Condensates in a whirl
Physicists have been attempting to create a vortex in a dilute Bose condensate since these systems were first created in 1995. In principle, atomic condensates are ideal systems in which to study vort...
Organic magnets
The material – 1,3,5-trithia-2,4,6-triazapentalenyl (TTTA) – is non-magnetic at very low temperatures. The paramagnetic effect is strong at room temperature, but as the compound is cooled,...
Phase diagram hints at traffic solution
Helbing and co-workers have identified six different traffic phases: homogeneous congestion, oscillatory congestion, triggered stop-and-go traffic, moving localised clusters, pinned localised clusters...
New light on sonoluminescence
Sascha Hilgenfeldt, Siegfried Grossman and Detlef Lohse extended the model by making the bubble’s temperature dependent on its volume and by making an allowance of the small emissivity of the we...
Physics, biscuits and the public
Scientists often complain that the media do not report their work. However, according to Fisher, this is not because journalists are not interested in science but because they have a fear of looking f...
Physics at work
Colloids are also immensely important in a range of industries. Although the products themselves are low-tech – paint, mayonnaise, toothpaste and ice cream, for instance – the physics unde...
Trapping breakthrough for molecules
Many of the optical and magnetic techniques used to trap and cool atoms do not work with molecules because they have complex internal energy levels. Instead Doyle and his colleagues chilled the molecu...
Deuterium ‘shocked’ into metallic state
Gilbert Collins and colleagues used the NOVA laser at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California to carry out the experiments (Science 281 1178). The deuterium was placed in a small copp...
The shape of sonoluminescence
Sonoluminescence occurs because sound waves cause a bubble to expand and then collapse in a liquid. The bubble first expands to almost 10 times its original dimensions, and then collapses at supersoni...
Superfluidity seen on microscopic scales
Bulk superfluid helium has many unusual properties – it can flow up walls and through narrow pores without resistance. Helium-4 and helium-3 become superfluid below 2.12 and 0.003 Kelvin respect...
