‘The Particle at the End of the Universe’ Gets Real
Caltech physicist Sean Carroll makes the search for the Higgs boson a scientific detective story. At heart is the mystery of the universe.
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5 Charts About Climate Change That Should Have You Very, Very Worried
Two major organizations released climate change reports this month warning of doom and gloom if we stick to our current course and fail to take more aggressive measures. A World Bank report imagines a world 4 degrees warmer, the temperature predicted by century’s end barring changes, and says it aims to shock people into action…
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Atom Smasher Creates New Kind of Matter
Collisions between particles inside the Large Hadron Collider atom smasher have created what looks like a new form of matter. The new kind of matter is called color-glass condensate, and is a liquidlike wave of gluons, which are elementary particles related to the strong force that sticks quarks together inside protons and neutrons. Scientists didn’t…
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Scientists See Promise in Deep-Learning Programs
Using an artificial intelligence technique inspired by theories about how the brain recognizes patterns, technology companies are reporting startling gains in fields as diverse as computer vision, speech recognition and the identification of promising new molecules for designing drugs. The advances have led to widespread enthusiasm among researchers who design software to perform human activities…
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Quantum Code Sent on Common Fibre
The “uncrackable codes” made by exploiting the branch of physics called quantum mechanics have been sent down kilometres of standard broadband fibre. This “quantum key distribution” has until now needed a dedicated fibre separate from that used to carry data. The technique, reported in Physical Review X, shows how to unpick normal data streams from…
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Simulation: Quantum Leaps
Fully fledged quantum computers are still a long way off. But devices that can simulate quantum systems are proving uniquely useful.
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Wiley and TED to Offer Educational Content, Promote Big Ideas
John Wiley has reached an agreement with TED, the nonprofit specializing in spreading discussions on technology, entertainment, design and other subjects, to produce instructional material for TED Studies, 21 collections of curated discussions aimed at the school market and organized under academic subject categories. The Wiley/TED instructional content will be offered for free along with…
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A Match Made in Cyberspace: How Networks Nurture Science
With the growth of online science networks, geography and economics no longer dictate how research is undertaken or published. Just as matchmaking sites connect romance-seekers based on their relationship compatibility, new academic social networks are connecting scientists based on their professional research interests. These sites obviously lack the general appeal of Facebook, which topped one…
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Quantum ‘Kisses’ Change the Color of Air
The movement of electrons across tiny distances between metals has the power to change the colour of the gap. Nanophotonics researchers discovered that spaces smaller than a nanometre between metals undergo observable colour changes thanks to the movement of electrons in the surrounding area — meaning the scientists could see quantum mechanical processes in action….
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A New Order in the Quantum World
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,…