All Stories by Emily Conover
- Physics
Heat makes water evaporate. Now it appears light can, too
In the lab, shining light on water made it evaporate faster. This never-before-seen effect, if real, might be happening naturally all around us.
- Physics
A new tool shows tiny changes in the ’24-hour’ length of a day
An underground instrument known as ‘G’ uses laser beams to measure Earth’s rotation — a gauge of day length — with extreme precision.
- Math
A twisty mystery about Möbius strips has been solved at last
Turning to paper and scissors helped one mathematician finally figure out just how short the twisted loops can be.
- Physics
Efforts to create ultrafast light pulses win 2023 physics Nobel
Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier won the prize for creating light bursts that last billionths of a billionth of a second.
- Space
Newfound gravitational waves may be from the biggest black holes in the universe
Observations of dead stars hint that ripples in spacetime — ripples light-years long — roll through our universe.
- Plants
A single particle of light can kick off photosynthesis
In a new experiment with bacteria, a lone photon sparked the process of turning light to chemical energy.
- Math
An ‘einstein’ shape eluded mathematicians for 50 years. Now they found one
The shapes can form an infinite tiled pattern that never repeats. The first is a 13-sided shape nicknamed “the hat.”
- Physics
Shouting into the wind may seem futile — but it’s really not
Sending a sound upwind, against the flow of air, actually makes the sound louder — only it doesn’t sound that way to the person making the noise.
- Materials Science
Laser light transformed plastic into tiny diamonds
The technique could be used to make nanodiamonds for quantum devices and other technology.
- Physics
Scientists used lasers to make ‘smoke rings’ of light
Physicists had a bright idea: Make light into swirling, ring-shaped vortices, similar to smoke rings or bubble rings.
- Physics
When dominoes fall, how fast the row topples depends on friction
Two types of friction help determine how quickly a line of dominoes collapses, computer modeling shows.
- Computing
A new supercomputer just set a world record for speed
Able to perform more than a quintillion calculations per second, it will allow scientists to study exploding stars, subatomic particles and more.
