A team of physicists recently found that an atomic nucleus can hold many more neutrons than what was previously considered possible. In experiments conducted earlier this year, researchers created and detected one new ultra-heavy isotope of magnesium – magnesium-40 – ...
Speeding Up Atomic-Level Microscopy
Scientists from Cornell and Boston Universities, headed by Keith Schwab, Associate Professor of Physics at Cornell University, have developed a new scanning tunneling microscope (STM). The microscope’s design is based on an existing technique, which is used in a novel ...
2007 Nobel Prize in Physics
The 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the discovery of a revolutionary quantum mechanical effect that is used to store and retrieve data on hard disk drives in a way not possible before. The prize will be divided ...
Mini-Mag Orion Will Reach for the Stars
Andrews Space & Technology (AS&T) introduced an innovative propulsion system that could significantly shorten round trips from Earth to Mars (from two years to only six months!) and enable our spaceships to reach Jupiter after one year of space traveling. ...
What is a quantum computer?
In quantum computation we use quantum physics to compute. The use of physics in computation raises some deep philosophical problems concerning the relation of math to physics. It concerns the definition of the term ‘computer’ as a physical object. We ...
2006 in Science, Medicine, and Space
From discovering extrasolar planets to revealing new insights into the workings of life-threatening diseases such as cancer, AIDS, and Alzheimers, 2006 was a year full of scientific innovation. In this article, TFOT returns to a few of the most interesting ...
World’s Largest Superconducting Magnet
The Barrel Toroid superconducting magnet is part of the ATLAS detector, one of the four big particle experiments on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), currently under construction at the CERN Laboratory in Switzerland. Among the questions ATLAS will focus on ...
2006 Nobel Prize in Physics
Nobel Prize in Physics – According to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the 2006 Nobel in Physics will be awarded to John C. Mather of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (on the left) and George F. Smoot of ...