Both high-valued diamond and low-prized graphite consist of exactly the same carbon atoms. The subtle but nevertheless important difference between the two materials is the geometrical configuration of their building blocks, with large consequences for their properties. There is no way any kind of material could be diamond and graphite at the same time. However,…
A research team led by the University of Vienna has developed a new method for entangling single photons that gyrate in opposite directions. This is the first step towards entangling and twisting even macroscopic, spatially separated objects in two different directions, according to the team. The findings of this study have been published in the…
NASA’s Curiosity rover has gulped in Martian air but failed to find methane – a gas linked to living things. But it has turned up signs that Mars may have lost much of its original atmosphere. Since landing on the Red Planet’s surface Aug. 5, the Mars Science Laboratory rover has zapped rocks with its…
Until this week climate change was sadly absent from the presidential election discourse, even though scientific reports have linked the increasingly extreme events experienced recently in the US and elsewhere – the drought and heatwaves, deluges and blizzards that some call “weather weirding” – to systemic change rather than coincidental natural fluctuations. Sandy has forced…
If we want to find intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, it might be wise to look for stars with asteroid belts similar the one in our own Solar System. According to the theory of punctuated equilibrium, evolution goes faster and further when life has to make rapid changes to survive new environments — and…
Stanford University scientists have built the first solar cell made entirely of carbon, a promising alternative to the expensive materials used in photovoltaic devices today. “Carbon has the potential to deliver high performance at a low cost,” said Zhenan Bao, senior author of the study, which was published online in the journal ACS Nano. “To the best of our…
We’ve had two once-in-a-century storms within a decade. Hurricane Sandy seems likely to become the second-costliest storm in U.S. history, behind Hurricane Katrina. Lower Manhattan is struggling to recover from an unprecedented flood, and the New Jersey coast is smashed beyond recognition. Will we finally get the message? How, at this point, can anyone deny…
Light from the very first stars in the universe has been measured – and there is less of it than previously thought. The discovery should help us better understand how the hot haze of hydrogen that existed shortly after the big bang transformed into the complex web of stars and galaxies we see today. Although…
Astronomers have measured the background light from all the stars in the cosmos and inferred the number of stars created since the dawn of the universe, Using observations from NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, scientists discovered emissions from distant blazars – gamma ray-emitting supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. As matter falls into…
Amir D. Aczel blogs about physics and cosmology for Discover’s Crux: If somebody told you that there are angels floating in space, observing our world and forming their impressions of our everyday reality, you would think that this person is nuts—a religious fanatic with an active imagination, and certainly not a scientist. Scientists, as we…