Agriculture’s impact on soil erosion goes back earlier than thought
Tropical rivers carry large amounts of eroded soils into the sea every year. Credit: Johanna Ciella, CC BY-SA…
Luis Walter Alvarez’s eclectic career
Luis Walter Alvarez’s career was marked by two explosions. The first was one the physicist enabled: a plutonium…
What happens when you cross the point of no return?
Black holes form when massive stars exhaust their nuclear fuel and collapse under their own gravity. This collapse…
Energy-efficient ultracompact laser reduces light loss in all directions
The chip with the hexagon-shaped laser cavities. Credit: NTU Singapore An international team of scientists led by Nanyang…
The cosmic giant that shouldn’t exist — 66-billion-sun monster breaks the rules
To a lot of enthusiasts, the figure 66 billion might seem out of reach, but for seasoned astronomers,…
Swimming sperm appear to break Newtonian laws of physics
Human sperm are famously good swimmers, yet the physics of their motion has puzzled scientists for decades. Thick…
Misunderstood “photophoresis” effect could loft metal sheets to exosphere
Light and lifting The researchers then built a few sheets of nanocardboard to test the output of their…
Universality in quantum critical flow of charge and heat in ultraclean graphene
Levitov, L. & Falkovich, G. Electron viscosity, current vortices and negative nonlocal resistance in graphene. Nat. Phys. 12,…
The man behind famous quantum physics experiment
The famous cat experiment in 1935 of the Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger became one of the most iconic…
Using Sound to Remember Quantum Information
While conventional computers store information in the form of bits, fundamental pieces of logic that take a value…