Category Physics

Acoustic waveguide channels phonons into the optomechanical cavity, enabling the group to manipulate the motion of the suspended nanoscale beam directly. Credit: K. Balram/K. Srinivasan/NIST

A system based on this design could move and store information in next-generation computers. While Moore’s Law, the idea that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit will double every 2 years, has proven remarkably resilient, engineers will soon begin to encounter fundamental limits. As transistors shrink, heat and other factors will begin to have magnified effects in circuits. So researchers are considering designs in which electronic components interface with other physical systems that carry information such as light and sound...

Crystal structures of the competing phases.

The quantum behaviour of hydrogen affects the structural properties of hydrogen-rich compounds, which are possible candidates for the elusive room temperature superconductor. New theoretical results suggest that the quantum nature of hydrogen – meaning that it can behave like a particle or a wave — strongly affects the recently discovered hydrogen sulphur superconductor, a compound that when subjected to extremely high pressure, is the highest-temperature superconductor yet identified...

The STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider tracks thousands of particles produced in collisions of heavy ions such as gold, as shown in the colorful particle tracks on the right-hand side of the image. In collisions of polarized protons at RHIC, STAR is also seeing hints of an effect of a different kind of color — the “color” charges of the quarks that make up the colliding protons. Credit: Brookhaven National Laboratory

The proton sounds like a simple object, but it’s not. Inside, there’s a teeming microcosm of quarks and gluons with properties such as spin and “color” charge that contribute to the particle’s seemingly simplistic role as a building block of visible matter...

Afsaneh Rabiei examines a sample of metal foam. A new study by Rabiei finds that novel light-weight composite metal foams are significantly more effective at insulating against high heat than the conventional base metals and alloys that they’re made of, such as steel. The finding means the CMF is especially promising for use in storing and transporting nuclear material, hazardous materials, explosives and other heat-sensitive materials, as well as for space exploration. Credit: North Carolina State University

Novel light-weight composite metal foams are more effective at insulating against high heat than the conventional base metals and alloys that they’re made of, such as steel...