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materials science

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Photo of the blue-winged leafbird of Southeast Asia.
explainers

How Animals Color Themselves With Nanoscale Structures

By Viviane Callier
June 16, 2021
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Animals sculpt the optical properties of their tissues at the nanoscale to give themselves “structural colors.” New work is piecing together how they do it.

Q&A

The Materials Scientist Who Studies the Innards of Exoplanets

By Adam Mann
June 15, 2021
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Federica Coppari uses the world’s most powerful laser to recreate the cores of distant worlds.

Orange hills (polaritons) against a black background. Below each hill, an arrow points to an angular position on a circle.
explainers

The Near-Magical Mystery of Quasiparticles

By Thomas Lewton
March 24, 2021
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The zoo of spontaneously emerging particlelike entities known as quasiparticles has grown quickly and become more and more exotic. Here are a few of the most curious and potentially useful examples.

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.

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.


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