Theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg said, "not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think." That could very well be true, but that doesn't mean some very smart men and women will stop seeking answers as to how the Universe behaves. Here is where we try to make sense of their discoveries.
A five-year experiment is underway in central Italy to determine whether the decay of heavy neutrinos shortly after the Big Bang can explain why the universe is composed mostly of matter and very little antimatter.
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Some theories suggest there could be many more dimensions that we’re unaware of, mostly because they’re imperceptibly tiny. Now researchers have taken the search for extra dimensions down to the nanoscale, using a neutron beam to study gravitational forces more precisely than ever before.
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Researchers have broken the efficiency record for nuclear fusion on the micro-scale. Using an ultra-fast, high-powered laser, the results were about 500 times more efficient than previous experiments. The researchers blasted arrays of nanowires to create incredibly hot, dense plasmas.
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Ball lightning has been consistently reported for centuries, and yet we still know very little about it. Now, scientists have created quantum ball lightning by knotting together the magnetic spins of atoms, which could help unlock the secrets of the phenomenon, or make more stable fusion reactors.
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As tiny as they are, there's a relatively large amount of empty space inside an atom. Now, scientists from Austria and the US have filled in some of those gaps, creating a new state of matter in the form of "giant atoms" filled with other atoms.
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Antimatter is tricky to store and study, since it will vanish in a burst of energy if it touches regular matter. How can you transport something that will annihilate any physical container you place it in? Now, CERN researchers are planning to trap and truck antimatter from one facility to another.
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Humanity has been on the trail of the elusive and mysterious Majorana fermion since it was first theorized in 1937. Now, researchers think they have manufactured a topological superconductor capable of hosting the particle. If so, this could be an important step towards quantum computing.
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Few natural light shows come more spectacular than the legendary Northern Lights. For the first time, scientists in Japan have now directly observed its inner mechanics, confirming once and for all a long-held hypothesis and furthering our understanding of one of the world's great natural wonders.
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Photons, the elementary particles that make up light, are fast, weightless and don't interact with each other. But in new experiments, physicists have now created a new form of light, demonstrating that groups of photons can be made to interact with each other, slow down and gain mass.
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Levitation usually only works with particles or tiny objects, but scientists from the University of Bristol have developed a new “acoustic tractor beam” that can trap larger objects, possibly paving the way for contactless production lines or even human levitation.
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