News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Scientists today announced a major new finding about how matter behaves in the extreme conditions of the sun's atmosphere. Their work has shed new light on the exotic but poorly understood 'fourth state of matter,' known as plasma, which could hold the key to developing safe, clean and efficient nuclear energy generators on Earth.

'A major aspect of our research is that it just really illustrates how complex all these different components are going on inside a person's body,' said Andrew Ford.

Indiana University researchers have synthesized a powerful new molecule to trap chloride salts. The technology has the potential to reduce its seepage into freshwater systems, which is a threat to drinkable water across the globe.

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology and Keio University investigated the excitation and detection of photogenerated coherent phonons in polar semiconductor GaAs through an ultrafast dual pump-probe laser for quantum interferometry.

Scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory studying super-cold states of water discovered a pathway to the unexpected formation of dense, crystalline phases of ice thought to exist beyond Earth's limits. Their findings, reported in Nature, challenge accepted theories and could lead to better understanding of ice found on other planets, moons and elsewhere in space.

Physicists have demonstrated a new way to obtain the essential details of an isolated quantum system through direct observation. The method gives information about the likelihood of finding atoms at specific locations in the system with unprecedented spatial resolution far better than an optical microscope can provide. With this technique, scientists can obtain details on a scale of tens of nanometers -- smaller than the width of a virus.