroscopy may offer doctors, dentists and forensic scientists a better tool for molecular detection.
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- Materials Science
Solar panels to dye for
Scientists show that cheap chemical dyes may one day help with the efficient capture of the sun's energy
- Physics
Large Hadron Collider
When the Large Hadron Collider powers up this fall, protons moving at almost the speed of light will collide with energies high enough, physicists hope, to solve matter’s biggest mysteries.
- Physics
Layers in a Stradivarius
Slight differences in the wood from which violins are made might be what distinguishes a mellow-toned Stradivarius from an ordinary instrument.
- Physics
Left in the cold
An optical trap lets atoms in but not out, and it can be used to study matter at ultracold temperatures.
- Physics
Galaxy Zoo’s blue mystery (part I)
A Dutch science teacher found a novel celestial object that had eluded the notice of astronomers.
