Physics

Credit: Brian J. Tromp A new discovery about how cutting onions ejects pungent aerosols up to two-thirds of a meter into the air has led to practical advice for reducing the spray: Cut onions slowly with a sharpened blade or coat an onion in oil before cutting. Past research had already identified that a chemical […]

The new physics Nobel laureates laid the groundwork for the development of superconducting quantum bits, such as those used in Google’s Sycamore processor. The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to three scientists on Tuesday for discovering that a bizarre barrier-defying phenomenon in the quantum realm could be observed on an electrical circuit in our

Jouni Ruotsalainen. Credit: University of Jyväskylä Neutrinos are very common fundamental particles included in the Standard Model of particle physics. Measuring their properties allows for creating more accurate models of the birth of the universe, the life of stars and the interactions between fundamental particles. Some of the open questions include the absolute mass of

Credit: Yunxuan Wei at USC. A team of researchers at the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering has created a new breakthrough in photonics: the design of the first optical device that follows the emerging framework of optical thermodynamics. The work, reported in Nature Photonics, introduces a fundamentally new way of routing light

From left, Chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics Chair Olle Eriksson, Secretary General of the Swedish Academy of Sciences Hans Ellegren and Member of the Nobel Committee for Physics Goran Johansson announce John Clarke, Michel H Devoret and John M. Martinis, on screen behind, as the recipients the Nobel Prize in Physics, at the

A Nobel Prize medal is displayed before a ceremony at the Swedish Ambassador’s Residence in London, Monday, Dec. 6, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Matt Dunham, File Nobel Prize in Physics will be announced Tuesday, the second award to be revealed this year by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm a day after a trio

3D plots of the temperature field’s evolution over time and space in natural Si crystals at (a) 300, (b) 200, (c) 100, (d) 50, and (e) 30 K. The evolution of T ( x , t ) is solved using Eq. (17), with the Z ( t ) from Fig. 1 as input. (f) Snapshots

Single-molecule control of F 1 as a model system of ATP synthase. (a) We externally rotate F 1 derived from thermophilic Bacillus PS3 [6] by applying torque on the probe attached to its γ shaft. We observe the rotation by video microscopy at 4 kHz. Inset: F o F 1 -ATP synthase. (b) We realize

Virtual particles can help explain how black holes act. Credit: SXS, CC BY-ND A clever mathematical tool known as virtual particles unlocks the strange and mysterious inner workings of subatomic particles. What happens to these particles within atoms would stay unexplained without this tool. The calculations using virtual particles predict the bizarre behavior of subatomic

Photo of the strontium optical lattice clock in JILA. Credit: Kyungtae Kim. Optical lattice clocks are emerging timekeeping devices based on tens of thousands of ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice (i.e., a grid of laser light). By oscillating between two distinct quantum states at a particular frequency, these atoms could help to measure