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JILA’s atomic clock based on strontium atoms held in a lattice of laser light is the world’s most precise and stable atomic clock. Image credit: Jun Ye et al / Baxley / JILA.

Strontium Atomic Clock Most Precise Timekeeping Device Yet, Say Scientists

Apr 22, 2015 by News Staff

The experimental strontium lattice clock at JILA, a joint institute of National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado...

A new radio-frequency spectrometer is able to identify single electrons. Image credit: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

New Radio-Frequency Spectrometer Identifies Single Electrons

Apr 22, 2015 by News Staff

A group of scientists from the Project 8 Collaboration has developed a new particle detector that is able to detect the frequency of cyclotron radiation...

An image shows a comet striking coastal Yucatan, forming the giant Chicxulub impact crater and causing the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs (Don Davis / NASA)

Experiments Show What Happens Below Ground When Meteorite Strikes Earth

Apr 13, 2015 by News Staff

Scientists led by Dr Abram Clark of Duke University and Yale University developed a novel technique which enabled them to simulate accurately high-speed...

Laser light enters a synthetic diamond from a facet at its corner and bounces around inside the diamond until its energy is exhausted; this excites the NVs that can be used to measure magnetic fields. Image credit: H. Clevenson / MIT Lincoln Laboratory.

Physicists Create Ultrasensitive Magnetometer

Apr 10, 2015 by News Staff

A team of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed an ultrasensitive magnetic-field detector that could lead to smaller devices...

Visualization of magnetic fields. Image credit: Windell Oskay / CC BY 2.0.

Study Reveals Surprising Behavior in Frustrated Magnets

Apr 4, 2015 by News Staff

In a new study reported in the journal Science, Princeton University physicists tested the frustrated magnets – so-named because they should be magnetic...

Further studies are needed to take into consideration the possibility that many modes, or light paths, exist simultaneously in the cavity, Dr Ge and his colleagues said. Their far-field emission patterns may change in different ways, which causes a reduction of the sensitivity to rotation. Image credit: Li Ge et al.

Physicists Find Way to Create Tiny Optical Gyroscope

Apr 1, 2015 by News Staff

According to a group of scientists led by Dr Li Ge from the CUNY’s College of Staten Island, a pair of light waves may hold the key to creating the world’s...

NIST-F1 Cesium fountain atomic clock, serving as the U.S. time and frequency standard. Image credit: NIST.

New Technique Could Make Atomic Clocks More Accurate

Mar 31, 2015 by News Staff

An international group of physicists led by Prof Vladan Vuletic of MIT has developed a novel technique that can successfully entangle 3,000 atoms using...

Square ice between two graphene sheets as seen in a transmission electron microscope (TEM); high-contrast dark spots are oxygen atoms that indicate positions of water molecules; hydrogen atoms yield too little contrast to be resolved even by the TEM. The top right inset shows a magnified image of a small area in the centre of the ice crystal. Image credit: University of Ulm.

Physicists Create New Form of Ice: Square Ice

Mar 27, 2015 by News Staff

When water is confined at high pressure between sheets of graphene its molecules adopt a square configuration, says a team of physicists from the University...

This image shows the famous Trifid Nebula to the right of center; it appears as faint and ghostly at these infrared wavelengths when compared to the familiar view at visible wavelengths; this transparency has brought its own benefits - many previously hidden background objects can now be seen clearly; among these are two newly discovered Cepheid variable stars, the first ever spotted on the far side of our Milky Way Galaxy near its central plane. Image credit: ESO / VVV consortium / D. Minniti.

Stars May Generate Sound, Physicists Say

Mar 24, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of scientists headed by Dr G. Ravindra Kumar of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India, has provided experimental...

Proton transfer channel across a quad-defect in graphene. Image credit: Murali Raju / Penn State.

