On one particular day in 2021, astronauts and cosmonauts aboard the ISS must have felt a pin-prick of fear and uncertainty. On November 15th of that year, Russia fired an anti-satellite missile at one of its own defunct military satellites, Tselina-D. The target weighed about 1,750 kilograms, and when the missile struck its target, … Read more
Until recently, astronomers could not observe the first stars and galaxies that formed in the universe. This occurred during what is known as the “Cosmic Dark Ages”, a period which took place between 380,000 and 1 billion years after the Big Bang. Thanks to new generation tools like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), improved … Read more
July 19, 2023• Physics 16, 113 The first observation of neutrinos produced in a particle collider opens up a new field of study and offers ways to test the limitations of the standard model. Google Earth, images (c)2023 Maxar Technologies, map data (c)2023; CERN; adapted by APS/Alan Stonebraker Figure 1: The Forward Search Experiment (FASER) … Read more
A team led by the University of Washington has discovered that by stacking a sheet of graphene on top of bulk graphite with a small twist angle (top), exotic properties present at the graphene-graphite interface (yellow) can penetrate the graphite itself. Credit: Ellis Thompson A groundbreaking study of the University of Washington demonstrated that graphite, … Read more
Gravity accelerates objects equally, despite differences in their mass or composition. This fundamental principle of modern physics was known in the 16th century thanks to the observations of Galileo Galilei, which were later confirmed by astronaut Dave Scott during the Apollo 15 moonwalk. What do you know! Mr. Galileo was right, Scott said during a … Read more
From In a flight of starlings: the wonders of complex systems by Giorgio Parisi. Copyright © Giorgio Parisi, 2023. Published in agreement with Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Random House LLC. The birth of ideas is a topic that many scientists have addressed in their writings. Let’s start with the famous French mathematicians Henri … Read more
On July 19, 1973, the Gargamelle bubble chamber at CERN revealed the existence of weak neutral currents and put the nascent Standard Model of particle physics on solid ground Half a century ago, a series of tiny traces in a bubble chamber at CERN changed the course of particle physics. The observation of weak neutral … Read more
The LIGO observatory in India will be built in the Hingoli district of Maharashtras, near the city of Aundha. The government has acquired 174 acres of land to set up the observatory, which is expected to be operational by 2030. This will be the third LIGO site in the world. The first two are both … Read more
July 18, 2023• Physics 16, 125 Using carefully placed cuts, the scientists engineered an adhesive tape that is highly sticky but easy to remove. M. Bartlett/Virginia Tech The tape engineer from Bartlett and his colleagues has up to 60 times the adhesion of tape you can buy at the store. Ubiquitous in first aid cabinets, … Read more
The light is extremely confined to a nanoslit in a pair of bonded nanowires. Credit: Zhejiang University Nanophotonics Group led by Limin Tong The waveguide scheme allows for highly confined subnanometer optical fields. Researchers have pioneered a new method for confining light to sub-nanometer scales. This development offers promising potential for advances in areas such … Read more
