Recent Articles
Meetings: WIMP Alternatives Come Out of the Shadows
At an annual physics meeting in the Alps, WIMPs appeared to lose their foothold as the favored dark matter candidate, making room for a slew of new ideas. Read More »
Focus: Fluid Interactions Help Fish in a School Swim Faster
Simulations of fish schools that include fluid dynamics in addition to the usual coordination of individuals lead to faster swimmers and reveal a new collective swimming mode. Read More »
Q&A: Looking for Failure
Karen Daniels explains how force maps in granular materials could be used to design materials that fail in predictable ways. Read More »
Synopsis: Fitting a Bose-Einstein Condensate inside an Atom
A giant Rydberg atom enveloping thousands of ordinary atoms could be used to study ion-atom interactions at ultralow temperatures. Read More »
Synopsis: Neutron Decay May Hint at Dark Matter
The occasional decay of neutrons into dark matter particles could solve a long-standing discrepancy in neutron decay experiments. Read More »
Synopsis: Revised Prediction for Mercury’s Orbit
Mercury’s orbital ellipse is predicted to shift an additional every two billion years as a result of previously unaccounted for effects of general relativity. Read More »
Viewpoint: Crystal Defects Mimic Elusive Fractons
A newly discovered duality shows that crystalline defects exhibit the behavior of exotic theoretical particles known as fractons. Read More »
Focus: Video—Roach-like Robots Act Collectively
A collection of simple, self-propelled robots in a flexible and mobile corral can pull the whole group through a narrow space between walls. Read More »
Arts & Culture: Materials as Musical Muses
A physicist uses music to explore large datasets of material properties and, in turn, uses materials data to inspire creative musical compositions. Read More »
