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condensed matter physics

Latest Articles

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.

materials science

The Shape-Shifting Squeeze Coolers

By Marcus Woo
August 24, 2020
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Push or crush a new class of materials, and they’ll undergo record-breaking temperature changes.

A glass object being shaped by a blowtorch.]
Abstractions blog

Why Is Glass Rigid? Signs of Its Secret Structure Emerge.

By John Pavlus
July 7, 2020
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At the molecular level, glass looks like a liquid. But an artificial neural network has picked up on hidden structure in its molecules that may explain why glass is rigid like a solid.

Gif of a grid of arrows whose directions flip up and down.
Abstractions blog

The Cartoon Picture of Magnets That Has Transformed Science

By Charlie Wood
June 24, 2020
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One hundred years after it was proposed, the Ising model is used to understand everything from magnets to brains.

A quantum knot.
Abstractions blog

‘Milestone’ Evidence for Anyons, a Third Kingdom of Particles

By Dana Najjar
May 12, 2020
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Anyons don’t fit into either of the two known particle kingdoms. To find them, physicists had to erase the third dimension.

Image of LIGO’s mirror.
Abstractions blog

To Make the Perfect Mirror, Physicists Confront the Mystery of Glass

By Natalie Wolchover
April 2, 2020
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Sometimes a mirror that reflects 99.9999% of light isn’t good enough.

A close-up of fossilized amber.
materials science

Ideal Glass Would Explain Why Glass Exists at All

By Natalie Wolchover
March 11, 2020
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Glass is anything that’s rigid like a crystal, yet made of disordered molecules like a liquid. To understand why it exists, researchers are attempting to create the perfect, still-hypothetical “ideal glass.”

Q&A

The Man Making Rwanda Into a Hub for Physics

By Thomas Lewton
March 3, 2020
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As the founding director of a new institute for fundamental research in Rwanda, the physicist Omololu Akin-Ojo hopes to stem the brain drain of Africa’s brightest minds.

Six looping videos of different types of snowflakes and snow crystals growing.
crystals

Toward a Grand Unified Theory of Snowflakes

By Rebecca Boyle
December 19, 2019
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Snow crystals come in two main types. The “pope” of snowflake physics has a new theory that explains why.


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