Physics

You might not know the term ‘oobleck’, but it’s highly likely you came across it as a kid. Also known as a non-Newtonian fluid, the strange material sometimes behaves like a liquid, and sometimes acts like a solid. It’s usually made of corn-starch and water, and it produces hours of fun for children everywhere. Punch it

Scientists have observed a quantum vibration at normal room temperature for the first time, a phenomenon that usually requires ultra-cold, carefully calibrated conditions – bringing us another step closer to understanding the behaviour of quantum mechanics in common materials. The team was able to spot a phonon, a quantum particle of vibration generated from high-frequency

You might be familiar with the Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment, where the eponymous feline in a box can be both alive or dead at the same time, often used to illustrate the multi-state paradox of quantum mechanics. Well, now scientists have managed to apply that theory to huge molecules made up of 2,000 atoms. Quantum

From smartphones to electric cars, we’re going to continue to need plenty of batteries in the years to come. New research shows how an upgraded type of aluminium battery could offer several advantages over the traditional lithium-ion ones in use today. The battery has low production costs, and doesn’t take the same environmental toll as

Superconductivity (passing charges through materials without losing heat) promises to revolutionise electronics and power, if we can get it working at reasonable temperatures – and scientists just reported a big step forward in our understanding of the phenomenon. The new discovery centres around the Hubbard model: a maths model of conduction and insulation in materials,

For several years now, physicists at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) have been running a landmark experiment, recording tens of billions of particles break apart in the hopes of catching a few oddballs. And they finally have some intriguing results to share. This experiment, called NA62, has researchers building and destroying pairs of quarks called

A huge experiment to pin down the mass of one of the Universe’s most perplexing particles has put a cap on how big the neutrino might actually be. Once considered massless, the particle’s mass is now thought to weigh no more than a single electronvolt. It might not be a precise answer, but it does

You might think you already know black – even super-black Vantablack, previously the blackest material known to science – but researchers just came up with a material that takes black to a new level of blackness. The new, as-yet-unnamed ultra-black material is made from vertically aligned carbon nanotubes (CNTs), microscopic carbon strings that are a

A fifty-year-old hypothesis predicting the existence of bodies dubbed Generic Objects of Dark Energy (GEODEs) is getting a second look in light of a proposed correction to assumptions we use to model the way our Universe expands. If this new version of a classic cosmological model is correct, some black holes could hide cores of pure

Protons probably aren’t quite as big as we’d once imagined, according to the results of a sensitive physics experiment that took eight years to complete. Scientists now say our earlier measurements of proton size were off by as much as 5 percent – which might not seem like such a huge correction, but to physicists

A team of researchers has just demonstrated quantum enhancement in an actual X-ray machine, achieving the desirable goal of eliminating background noise for precision detection. The relationships between photon pairs on quantum scales can be exploited to create sharper, higher-resolution images than classical optics. This emerging field is called quantum imaging, and it has some

Water is a weird molecule, and no matter how many strange things about it we discover, it seems like there are always more unexpected surprises waiting around the corner – even after centuries of researching it. Case in point: in a new study, scientists in the US have discovered that in the right circumstances, water

When two neutron stars collide, it’s not like we can just pop up there with a thermometer to measure the intense temperatures being generated at the heart of the collision. There are other observables that can help us calculate surface temperatures, but inside? That’s a little trickier. Add to that the fact that we’ve only

Scientists have found evidence of superconductivity happening at temperatures and energy levels way above its normal boundaries – a finding which could one day go on to help revolutionise the design and workings of our electronics. A superconductor material is one that can transfer electricity without resistance. In turn, this means the electricity travels through

It’s not like the one in your car, but a team of physicists at Trinity College Dublin have built what they claim is the world’s smallest engine. The engine is the size of a single calcium ion – about ten billion times smaller than an automobile engine. Rather than powering your next road trip, the

For quantum computing to become fully realised, we’re going to have to make a few huge scientific leaps along the way – including finding a superconductor that can act in the same way as silicon does in today’s computing. A team of researchers thinks that search might now be over. Introducing the compound uranium ditelluride

Carbon can be arranged in a number of configurations. When each of its atoms is bonded to three other carbon atoms, it’s relatively soft graphite. Add just one more bond and it becomes one of the hardest minerals known, diamond. Chuck 60 carbon atoms together in a soccerball shape and boom, buckyballs. But a ring

Researchers have created the thinnest unsupported gold sheets ever created in a lab, producing infinitesimal slivers of the precious metal that are only two atoms thick. These vanishingly thin gold sheets – approximately 1 million times thinner than a human fingernail – measure just 0.47 nanometres in thickness, representing a new breakthrough in the fabrication

It’s time to celebrate another first in the field of quantum physics: scientists have been able to ‘teleport’ a qutrit, or a piece of quantum information based on three states, opening up a whole host of new possibilities for quantum computing and communication. Up until now, quantum teleportation has only been managed with qubits, albeit

The Negev desert that sprawls across Israel is one of the driest places on Earth, but deep below its surface is a different story. Held in the sandstone deep underground is a reservoir of fossil water that lay undisturbed for hundreds of thousands of years. Researchers know this water is old, because it can’t have been