materials science

Has physics reached the limits of what we can discover — or are the possibilities only just beginning?

Researchers have shown how to effectively transform one material into another using a finely shaped laser pulse.

Push or crush a new class of materials, and they’ll undergo record-breaking temperature changes.

Sometimes a mirror that reflects 99.9999% of light isn’t good enough.

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.”

Mathematicians have studied knots for centuries, but a new material is showing why some knots are better than others.

While studying materials made from DNA-coated nanoparticles, researchers found a new form of this matter: lattices in which smaller particles roam like electrons in metallic bonds.

Answering these simple questions can give you an intuitive feel for the geometric properties behind the emergence of superconductivity in rotated graphene sheets.

By studying a swarm of flying midges as though it were a fluid, physicists have learned how collective behaviors might stabilize a group against environmental disruptions.