Browse Physics

Oil droplets zip around the bottom of a petri dish powered by their attraction to surfactant molecules and can cover the same ground many times.

Researchers have directly imaged lead atoms as they rearrange and undergo a phase transition.

A neutron star may have formed quietly from a white dwarf, rather than from a supernova, as the standard theory predicts.

Charles Townes’ pair of papers on the first maser in 1954 and 1955 laid the foundation for the laser era.

A new technique could dramatically improve the resolution of ordinary light microscopes.

A new scheme has captured more antimatter than ever before.

A hybrid state of matter that includes both superfluid and normal fluid should be stable, according to new calculations. The theory predicting the state was controversial.

The furniture in a cluttered room allows two wireless signals to be transmitted simultaneously to different locations using the same frequency.

Working like a ratchet, a tube-shaped protein can nudge a small molecule “uphill,” chemically speaking.

Colorful soap films confirm an old theory on mixing in a turbulent fluid.

An unusual material shrinks as it gets hotter because of complex vibrations in its crystal structure.

Researchers have measured the energy required for two membranes to fuse–the process that occurs when a virus attacks a cell.

Imaging of single molecules on cell surfaces might be possible, thanks to two new fluorescence microscopes.

Two billion years ago, a naturally occurring nuclear reactor cycled on and off every 3 hours, according to clues from xenon isotopes.

The Physical Review delayed publishing the 1941 discovery of plutonium–which was used in an atomic bomb–until 1946 because of wartime security concerns.

When following a moving object, humans appear to anticipate the object’s motion in the way that best allows for unexpected speed changes.

The theorists who explained how quarks could be loosely bound yet inseparable won the 2004 physics Nobel Prize.

Computer simulations and experiments show that a ball can rebound from a surface with more vertical speed than it had initially.

New calculations show how the four dimensions we take for granted emerge from the “quantum foam” of spacetime.

A new technique images the electron clouds in small molecules.