Physicists hope to develop new ways of accelerating particles because of the high cost and large size of traditional accelerators. Electrons in standard accelerators gain energy by surfing large electromagnetic (EM) waves contained by powerful magnetic fields. However it may be possible to adapt the intense EM waves generated when a laser pulse interacts with […]
The pairs are created by illuminating a semiconductor quantum well with a pulsed laser diode. A slight voltage difference on the semiconductor keeps the electron and the hole in separate levels inside the quantum well. When the voltage is switched off, the electron-hole pair move together under Coulomb attraction and radiatively recombine – producing a […]
Buckyballs, nanotubes and related structures have great potential for storage applications because their small size offers the possibility of high switching speeds and low power consumption. However, the unusual conducting properties of nanotubes have made it extremely difficult to construct devices. The Michigan-NEC team realised that inserting a positive ion into the buckyball made it […]
Friedman, Kendall and Taylor scattered beams of high-energy electrons from liquid hydrogen and deuterium targets. They found that electrons were more likely to be scattered at large angles than was previously thought. This work paralleled that of Ernest Rutherford, who famously scattered alpha particles from nuclei, pointing to the existence of the atomic nucleus. “Henry […]
Electromagnetically induced transparency relies on interference between different electronic transitions in an atom and has been used to make opaque media transparent at certain wavelengths in the past. In the latest experiment the sodium atoms were trapped and cooled in a magneto-optic trap. The atoms were cooled until they collapsed into a Bose-Einstein condensate – […]
The French team studied the behaviour of air bubbles on the surface of the sticky polymer film attached to a metal probe. The number and size of the bubbles depends on the surface roughness of the film and probe. They discovered that when the film and the probe are pulled in opposite directions, the air […]
Scientists often complain that the media do not report their work. However, according to Fisher, this is not because journalists are not interested in science but because they have a fear of looking foolish when asking questions. The dunking story, on the other hand, gave journalists the chance to interact with researchers on a topic […]
Gumbsch and Gao also found that the supersonic speeds only occur when the stress is applied at a single point. At very low strains, the deformations travel subsonically. At intermediate strains, however, they start supersonically but quickly drop below the sound barrier. But if higher strains are applied, stable supersonic deformation occurs, causing a ‘shock […]
