Experimental physics

Decades after a Tanzanian teenager initiated study of the “Mpemba effect,” the effort to confirm or refute it is leading physicists toward new theories about how substances relax to equilibrium.

Physicists are building neural networks out of vibrations, voltages and lasers, arguing that the future of computing lies in exploiting the universe’s complex physical behaviors.

Throwing out data seems to make measurements of distances and angles more precise. The reason why has been traced to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

A new analysis of W bosons suggests these particles are significantly heavier than predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics.

Thanks to the power of fluctuation relations, physicists are taking the second law of thermodynamics to settings once thought impossible.

Physicists are devising clever new ways to exploit the extreme sensitivity of gravitational wave detectors like LIGO. But so far, they’ve seen no signs of exotica.

An experiment conducted on hybrid matter-antimatter atoms has defied researchers’ expectations.

The strong force holds protons and neutrons together, but the theory behind it is largely inscrutable. Two new approaches show how it works.

In the 1960s, drillers noticed that certain fluids would firm up if they flowed too fast. Researchers have finally explained why.