Physicists use an interferometer to test whether standard quantum mechanics is correct, or whether a more complex version is required. They used the interferometer to send photons around a loop in opposite directions. In this way, photons travelling in...
The Burton lab studies tiny, plastic particles as a model for more complex systems. The particles are suspended in a vacuum chamber filled with a plasma -- ionized argon gas.
Credit: Justin Burton, Emory University
Physicists at Emory University have shown...
Cosimo Rusconi (l.) and Oriol Romero-Isart (r.) play with a levitron to illustrate their work on nano magnets.
Credit: IQOQI Innsbruck/M.R.Knabl
Already in 1842, British mathematician Samuel Earnshaw proved that there is no stable configuration of levitating permanent magnets. If...
This is a computer graphic showing the kind of tight network of flux tubes that the physicists propose may have filled the early universe.
Credit: Thomas Kephart, Vanderbilt University
The next time you come across a knotted jumble of rope or...
Carbon nanotubes wrapped in polymer dispersants are used in many fields, including biotechnology and energy.
Credit: Image courtesy of National Institute for Materials Science
Scientists at Japan's Kyushu University say polymer-wrapped carbon nanotubes hold much promise in biotechnology and energy applications....
Visual depiction of one- and two-line tasks that participants were asked to complete and that was key to the paper's findings.
Credit: Ning Qian/Columbia's Zuckerman Institute
Scientists at Columbia's Zuckerman Institute have contributed to solving a paradox of perception, literally upending...
The so-called 5/2 state has confounded scientists for several decades. While all known particles in the universe are classified as either bosons or fermions, the 5/2 state, which emerges only in a 2-D electron gas under large magnetic fields,...
Aerial view of the LIGO Hanford Observatory.
Credit: Caltech/MIT/LIGO Laboratory
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 with one half to Rainer Weiss, LIGO/VIRGO Collaboration, and the other half jointly to Barry...
This drawing illustrates the path of packets of light waves (blue dashed line, moving right to left), as they hit an atom (white sphere with green nucleus) and an electron is knocked free (purple dashed line, moving left to...
This is an image of diamonds with different properties ready to be measured.
Credit: Dima Farfurnik
Pure diamond consists of carbon atoms in a perfect crystal lattice. But remove a few carbons and swap some others for nitrogen, and you get...
This is an example of the Hofstadter butterfly phenomenon.
Credit: The University of Manchester
A team of Graphene Flagship researchers led by the University of Manchester reported in the journal Science showing the first new type of quantum oscillation to be...
