Putting the quantum brakes on light
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 pas...
A ‘sticky’ theory
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 fil...
Physics, biscuits and the public
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 f...
Supersonic plasticity
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, howev...
Statistical physics challenges economics
Once the balance between ‘fundamentalists’ and noise traders is breached the market becomes more volatile and creates boom or bust cycles. For example, Amazon.com is now worth over $30 bil...
Wigner crystal found
Normal metals have an equal number of electrons with spin “up” and spin “down”. However, when there are more spins pointing up than down, or vice versa, the metal becomes a fer...
Perl reveals recipe for success
The history of science is littered with famous scientists who pushed the ‘wrong idea’, Perl told PhysicsWeb. And research organisations do not have a good track record of controlling the d...
Physics misses out in US budget
At the DOE, the budget for basic energy science is set to rise by 11%, with two-thirds of this going to meet construction costs for the Spallation Neutron Source being built at Oak Ridge. Fusion resea...
Hydrogen: a quantum gas at last
Jaakkola observed two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensation (2D BEC) in a gas of specially prepared hydrogen atoms adsorbed on the surface of liquid helium. In Bose-Einstein condensation all the part...
Earth’s poles may switch
“This is certainly the quickest movement since we started measurements in Greenland in 1928, ” says Torsten Neubert, who heads DMI’s Solar-Terrestrial Physics Department. Neubert thi...
