Carbon-60 is in a class of organic materials known as fullerenes, which are insulators. Scientists first generated superconductivity – current flow without resistance below a certain ‘transition temperature’ – in carbon-60 ten years ago. They doped the material with alkali metal ions, which donate its electrons and makes the carbon-60 conducting. But electron doping led […]
Read article: A maverick’s quest for quantum gravity
There is one central quandary to 21st-century physics. It is that the two main pillars of 20th-century physics – quantum mechanics and Einstein’s general theory of relativity – are mutually incompatible. On the sub-atomic scale, Einstein’s view of gravity fails to comply with the quantum rules that govern the elementary particles, while on the cosmic […]
Read article: Max Planck: the reluctant revolutionary
100 years ago Max Planck published a paper that gave birth to quantum mechanics – but he didn't immediately realize the consequences of his work, says Helge Kragh
Read article: Pack your cherries to perfection
A burning issue for fatties like me is whether you can make a low-fat Black Forest gateau. The answer, surprisingly, can be found in two new science books. The Pursuit of Perfect Packing by Tomaso Aste and Denis Weaire tells you how to pack the cherries in the middle of the cake as densely as […]
Read article: Quantum mechanics with single atoms and photons
Some 100 years after the birth of quantum mechanics, physicists are still learning more about the interactions between light and matter
Read article: CERN split over collider closure
Many researchers at the particle-physics laboratory are unhappy that the management has not given LEP an extension
Read article: No more lectures any more?
Try this introspective experiment. Think about your favourite quiz show and ask yourself how many questions you can remember after the programme ends (never mind the answers). You’ll find that you fall into one of two categories. Where the questions are in a subject you know about, you will probably remember quite a few. Where […]
Read article: Rock blasts in from the past
Rocks from space have had a bad press recently. The action movies Armageddon and Deep Impact explored what would happen if the Earth was threatened by a huge asteroid impact. Somewhat more down to Earth, so to speak, was a recent UK government report suggesting that we really should take the threat of an […]
Schmid and colleagues used new microscopy techniques to observe in real time interactions between the tin clusters – each containing hundreds of thousands of atoms – and the copper surface. They found that tin and copper atoms swap places at the interface between the two metals to form bronze. The tin atoms in the cluster […]
Louis Néel was born in Lyons in 1904 and dedicated his career to the study of magnetism. In 1932 he discovered antiferromagnetism – a form of magnetism in which the ‘spins’ on neighbouring atoms point in opposite directions. Previously only three forms of magnetism – dia-, para- and ferromagnetism – were known. During the Second […]
