Browse Physics

The quantum jiggling that molecules experience even at the lowest temperatures–motion associated with the uncertainty principle–is not as tiny as researchers assumed and may be detected in the scattering of light through a liquid.

A hydrogen molecule trapped in a carbon cage is restricted to discrete energies of linear and rotational motion, an unusually clean demonstration of the wave nature of molecules.

With an array of water-activated levers, researchers demonstrate the first mechanical medium where waves travel in only one direction.

An experiment showing that an optical fiber recoils as light exits it addresses a century-old controversy over the momentum of light in transparent materials.

The physics community was stunned to learn in the 1950s that some events, unlike billiard ball collisions, follow different rules in their mirror-image versions.

A synthetic nanomotor made of DNA can take a ‘step’ in one direction without moving backward and without any outside control.

Researchers created an ultracold plasma with molecules, rather than atoms, which opens a new window into the dynamics of this strange state of matter.

A pair of vibrating membranes could be cooled to their quantum mechanical ground state using current technology, and they could show a variety of quantum behaviors, according to calculations.

A new technique allows fluorescent particles to be precisely placed in photonic structures–the ‘circuit boards’ for future devices that would process signals using light.

Computer simulations reveal a new type of wave structure that may appear in the banded flows of giant planets, or even Earth’s oceans.

The 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics recognizes the discovery of symmetry breaking in particle physics, which is an essential concept in modern theories of the fundamental forces.

A disk of living tissue forms surprising shapes if its circumference grows faster than its diameter, according to a mathematical analysis.

A surprising negative charge at the center of the neutron arises from an abundance of negatively-charged quarks with very high speeds.

When moved across a surface, some nanoscale metallic islands show frictional resistance, while others do not, adding new support to a theory that attributes friction to trapped impurity atoms.

Researchers measured the interaction between surface plasmons–electron waves on metal surfaces–with excitons, excited states of electrons in semiconductors. Understanding the communication between the two could improve solar cells and speed up electronic and optical devices.

Researchers have shaped the time profile of a single photon. The work may benefit quantum information processing in fields such as quantum cryptography.

Slow-moving nanoparticles hitting a surface bounce away, but surprisingly, fast-moving ones stick. New simulations explain that the sticking occurs because the fast particles absorb the collision energy by transforming their atomic structure.

A large fraction of an antimatter beam can reflect off of a wall made of normal matter instead of annihilating. The surprising effect turns out to follow from standard, textbook physics.

A flash of laser light briefly excites electrons in graphite into a bonding state similar to diamond. Making the conversion complete could lead to new types of nanoscale circuits.

Theorists predict that collisions can briefly create a beryllium nucleus in which neutrons bind two clumps of particles together the way electrons bind atoms into a molecule–in three very different configurations.