A truck full of antimatter would make for a seriously epic road trip. And scientists are now one step closer to transporting the substance in vehicles. Scientists at the European laboratory CERN have demonstrated the ability to transport a cloud of subatomic particles on board a truck, using protons as a support for their antimatter … Read more
At the age of 12, Tracy Slatyer felt sorry for a book. She read a newspaper article about how many people were buying A brief history of time by Stephen Hawking. “But then … nobody was reading it,” she says. “People were just leaving it on their coffee tables.” Determined to right this wrong, Slayer … Read more
Imagine Victorian London, but its skies are filled with airplanes. Steam robots crowd the streets, mingling with people in hats and cloaks. This kind of retrofuturistic mash-up is the fantasy realm of steampunk, a genre of literature, film, and other creative media. Theoretical physicist Nicole Yunger Halpern sees her specialty, the field of quantum thermodynamics, … Read more
Electric vehicles promise to help us move away from fossil fuels, but they present a new problem: how to get enough lithium that EV batteries require (SN: 5/7/19). Materials scientist Chong Liu of the University of Chicago has some ideas. Existing technology can only extract lithium from sources with highly concentrated ions, such as solid … Read more
As artificial intelligence explodes in popularity, two of its pioneers have received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. The award goes to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton “for fundamental discoveries and inventions enabling machine learning with artificial neural networks,” the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm announced on Oct. 8. These computational tools, which … Read more
Stitching is getting a shocking upgrade. In an experiment with mice, a new strong and flexible thread accelerated wound healing by converting muscle movement into electrical energy, researchers report Oct. 8. Nature Communications. If the material is eventually deemed safe for use in humans, it “could change the way we treat injuries,” says materials scientist … Read more
Cancer-destroying particle beams have been caught red-handed. Particle beams can deliver a burst of destructive energy directly to tumors – assuming the beam is in the right place. Now, using a radioactive beam, scientists have determined the location of the beam while treating tumors in mice. It is the first successful treatment of tumors with … Read more
A hypothetical “fifth force” could attract asteroids, if it exists. But asteroid Bennu shows no signs that its orbit has been altered by such a force. This puts a ceiling on how strong a possible fifth force could be, physicists report Sept. 20 Physics of communications. Scientists know of four forces in the universe: electromagnetism, … Read more