Glimpses of the ultrafast world of electrons are changing scientists’ vision of the inner workings of atoms and molecules. The 2023 Nobel Prize in physics goes to three physicists who illuminated this realm with ultrashort pulses of light, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced October 3. Physicists Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier […]
50 years ago, scientists dreamed of lasers that could kick off nuclear fusion
Excerpt from the September 29, 1973 issue of Science News Nearly 200 powerful lasers at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, Calif., blast a fuel pellet (illustrated), igniting nuclear fusion that can release more energy than the lasers put in. LLNL A powerful pulse of laser light: Step toward fusion — Science News, September 29, 1973 One […]
Astronomers call for renaming the Magellanic Clouds
Names have significance, especially when they’re written in the stars. A group of astronomers is coalescing around an idea to rename two neighbors of the Milky Way, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. Named after explorer Ferdinand Magellan, the satellite galaxies are visible with the naked eye from the Southern Hemisphere. But Magellan’s name is […]
How to stop quantum computers from breaking the internet’s encryption
Keeping secrets is hard. Kids know it. Celebrities know it. National security experts know it, too. And it’s about to get even harder. There’s always someone who wants to get at the juicy details we’d rather keep hidden. Yet at every moment, untold volumes of private information are zipping along internet cables and optical fibers. […]
A laser gyroscope measured tiny variations in the lengths of days on Earth
Some days really are longer than others. And now scientists know by precisely how much. Using a laser gyroscope, scientists have measured variations in Earth’s rotation rate smaller than a millionth of a percent. The technique could help scientists understand the complex flows of water and air that cause the tiniest of tweaks to the […]
Here are some of the new ways researchers might detect gravitational waves
Until recently, gravitational waves could have been a figment of Einstein’s imagination. Before they were detected, these ripples in spacetime existed only in the physicist’s general theory of relativity, as far as scientists knew. Now, researchers have not one but two ways to detect the waves. And they’re on the hunt for more. The study […]
Superconductor research surges forward despite mounting controversy
With his bold claims of revolutionary room-temperature superconductors, physicist Ranga Dias of the University of Rochester in New York propelled the field of high-pressure physics into the spotlight. Now, after two paper retractions and plagiarism allegations, there’s a haze of suspicion around Dias, and some physicists are worried that outsiders might suspect that the entire […]
There’s a new measurement of muon magnetism. What it means isn’t clear
Muons might not behave as expected. But scientists can’t agree on what to expect. By taking stock of how the subatomic particles wobble in a magnetic field, physicists have pinned down a property of the muon’s internal magnet to greater precision than ever before, researchers from the Muon g−2 experiment reported August 10 in a […]
Mass has different definitions. The moon’s orbit confirms two are equivalent
Mass is mass is mass. Physicists have three different definitions of mass, all thought to be equivalent. Measurements of the distance between Earth and the moon confirm that two of those masses are one and the same to higher precision than ever before, physicists report July 13 in Physical Review Letters. That result confirms one […]
New gravitational waves may be from the universe’s biggest black holes
Citations G. Agazie et al. The NANOGrav 15-Year data set: Detector characterization and noise budget. Astrophysical Journal Letters. Vol. 951, June 28, 2023, p. L10. doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/acda88. G. Agazie et al. The NANOGrav 15-year data set: Evidence for a gravitational-wave background. Astrophysical Journal Letters. Vol. 951, June 28, 2023, p. L8. doi: 10.3847/2041-8213/acdac6. G. Agazie et al. The NANOGrav 15-year data set: Observations and timing […]