Physicists get a first glimpse of the elusive isotope nitrogen-9
The atom’s nucleus has a lopsided count of seven protons but just two neutrons
Biophysicists Uncover Powerful Symmetries in Living Tissue
After identifying interlocking symmetries in mammalian cells, scientists can describe some tissues as liquid crystals — an observation that lays the groundwork for a fluid-dynamic theory of how tissues move
This mathematician is making sense of nature’s complexity
Hungarian scholar Gábor Domokos aims to understand the physical world by describing its forms in the simplest possible geometry
Clara Sousa-Silva seeks molecular signatures of life in alien atmospheres
The quantum astrochemist’s work offers clues to what distant objects are made of
Scientists finally detected oxygen-28. Its instability surprised them
Something may be missing from current theories about the strong nuclear force
Scientists Find a New Spin on Winning the ‘Bottle Flip’ Challenge
In experiments involving bouncy balls, plastic bottles and a high-speed camera, researchers in Chile discovered that it’s possible to control the height of a container’s bounce by swirling the water inside.
Spiral galaxies might have been lentil-shaped before becoming starry whirls
A new look at lenticular galaxies suggests a tweak to galaxy evolution theory
A rain of electrons causes Mercury’s X-ray auroras
The discovery hints that auroras on all planets except Neptune have a common explanationr
The Simple Geometry That Predicts Molecular Mosaics
By treating molecules as geometric tessellations, scientists devised a new way to forecast how 2D materials might self-assemble.
This Quantum Fluid Freezes When Heated
Physicists finally understand why heating a supercold quantum fluid freezes it into a solid
Bizarre Quantum Tunneling Observation Throws Out All the Rules
The strange phenomenon of quantum tunneling has been observed in a chemical reaction that defies classical physics