MIT chemist Admir Masic really hoped his experiment wouldn’t explode. Masic and his colleagues were trying to re-create an ancient Roman technique for making concrete, a mix of cement, gravel,…
Category: Physics
50 years ago, physicists found the speed of light
A New Figure for the Cosmic Speed Limit – Science News, December 2, 1972 A group at the National Bureau of Standards at Boulder, Colo., now reports an extremely accurate…
Here’s how polar bears might get traction on snow
Tiny “fingers” can help polar bears get a grip. Like the rubbery nubs on the bottom of baby socks, microstructures on the bears’ paw pads offer some extra friction, scientists…
Carlos Argüelles hunts for particles beyond the standard model
If you saw Carlos Argüelles-Delgado’s childhood bedroom — the whiteboard for working out problems, the math textbooks they asked for as birthday gifts — you’d likely not be surprised that…
How ghostly neutrinos could explain the universe’s matter mystery
The answer to one of the greatest mysteries of the universe may come down to one of the smallest, and spookiest, particles. Matter is common in the cosmos. Everything around…
This environmentally friendly quantum sensor runs on sunlight
Quantum tech is going green. A new take on highly sensitive magnetic field sensors ditches the power-hungry lasers that previous devices have relied on to make their measurements and replaces…
50 years ago, physicists got a whiff of what glues together protons
What holds the proton together— Science News, September 16, 1972 An experiment … at the CERN Laboratory in Geneva … gives an important clue to structural arrangements deep within the…
Sea urchin skeletons’ splendid patterns may strengthen their structure
Sea urchin skeletons may owe some of their strength to a common geometric design. Components of the skeletons of common sea urchins (Paracentrotus lividus) follow a similar pattern to that…
Protons contain intrinsic charm quarks, a new study suggests
Protons may be intrinsically charming. The subatomic particles are a mash-up of three lighter particles called quarks: two of the type known as up quarks and one down quark. But…
Physicists spotted rare W boson trios at the Large Hadron Collider
The letters “www” are typically followed by a “dot” — but not in this experiment. Around 270 WWW events, trios of particles called W bosons, appeared in an experiment at…
