Prestigious prize for superconductivity researcher Mikhail Eremets

04-Nov-2019 - The American Physical Society (APS) awards Mikhail Eremets the 2020 James C. McGroddy Prize for New Materials. As recently announced, the researcher from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry receives the honor for his "For pioneering studies of hydrides, a new family of high Tc materials, and ...

A crack in the case for supersolids

Reports of supersolid helium may have been premature

23-Jun-2010 - New experiments are casting doubt on previously reported observations of supersolid helium. In a paper appearing in Physical Review Letters (PRL), John Reppy (Cornell University) presents research suggesting that prior experiments that seemed to show signs of supersolidity were in fact the result ...

Doping graphene

New graphene-based electronics could take a page out of the silicon electronics book

04-Jun-2010 - An organic molecule that has been found to be effective in making silicon-based electronics may be viable for building electronics on sheets of carbon only a single molecule thick. Researchers at the Max Plank Institute for Metals Research in Stuttgart report the advance in a paper appearing ...

Nuclear missing link created at last: Superheavy element 117

Element 117 fills in the final gap in the list of observed elements up to element 118

08-Apr-2010 - A collaboration of Russian and US physicists has finally created element 117 - a superheavy element made of atoms containing 117 protons that is roughly 40% heavier than lead. The achievement fills in the final gap on the list of observed elements up to element 118. The team produced the elusive ...

How to see through opaque materials

Physicsists find a way to see through paint, paper, and other opaque materials

10-Mar-2010 - Materials such as paper, paint, and biological tissue are opaque because the light that passes through them is scattered in complicated and seemingly random ways. A new experiment conducted by researchers at the City of Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution (ESPCI) ...

Super cool atom thermometer

Physicists face the daunting task of developing new, reliable ways of measuring extreme low temperatures

11-Dec-2009 - As physicists strive to cool atoms down to ever more frigid temperatures, they face the daunting task of developing new, reliable ways of measuring these extreme lows. Now a team of physicists has devised a thermometer that can potentially measure temperatures as low as tens of trillionths of a ...

Growing geodesic carbon nanodomes

Tiny carbon islands bubble up at the center to form nanoscopic geodesic domes

12-Oct-2009 - Researchers analyzing the assembly of graphene (sheets of carbon only one atom thick) on a surface of iridium have found that the sheets grow by first forming tiny carbon domes. The discovery offers new insight into the growth of graphene layers and points the way to possible methods for ...

Molecules on a string, and why size isn't the only thing that matters for data storage

Physicists get a grip on slippery molecules, and learn how the shape of nanoscopic magnetic islands affect data storage

16-Sep-2009 - Molecules of hydrogen are difficult to steer with electric fields because of the symmetrical way that charges are distributed within them. But now researchers at ETH Zurich have found a clever technique to get a grip on the molecules. Their findings are reported in Physical Review Letters and ...

Exploring the standard model of physics without the high-energy collider

12-Aug-2009 - Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the US, have performed sophisticated laser measurements to detect the subtle effects of one of nature's most elusive forces - the "weak interaction". Their work, which reveals the largest effect of ...

On the path to metallic hydrogen

04-Aug-2009 - Hydrogen, the most common element in the universe, is normally an insulating gas, but at high pressures it may turn into a superconductor. Now, scientists at the Carnegie Institution in Washington D.C., US, have discovered a hydrogen-based compound that could be helpful in the search for metallic ...