Physics

Materials Science

Membrane Mastery: Nanosize silica speeds up sieve

A novel modification to polymer membranes gives researchers a means to tune certain filters so they separate molecules more quickly and more selectively.

Physics

Molding Atoms: Using a tiny template to make tinier structures

With the help of a molecular mold composed of exactly 188 atoms, researchers have been able to impose textures at an even smaller atomic scale on a metal surface.

Materials Science

Steely Glaze: Layered electrolytes control corrosion

Experiments with ultrathin organic coatings applied to steel suggest a new technique for slowing corrosion.

Materials Science

A Field of Diminutive Daisies

Researchers have created tiny daisies as a demonstration of a new technique that creates three-dimensional structures from carbon nanotubes.

Materials Science

Osmium is Forever: Rare metal’s strength humbles mighty diamond’s

A new route to materials harder than diamond may have opened with the surprising finding that the rare metal osmium resists compression better than diamond does.

Physics

The Black Hole Next Door

Microscopic black holes—fleeting replicas of the huge, matter-gobbling ones in space—may be detected soon in our atmosphere and at a big particle collider now being built.

Physics

Signatures of the Invisible

Contemporary artists worked with CERN particle physicists to create pieces of art that respond to (rather than simply illustrate) the preoccupations of modern physics. This quirky Web site, hosted by the London Institute, provides glimpses of the artworks that resulted from this collaboration. Go to: http://www.signatures.linst.ac.uk/

Physics

Computer simulates full nuclear blast

In a classified nuclear-weapon experiment, the world's fastest computer simulated a thermonuclear blast in three dimensions.

Physics

Magnetism piece fits no-resistance puzzle

Experimenters have found evidence that a type of magnetic behavior correlated with the onset of zero electrical resistance in some so-called high-temperature superconductors is generic to the whole class of those materials, yielding a possible clue to how the substances lose their resistance.

Physics

Star in a Jar? Hints of nuclear fusion found—maybe

In a bench-top experiment, atomic nuclei may have fused inside rapidly imploding bubbles of vapor in a liquid bombarded by sound waves, but many scientists find the evidence for bubble fusion unconvincing.

Materials Science

Thin Jet Flies Two for One: Double streams yield sheathed nanoballs, fibers

Researchers have used powerful electric fields to stretch liquids into ultrathin jets in which a stream of one liquid encloses the stream of another.

Materials Science

Materials Take Wing

Materials scientists are finding new uses for the billions of pounds of feathers produced each year by the poultry industry.