Physics

Nuclear power of the future is going to need fuel. That has governments, energy companies and nuclear engineers clamoring to get their hands on HALEU: high-assay low-enriched uranium. HALEU (pronounced like “Hey, Lou”) was previously a niche material, used mainly in nuclear reactors conducting scientific research. But now, multiple companies in the United States have […]

Something strange is happening at Earth’s center. Decades of earthquake data show that Earth’s inner core has been rotating slower than its mantle and surface since around 2010, researchers report June 12 in Nature. The study appears to confirm a controversial finding from last year that the inner core may have reversed its rotation relative […]

Black holes can’t be formed from pure light. Quantum physics would curb their creation under any foreseeable conditions, a new study suggests. Typically, matter is responsible for black holes. They’re often formed when a star’s core implodes at the end of its life. But matter isn’t necessarily required to form a black hole. According to […]

Any way you slice it, a paper cut is painful.  Magazines, letters and books harbor a devious potential for minor self-induced agony. But other types of paper — like thin tissue paper or the thicker stuff used for postcards — are less likely to offend. Scientists have now explained the physics behind why some paper […]

The neutrino “fog” is beginning to materialize. Lightweight subatomic particles called neutrinos have begun elbowing their way into the data of experiments not designed to spot them. Two experiments, built to detect particles of dark matter, have caught initial glimpses of neutrinos born in the sun, physicists report. “That’s a triumph,” says neutrino physicist Kate […]

Sometimes science fiction does inspire science research. À la Jurassic Park’s entombed mosquito, scientists have developed a method to store DNA in an amberlike material and still extract it easily hours later. This storage method is cheaper and faster than existing options, the researchers report in the June Journal of the American Chemical Society. If […]

Scientists have just slashed the potential hiding spaces for dark matter particles. The LUX-ZEPLIN, or LZ, experiment has searched for and ruled out the existence of dark matter particles with a wide swath of properties, researchers report August 26 at two conferences. Dark matter is a substance whose influence can be seen on the scale […]

The rotation of the Earth has been measured many times – but never like this. At first, scientists used entangled quantum particles called photons to detect the speed at which the globe spins. The achievement is a step toward investigating one of physics’ greatest mysteries: how the tiny world of quantum physics interacts with gravity. […]

Extreme Climate Survey Scientific news is collecting questions from readers about how to navigate our planet’s changing climate. What do you want to know about extreme heat and how it can lead to extreme weather events? Previous research showed a temporal change in the reflectance of cuprates, compounds containing copper and oxygen, when exposed to […]

To expand the periodic table, it may be time to use titanium. A new study lays the groundwork to expand the periodic table with a search for element 120, which will be done by slamming titanium atoms, or electrically charged ions, into a Californian target. If produced, the new element would have an atomic nucleus […]