It inspired the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics. It’s the best thermal conductor we know of. It’s a crystal stiffer than diamond, but able to stretch by 20% of its length, and can carry a current density one…
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Articles on Physics
Displaying 441 - 455 of 455 articles
String theory entered the public arena in 1988 when a BBC radio series Desperately Seeking Superstrings was broadcast. Thanks to good marketing and its inherently curious name and features, it’s now part…
The “traditional” beauty of theoretical physics is its equations. If we want to describe something, or the way something behaves, we can write down a relation between some properties we think that thing…
For the first time ever, a beam of light has been bent around an object on a two-dimensional metal surface. The light beam…
Welcome to If I had a blank cheque … a series in which leading researchers reveal what they could (and would) do in their discipline if money were no object. Today we hear from Dr Jonathan Carroll, Postdoctoral…
Last week, scientists set a new distance record, seeing a burst of gamma-rays from a star that exploded when the universe was only 520 million years old. The light from this distant source has been travelling…
A decade-long experiment has discovered electrons are “rounder” than expected. The experiment looked at electrons inside…
Economists and physicists may seem like unlikely bedfellows, but then opposites often attract. Their union has recently produced a peculiar baby, a field of research known as “econophysics”. Physicists…
Quantum teleportation has been in the news before but last week Japanese and Australian scientists went one better, managing to teleport every physicist’s favourite feline: Schrödinger’s cat. Before you…
Quantum mechanics (the theory of atoms, quarks and photons) is definitely weird and, thanks to the work I’m doing, it might be getting weirder. Allow me to throw a quantum spanner in the works. In the…
Theoretical physics is full of mysteries and unknowns. In the case of some particles, we can predict their existence even if we can’t find them. Such is the status of the Higgs boson. And yet detecting…
For the public, the jury is still out on nanotechnology – the media simultaneously extols its promise and warns of the potential calamity facing humanity. But what is it? How does it work? Is it dangerous…
There’s nothing like an unexpected result to get physicists excited. So in 2008, when some strange behaviour was detected from a rarely-produced particle known as the “top quark”, there was much interest…
Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) can be called a time machine in one sense: it enables us to examine conditions as they were during the universe’s early stages. But is the 27km-long particle accelerator…
Of all the known particles in our universe, neutrinos are perhaps the most elusive; their origins are mysterious, their purpose unknown and they are notoriously difficult to detect. You’ll already know…
Top contributors
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Associate Professor, Philosophy of Science, The University of Melbourne
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Post Doctoral Research Associate, Centre for the Subatomic Structure of Matter, University of Adelaide
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University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, University of Arizona
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Emeritus Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery, OzGrav, The University of Western Australia
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Physicien, Professeur des Universités, Université Paris-Saclay
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Professor of Astrophysics, University of Sydney
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Professor of Nuclear Physics, Michigan State University
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Professor of Physics, University of Lynchburg
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Senior Lecturer in Physics, University of New England
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Professor & Head, School of Science & Mathematics, Mauritius Institute of Education
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Lecturer, Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, Swinburne University of Technology
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Professor of Quantum Physics and Quantum Technology, University of Sydney
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Professor, University of Sydney
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Lecturer, The University of Queensland
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Honorary senior lecturer, Australian National University
