In the photoelectric effect, a photon ejects an electron from a material. Researchers at ETH have now used attosecond laser pulses to measure the time evolution of this effect in molecules. From their results they can deduce the exact...
Scientists have solved the riddle behind one of the most recognisable, and annoying, household sounds: the dripping tap. And crucially, they have also identified a simple solution to stop it, which most of us already have in our kitchens.
Using...
An international team of astronomers have made the most precise test of gravity outside our own solar system.
By combining data taken with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope, their results show that gravity...
Infrared cameras are the heat-sensing eyes that help drones find their targets, even in the dead of night or through heavy fog.
Hiding from such detectors could become much easier, thanks to a new cloaking material that renders objects—and people—practically...
Take a glass thread a thousand times thinner than a human hair. Use it as a wire between two metals. Hit it with a laser pulse that lasts a millionth of a billionth of a second.
Remarkable things happen.
The glass-like...
A scientist at Duke University says the natural evolution of social organizations into larger and more complex communities that exhibit distinct hierarchies can be predicted from the same law of physics that gives rise to tree branches and river...
Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder have helped to find the last reservoir of ordinary matter hiding in the universe.
Ordinary matter, or "baryons," make up all physical objects in existence, from stars to the cores of black holes....
Researchers more than doubled the ability of a material to convert heat into electricity, which could help reduce the amount of wasted heat, and thus wasted fossil fuel, in daily activities and industries.
Researchers from Hokkaido University and their colleagues...
EPFL physicists have found a way to reverse electron spins using electric fields for the first time, paving the way for programmable spintronics technologies.
Spintronics is a field of physics that studies the spin of electrons, an intrinsic type of...
Place a chunk of the clear mineral Iceland spar on top of an image and suddenly you'll see double, thanks to a phenomenon called double refraction—a result of a quality of the crystal material called optical anisotropy. Beyond just...
Manipulating light in a variety of ways—shrinking its wavelength and allowing it to travel freely in one direction while stopping it cold in another—hyperbolic metamaterials have wide application in optical communications and as nanoparticle sensors. But some of the...
