Scientists in Germany have hit a new superconductivity milestone – achieving a resistance-free electrical current at the highest temperature yet: just 250 Kelvin, or -23 degrees Celsius (-9.4 degrees Fahrenheit). The work was led by Mikhail Eremets, a physicist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, who set the previous high temperature record for superconductivity

The world produces a staggering 180 billion aluminium cans every year, but it’s a safe bet many of the people consuming those beverages don’t know about a hidden material concealed inside the metal cylinders. For decades, aluminium can manufacturers have lined the inside of their cans with plastic. Why? Well, it’s to protect the beverage

Sound isn’t just something we hear. It’s a formidable physical phenomenon – a wave of pressure that reverberates through the air around us. But the medium sound moves through doesn’t have to be air. Incredibly loud sounds can also travel through water, sometimes even being the result of particularly noisy fish. But if you really want

Finally, 130 years after it was established, the kilogram as we know it is about to be retired. But it’s not the end: tomorrow, 20 May 2019, a new definition will be put in place – one that’s far more accurate than anything we’ve had until now. After the shift was unanimously voted in at the

After 12 successful seasons, “The Big Bang Theory” has finally come to a fulfilling end, concluding its reign as the longest running multicamera sitcom on TV. If you’re one of the few who haven’t seen the show, this CBS series centers around a group of young scientists defined by essentially every possible stereotype about nerds

We learn about some awesome science in high school – like Einstein’s theory of relativity, the Periodic table, and DNA replication. The knowledge we pick up there sets the foundations for all the other amazing things we go on to study. But science definitely doesn’t end at high school, and it’s once you take your

It has taken one of the most powerful lasers on the planet, but scientists have done it. They’ve confirmed the existence of ‘superionic’ hot ice – frozen water that can remain solid at thousands of degrees of heat. This bizarre form of ice is possible because of tremendous pressure, and the findings of the experiment

There’s a stark contrast between the freezing temperatures of space and the relatively balmy atmosphere of Earth, and that contrast could help generate electricity, scientists say – utilising the same optoelectronic physics used in solar panels. The obvious difference this would have compared with solar energy is that it would work during the night time,

For the first time, scientists have performed an iconic physics experiment with a positron – the antimatter counterpart of an electron, one of the fundamental particles. Not only did they get some truly interesting results, but this achievement could become the first step towards potentially revolutionary discoveries. The experiment – an antimatter version of the

For something so commonplace, glass is actually an incredible mystery; an enigma of physics that has defied understanding since humans first encountered it millennia ago. The reason is this: glass is no ordinary solid. But nor is it a liquid. It lies somewhere in between, a strange hybrid known as an amorphous solid – something

Quantum communication is a strange beast, but one of the weirdest proposed forms of it is called counterfactual communication – a type of quantum communication where no particles travel between two recipients. Theoretical physicists have long proposed that such a form of communication would be possible, but in 2017, for the first time, researchers were

It doesn’t look like much. A cold, pock-marked block of benign uranium small enough to hold in your hand. But that tiny metal cube holds a secret to a dark world that might have been, one that University of Maryland physicists Timothy Koeth and Miriam Hiebert have realised was perhaps a little closer than we

At the end of Avengers: Infinity War half the people (including heroes and villains) in the universe were gone in the snap of a finger from Thanos (Josh Brolin). So how can Avengers: Endgame (in cinemas from this week) try to bring them back? Well, with that tried and tested movie plot device: time travel.

Thanks to the XENON1T dark matter detector lodged under the Gran Sasso mountains of Italy, scientists have recorded one of the rarest events to ever be detected: a special type of radioactive decay in xenon-124. It’s an amazing feat, because the decay of this isotope is extremely, extremely slow. In fact, xenon-124 has a half-life

Scientists have observed the clearest evidence yet of an incredibly rare and exotic theoretical phase of matter called a supersolid – and while it only lasted experimentally for a fleeting instant in the lab, it’s the longest we’ve ever glimpsed such paradoxical strangeness to exist at all. Supersolids were first theoretically predicted to exist a

For the first time, engineers have demonstrated how ‘bubbles’ of lighter grains can form in sand, just as they can in other fluids – even though granular materials tend towards mixing. Although individual grains of sand are solid, when you get a lot of them, they behave surprisingly like a fluid – think of falling

When it comes to the kinds of technology needed to contain a sun, there are currently just two horses in the race. Neither is what you’d call ‘petite’.   An earlier form of fusion technology that barely made it out of the starting blocks has just overcome a serious hurdle. It’s got a long way to

One of the ultimate goals of modern physics is to unlock the power of superconductivity, where electricity flows with zero resistance at room temperature. Progress has been slow, but in 2018, physicists have made an unexpected breakthrough. They discovered a superconductor that works in a way no one’s ever seen before – and it opens

Ice is a complex beast. While you and I only ever come into contact with one kind of it, scientists actually know of around 20 different molecular varieties – some so esoteric and rare, they may only exist inside computer simulations, or buried within distant planets. But just because water can freeze into a solid

For some physicists, measuring the spectrum of tiny waves making up empty space has been a goal for decades, but until now none have found a good way to achieve it.  Now physicists from ETH Zurich have cleverly used laser pulses to understand the quantum nature of a vacuum, setting a landmark in our attempts