Few things in life are utterly black or white. Even scientific ideas come in shades of “truth”, which is arrived at differently in different kinds of science. There are other gradations too, starting with theories that we are pretty damn sure are right and that we accept without question, such as Newton’s three laws of […]
Read article: Spotting craziness in cloud-cuckoo-land
New measurements suggest that the gravitational constant is too small
Read article: Helping ‘big G’ get back on track
A network of superconducting junctions could give insights into diverse fields of science
Physicists fail to repeat the ground-breaking experiment that created the heaviest element
Phonons may hold the key to the behaviour of the cuprate superconductors
Perhaps they’re just shy, but heavy atoms seem very embarrassed when most of their electrons are stripped off. In order to cover their nakedness as quickly as possible, they aggressively try to steal electrons from any source they encounter. Indeed, their electron-capture rates can be orders of magnitude higher than those of ordinary ions. As […]
Measurements of B mesons confirm that the Standard Model of particle physics cannot explain why the universe is made of matter rather than antimatter
Read article: Where did all the antimatter go?
Currently there are, at most, five centres operating in the front line of particle physics: CERN and DESY in Europe, Fermilab and Stanford in the US, and KEK in Japan. How many of these laboratories are still with us in a decade or two from now remains to be seen. The year 2020 might seem […]
Read article: Straight choices
The behaviour of magnetic vortices controls many physical properties of high-temperature superconductors, including their ability to carry current without resistance – a classic hallmark of superconductivity. Indeed, vortices provide an ideal platform for the creation and study of novel phases and phase transitions. Now Nurit Avraham at the Weizmann Institute in Israel and co-workers from […]
Self-focusing occurs at high intensities in transparent media when the refractive index is proportional to the intensity. The change in refractive index causes the medium to act as a lens that focuses the laser – hence the name self-focusing. This lens is the ultimate adaptive-optics element as it responds instantly to the shape of the […]