Imperfect Graphene Could Lead to Better Fuel Cells, Water Filters

Mar 18, 2015 by News Staff

A group of scientists headed by Dr Franz Geiger of Northwestern University has found that slightly imperfect graphene shuttles protons, and only protons,...

Just a few layers of bubbles are enough to significantly decrease the height of the waves in a sloshing liquid. Image credit: Takeaway / CC BY-SA 3.0.

Physicists Explain Why Latte Less Likely to Spill than Coffee

Feb 25, 2015 by News Staff

In a new study published in the journal Physics of Fluids, a team of researchers has found that a few layers of foam can significantly dampen the sloshing...

An electron (green) hits a proton in a nucleus, creating a pion (green-skinned particle) and transforming the proton into a neutron. Image credit: Joanna Griffin / Jefferson Lab.

CERN Physicists Measure Polarizability of Pion

Feb 16, 2015 by News Staff

Scientists from CERN’s COMPASS collaboration have made the most precise measurement ever of the polarizability of pion – the fundamental low-energy...

Penta-Graphene: Scientists Discover New Allotrope of Carbon

Feb 5, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of scientists, led by Prof Puru Jena of Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, has discovered a new structural variant of...

Numerically calculated and experimentally observed optical polarization Möbius strips. Image credit: Thomas Bauer et al, 10.1126/science.1260635.

Physicists Create Möbius Strips out of Light

Jan 30, 2015 by News Staff

An international team of physicists, led by Dr Thomas Bauer from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light and the Friedrich-Alexander-University...

A water droplet bouncing off a laser-treated platinum surface. Image credit: J. Adam Fenster / University of Rochester.

Physicists Create Super-Hydrophobic Metal Surfaces

Jan 21, 2015 by News Staff

A team of physicists at the University of Rochester has used lasers to make metal surfaces extremely water repellent, or super-hydrophobic. A water droplet...

This micromaser is a major step toward building quantum-computing systems out of semiconductor materials; a battery forces electrons to tunnel one by one through two double quantum dots located at each end of a cavity, moving from a higher energy level to a lower energy level and in the process giving off microwaves that build into a coherent beam of light. Image credit: Jason Petta.

Scientists Create Rice Grain-Sized Maser

Jan 16, 2015 by News Staff

A team of scientists led by Dr Jason Petta of Princeton University has built a rice grain-sized microwave laser, or maser, powered by single electrons...

A 9 cm-long capillary discharge waveguide used in BELLA experiments to generate 4.25-GeV electron beam. Image credit: Roy Kaltschmidt.

Compact Particle Accelerator Creates Electron Beam with Record-Breaking Energy

Dec 9, 2014 by News Staff

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab physicists using one of the most powerful lasers in the world have accelerated electrons to the highest energies ever recorded...

Dogs and cats need to move fluid against gravity into the body by means other than suction; they do this by lapping fluid with their tongue. When a dog drinks, it curls its tongue posteriorly while plunging it into the fluid and then quickly withdraws its tongue back into the mouth. During this fast retraction fluid sticks to the ventral part of the curled tongue and is drawn into the mouth due to inertia. The scientists studied several variations of this drinking behavior among many dog breeds, specifically, the relationship between tongue dynamics and geometry, lapping frequency, and dog weight; and also compared the results with the physical experiment of a rounded rod impact onto a fluid surface. Image credit: Emmanuel Keller aka Tambako The Jaguar / CC BY-ND 2.0.

Physicists Explain Why Dogs are Sloppy Drinkers

Nov 26, 2014 by News Staff

A team of scientists led by Dr Sunghwan Jung of Virginia Tech has identified and modeled the fluid dynamics at play when dogs (Canis lupus familiaris)...

This artist's concept shows what the very early Universe might have looked like. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / R. Hurt / SSC.

Gravity May Have Saved Very Early Universe – Study

Nov 20, 2014 by News Staff

A team of physicists from Denmark, Finland and the United Kingdom, led by Dr Matti Herranen University of Copenhagen, says that the spacetime curvature...