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Charlie Wood

Staff Writer

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An illustration of Isaa Newton looking at a pair of falling apples.a
quantum gravity

How Gravity Is a Double Copy of Other Forces

By Charlie Wood
May 4, 2021
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An enigmatic connection between the forces of nature is allowing physicists to explore gravity’s quantum side.

Graphic of swirling vortex-like patterns called skyrmions.
condensed matter physics

A New Twist Reveals Superconductivity’s Secrets

By Charlie Wood
March 16, 2021
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An unexpected superconductor was beginning to look like a fluke, but a new theory and a second discovery have revealed that emergent quasiparticles may be behind the effect.

A house of cards propped up by a letter i, the unit of imaginary numbers.
quantum physics

Imaginary Numbers May Be Essential for Describing Reality

By Charlie Wood
March 3, 2021
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A new thought experiment indicates that quantum mechanics doesn’t work without strange numbers that turn negative when squared.

Close-up photograph of a soap bubble with a spot on it that looks as though it must have come from a collision.
Abstractions blog

Physicists Study How Universes Might Bubble Up and Collide

By Charlie Wood
January 25, 2021
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Since they can’t prod actual universes as they inflate and bump into each other in the hypothetical multiverse, physicists are studying digital and physical analogs of the process.

The Milky Way galaxy shown in X-rays.
Abstractions blog

Galaxy-Size Bubbles Discovered Towering Over the Milky Way

By Charlie Wood
January 6, 2021
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For decades, astronomers debated whether a particular smudge was close-by and small, or distant and huge. A new X-ray map supports the massive option.

A computer simulation of two galaxies colliding.
astrophysics

The New History of the Milky Way

By Charlie Wood
December 15, 2020
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Over the past two years, astronomers have rewritten the story of our galaxy.

Infographic showing the ranges of possible masses of WIMPs, axions, ultralight dark matter, sub-GeV dark matter and primordial black holes, which are five different candidates for dark matter.
Abstractions blog

The Search for Dark Matter Is Dramatically Expanding

By Charlie Wood
November 23, 2020
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Physicists plan to leave no stone unturned, checking whether dark matter tickles different types of detectors, nudges starlight, warms planetary cores or even lodges in rocks.

A pair of diamonds press from opposite directions against a black metal gasket containing a hydrogen-carbon-sulfur compound.
Abstractions blog

Room-Temperature Superconductivity Claim Falls Apart [Update]

By Charlie Wood
October 14, 2020
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In 2020, researchers reported that they had created a room-temperature superconductor. That paper has now been retracted.

water molecules, droplets and a wave
Abstractions blog

How Mathematical ‘Hocus-Pocus’ Saved Particle Physics

By Charlie Wood
September 17, 2020
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Renormalization has become perhaps the single most important advance in theoretical physics in 50 years.


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