Physics
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Physics
Water droplets spontaneously bounce, sans trampoline
Initially stationary water droplets can bounce on an extremely water-repellent surface as if on a trampoline.
- Physics
Water droplets spontaneously bounce, sans trampoline
Initially stationary water droplets can bounce on an extremely water-repellent surface as if on a trampoline.
- Science & Society
Quantum spookiness, magnetic mysteries and more feedback
Letters and comments from readers on quantum spookiness, Earth's magnetic field, and more.
- Particle Physics
Antiprotons match protons in response to strong nuclear force
The first study of how antiprotons interact with each other reveals yet again that particles of antimatter behave just like their ordinary matter counterparts.
- Tech
Electronic skin feels the heat, hears the sound
Electronic skin inspired by human fingertips detects texture, pressure, heat and sound.
- Physics
Acoustic tractor beam reels in objects like the Death Star
A platform tiled with ultrasound-emitting speakers can get small objects to hover, spin, move around and get reeled in as if pulled by a tractor beam.
- Quantum Physics
Light mimics hotel with limitless vacancies
By mimicking a mathematician’s method for creating vacancies in a hotel with an infinite number of rooms, physicists may have found a way of increasing the amount of data that can be carried via light.
- Quantum Physics
Quantum interpretations feel the heat
Landauer’s principle shows a way to test competing interpretations about quantum physics.
- Quantum Physics
Confirmed: Quantum mechanics is weird
The first demonstration of a loophole-free Bell test validates the weirdness of quantum physics.
- Physics
Pentaquarks, locked-in syndrome and more reader feedback
Readers discuss pentaquark sightings, delightful diatoms and whether an ancient four-legged fossil was actually a snake.
- Quantum Physics
Future quantum computing could exploit old technology
Silicon transistors have been modified and patched together to form logic gates that could perform calculations in future quantum computers.
- Science & Society
Special Report: Gravity’s Century
After years of pondering the interplay of space, time, matter and gravity, Einstein produced, in a single month, an utter transformation of science’s conception of the cosmos: the general theory of relativity.
