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materials science

Latest Articles

Video artwork showing yellow blobs move, merge, split, shrink and enlarge inside a clear cube.
molecular biology

A Newfound Source of Cellular Order in the Chemistry of Life

By Viviane Callier
January 7, 2021
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Inside cells, droplets of biomolecules called condensates merge, divide and dissolve. Their dance may regulate vital processes.

Illustration showing orange building blocks outside a doorway that opens onto blue towers made up of similar building blocks.
Quantized Columns

Contemplating the End of Physics

By Robbert Dijkgraaf
November 24, 2020
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Has physics reached the limits of what we can discover — or are the possibilities only just beginning?

Illustration of gold unicorn
optics

Alchemy Arrives in a Burst of Light

By Philip Ball
September 30, 2020
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Researchers have shown how to effectively transform one material into another using a finely shaped laser pulse.

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.

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.”

Photo of a complicated knot.
Abstractions blog

Color-Changing Material Unites the Math and Physics of Knots

By Devin Powell
February 10, 2020
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Mathematicians have studied knots for centuries, but a new material is showing why some knots are better than others.

A view of nanoparticles in a crystalline pattern.
Abstractions blog

Strange Metal-like Bonds Discovered in Customized Crystals

By Erika K. Carlson
September 3, 2019
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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.

Insights puzzle

Solution: Magic Moiré in Twisted Graphene

By Pradeep Mutalik
July 26, 2019
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Answering these simple questions can give you an intuitive feel for the geometric properties behind the emergence of superconductivity in rotated graphene sheets.


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