Organic magnets
The material – 1,3,5-trithia-2,4,6-triazapentalenyl (TTTA) – is non-magnetic at very low temperatures. The paramagnetic effect is strong at room temperature, but as the compound is cooled,...
Top quark and Bell’s inequalities top PhysicsWeb Nobel poll
Every year the Foundation asks 3000 physicists to nominate individuals for the prize, and compiles a short-list of 250 candidates. These names are then whittled down to a list of 30, from which the wi...
Filing cabinets hamper scientific research!
Scargle argues that there already exists a bias in individual scientific papers because researchers usually only publish statistical summaries of their data – not the raw data itself. But his ma...
Has Hubble seen dark matter?
When the astronomers – Rodrigo Ibata from the European Southern Observatory, Harvey Richer and Douglas Scott from the University of British Columbia in Canada, and Ronald Gilliland from the Spac...
Do planets make diamonds from methane?
Lara Benedetti and colleagues from the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Missouri and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory sealed liquid methane between two diamond ‘...
Doubly magic nickel-48 surprises theorists
The name magic number comes from the shell model of the nucleus. The combined quantum mechanical effects of protons and neutrons in the nucleus can create energy shells similar to the electron energy ...
Theorists tackle the Earth’s core
Dario Alfè, David Price and Mike Gillian of University College London used a Cray T3E supercomputer to calculate that the melting point of iron was 6700 Kelvin, plus or minus 600 Kelvin, at the p...
Read article: Supersymmetry stands the test
Supersymmetry stands the test
An international team of nuclear physicists has found strong evidence for the existence of nuclear supersymmetry, a theory that relates bosons, which have integer values of spin, and fermions, with ha...
Can spin fluctuations explain superconductivity?
Superconductivity happens when the charge carriers overcome their mutual repulsion and bind together into Cooper pairs. In low-temperature superconductors phonons – quantized vibrations of the c...
