Electrons

Princeton physicists have accidentally discovered an unexpected quantum behavior in an insulator that was thought to be unique to metals. The find suggests a brand new type of quantum particle, which the team calls a neutral fermion.

Superconductors – materials in which electricity flows without any resistance whatsoever – could be extremely useful. For the first time ever, engineers have created a superconductor out of a state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC).

Researchers have for the first time managed to use electricity to switch on magnetism in a material that’s normally non-magnetic. This could be a step towards making electronic components out of common materials that might not otherwise be suitable.

It’s not unusual to find rust around salt water, but now the pairing might be more useful. Researchers have found that electricity can be produced when salt water flows over the top of thin films of rust. The process was previously seen in – what else – graphene, but rust is far easier to scale up.

A team from Stanford has shown that graphene arranged in a specific way can generate a magnetic field. That’s surprising enough, but it turns out this particular form of magnetism has previously only been theorized.

After studying proteins that are key to metabolism in modern cells, researchers reverse engineered a simplified protein that may have been responsible for kickstarting the process in ancient times. And to prove the idea, they then implanted it into living bacteria and found that it works just fine.

If you throw a particle at a wall, there’s a chance that it will suddenly appear on the other side. This is thanks to a phenomenon known as quantum tunneling, and now a team of physicists has measured just how long that process takes.

Particle accelerators have plenty to teach us, but these facilities involve kilometers of tunnels and equipment. Now, researchers at Imperial College London have developed a new way to accelerate antimatter particles using common equipment already found in many labs, in a much smaller space.

NOAA flew a scientific aircraft right through Hurricane Patricia in 2015. Now, the researchers have reported their findings, including the detection of a beam of antimatter being blasted towards the ground, accompanied by flashes of x-rays and gamma rays.

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.

The world’s most powerful X-ray laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), is about to get far more powerful. The first of 37 “cryomodules” has arrived at Stanford University’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, which will boost the speed and power of the facility.

To better understand molecular events, scientists use short-pulse X-ray lasers to take precise snapshots. Now, researchers at ETH Zurich have managed to shorten the pulse of an X-ray laser down to 43 attoseconds – which the team says is the shortest controlled event ever created by humankind.