Particle accelerator unearths surprises hidden with 2000-year-old mummy
Thanks to a bit of help from a particle accelerator, scientists have discovered an unusual amulet interred with a 2000-year-old mummy. Image: Stuart R Stock
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Category: Physics
The Future of Lasers
There is now a new kind of scientific machine on the horizon: a trimmed down particle accelerator that is small enough to fit on a tabletop. Diminutive they may be, but these table-top accelerators are still bursting with the power and versatility. Image: milkisprotein
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The ocean’s tallest waves are getting taller
The frigid Southern Ocean is well known for its brutal storms, which can sink ships and trigger coastal flooding on distant tropical islands. Now, a new study suggests the biggest waves there—already the world’s largest—are getting bigger, thanks to faster winds attributed to climate change. Image: PacificCove
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It takes 30 seconds for your fingerprint to grip your smartphone
Your fingers take time to engage in full contact with a touchscreen. In some cases, even 30 seconds or more after placing a dry finger on the glass, your skin is still adjusting. This can lead to problems using fingerprints to access phones and getting screens to respond to your touch. Image: chadmiller
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Ultrafast lasers catch electrons relaxing after brief excitement
No one can match these electrons when it comes to relaxing. Within a few hundred attoseconds – billionths of a billionth of a second – of being hit by an X-ray pulse, they are already back where they were, sitting calmly in a low-energy state. Image: Attoelectronics Group, MPQ
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In 1674, a mysterious storm devastated an entire city
It took barely 15 minutes. An intense and powerful – but brief – storm swept across north-west Europe one summer’s evening almost 350 years ago. It left a social and architectural imprint on the city of Utrecht that is felt to this day. Image: josef.stuefer
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What would happen to you if gravity stopped working?
We have all experienced the force of gravity. It is what happens to you when you jump up into the air. Disappointingly for anyone with ambitions to be Supergirl or Superman, we tend to fall right back down to the ground. But what if we could switch gravity off? Image: Charlotte May Godfrey
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Shortest ever pulse of visible light spots photons fleeing atoms
The ultimate high-speed flashbulb just measured how quickly electrons inside atoms respond to light. The work could speed the development of light-based electronics. At 380 attoseconds long – 380 x 10^-18 seconds – the flashes are the shortest pulses of visible light ever created in the lab. Image: Christian Hackenberger/Attoelectronics MPQ
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What is a ray of light made of?
Light is one of those things that we don’t tend to understand. If you were to zoom in on a ray of light, what would you see? Sure, light travels incredibly fast, but what is it that’s doing the travelling? Many of us would struggle to explain. Image: ilovepics11
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If birds in a truck fly, does the truck get lighter?
It’s an urban myth that had US TV show Mythbusters weighing a truck full of pigeons on a scale and getting them to fly. Now it seems there’s some truth to the idea that a truck driver carrying a cargo of birds can lighten the load by making the birds fly. Image: Lentink
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Graphene rival ‘phosphorene’ is born to be a transistor
“Phosphorene” – which has a similar structure to carbon-based graphene but is made of phosphorus atoms – is a natural semiconductor and so may be better at turbocharging the next generation of computers. Image: CORE-Materials
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Whirling dervish skirts are ruled by hurricane physics
If you have ever seen a whirling dervish in action, you may have been mesmerised by the complex three-dimensional patterns these dancers produce with their flowing skirts. It turns out that the patterns are buffeted by the same Coriolis force that produces destructive hurricanes. Image: roboppy
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