Physics
Scientists made clocks from an atomic nucleus
These super high-tech timepieces use the chemical element thorium to keep time. And as the clocks improve, they could help solve some mysteries in physics.
Physics
More Stories in Physics
- Animals
Analyze This: How sea slugs get their flashy colors
Crystals beneath the skin of nudibranchs, also called sea slugs, allow the creatures to make an array of intense hues with just one material.
- Physics
Physics explains why gold doesn’t ‘rust’
Metals like copper tarnish when they react with oxygen in the air. Gold doesn’t, thanks to a quick rearrangement of atoms on its surface.
- Space
Scientists Say: Event horizon
Past this boundary, nothing that enters a black hole can ever leave — not even light.
- Physics
Trying to break a photon would create a quantum mess
Attempting to cut a light particle in half would spawn up to infinite new photons, a new model shows.
- Archaeology
Mystery solved: Why earthquakes haven’t wrecked Egypt’s Great Pyramid
Its materials, shape and internal design have helped this ancient wonder withstand strong shaking.
- Chemistry
Tabletop lightning helps make an alcohol used for fuels and more
Methanol is used in plastics, paints and as a race car fuel. It’s been hard to make. But engineers have found a simple trick: Add lightning to methane.
- Materials Science
Scientists Say: Metal-Organic Framework
Special pockets in these molecular structures make them useful in medicine, climate science and more.
- Space
The lives of black holes, from birth to death
After more than a century, scientists are just beginning to understand black holes — the most bizarre and powerful things in the universe.
- Physics
Exploding black holes could solve a big cosmic mystery
Tiny black holes in the early universe could explain why matter is common and antimatter is not.
