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Applying strain to achiral solids containing subunits of opposite chirality can induce controllable handedness.
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An exceptionally long, thin cloud appears for a few hours each morning during Mars’s dusty season. Models of the atmosphere couldn’t explain how it develops—until now.
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Since 2008, more than 100 colleges and universities in the US have stopped offering an undergraduate physics major. What happened?
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A tiny levitating bead records the kicks delivered by impacts from individual gas atoms. Its jitters could become the basis for precision measurements—and searches for dark matter.
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The thermodynamic and quantum mechanical properties of topological insulators provide a path toward scalable energy storage in information-based batteries.
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Tested in pigs, a new battery design offers a safer, more reliable alternative to standard power sources for ingestible medical devices.
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Nilanjan P. Choudhury left physics for a corporate software job, then returned to it for playwriting.
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Science’s endless frontier is a changing frontier. It requires a dynamic approach to governance, collaboration, and investment.
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Protective policies, health insurance, and community are all important variables when gender-diverse scientists ask, “Where to next?”
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(10 February 1938 – 24 March 2026)
The solar physicist was a driving force behind many of the most influential scientific instruments for studying the Sun.
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(20 February 1936 – 29 June 2026)
The longtime University of Washington professor advanced ultralow-temperature techniques and performed groundbreaking experiments on adsorbed films.
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Classical approaches to verifying a subject’s position can be easily fooled. Quantum optics can help, but only if the systems are fast and have low loss.
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The sweeping federal financial assistance rule proposed by the Office of Management and Budget is on hold. The reprieve may be an opportunity for the rule to fizzle.
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His 1988 sketch of how to use Antarctic ice to detect neutrinos led to the IceCube observatory, which made the first detections of high-energy neutrinos in 2013.
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After collecting experimental data from a replica of the renowned bell, researchers used a technique called modal analysis to model its acoustic properties.
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At the end of the turbulent 1960s, the postwar funding boom in US physics came to a crashing halt. The lessons learned then may be helpful to today’s physicists.
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Interviews with 22 successful early-career physical scientists and engineers reveal that networking has been one of the most critical ways to nurture their careers.