Physics

Every four years, the men’s World Cup delivers some certainties. The pitch dimensions are tightly regulated, offside is signaled with a flag, and referees end the match with a blast of a whistle. But one key piece of equipment is changed on purpose: the ball. Source link

If you could take an apple and break it into smaller and smaller parts, you would find molecules, then atoms, followed by subatomic particles like protons and the quarks and gluons that make them up. You might think you hit the bottom, but, according to string theorists, if you keep going to even smaller scales—about

Trying to solve quantum gravity is frustrating. We have made tremendous progress in quantum theory, but it seems that every time we find a new quantum technique, there’s a reason it doesn’t quite work with gravity. Take, for example, the case of quantum fluctuations and renormalization. Source link

In Olympic weightlifting, a single kilogram plate can be the difference between gold and silver. As much as possible, elite athletes must use everything they can to their advantage. Source link

Sitting in a restaurant, you reach for the ketchup bottle, eyeing the basket of fries in front of you. You give the bottle a shake, then a tap. For a moment, nothing happens—the ketchup clings stubbornly to the glass. Then, all at once, it lets go and rushes out, sometimes in a steady stream, sometimes

When physicists fire beams of fast electrons at materials, they often need to know exactly how much energy those electrons will lose as they travel through. Through new research published in Physical Review Letters, a team led by Ke Jiang at Shenzhen Technology University in China has found that porous, mostly empty foam materials can

In the spring of 2025, baseball fans were treated to a surprise when the New York Yankees began the season with a unique style of bat. Termed “torpedo bats,” these new designs tapered slightly toward the end, so the widest points of the bats were closer to the “sweet spot”—the optimal place to hit to

The largest-ever survey of physicists from around the world—released today—shows a distinct lack of consensus across many of physics’s most important questions, from the nature of black holes and dark matter, to the still-incomplete unification of Einstein’s theory of gravity with quantum mechanics. Source link

Researchers at The University of Osaka, in collaboration with Ritsumeikan University, have demonstrated that growing europium-doped gallium nitride (Eu-doped GaN) on a semipolar crystal plane dramatically improves red light emission. The team found that this approach selectively promotes the formation of highly efficient Eu luminescent centers, resulting in red emission intensity more than 3.6 times

Matter behaves strangely under extreme conditions, and often, remnants of these behaviors are left behind even when conditions return to normal. The Trinity nuclear test in 1945 left behind such remnants, and now, 80 years after the explosion, researchers have identified another unique example of what happens when various materials are heated to temperatures exceeding