Physics and Astronomy

Chips based on Seignette-electrics (ferroelectrics) will retain recorded information for centuries, this being done without any power replenishment. Devices based on these wonderful materials’ thin films will help to track the route of an animal or a bird during its overall life span, to control the valuable freight travel and to find the lost or stolen stuff, even if more than a year elapsed since the time of a loss. The information on the St. Petersburg researchers’ development is available in

Penn State’s Alex Wolszczan, the discoverer in 1992 of the first planets ever found outside our solar system, now has discovered with Caltech’s Maciej Konacki the smallest planet yet detected,in that same far-away planetary system. Immersed in an extended cloud of ionized gas, the new planet orbits a rapidly spinning neutron star called a pulsar. The discovery, to be announced during a press conference at a meeting concerning planetary formation and detection in Aspen, Colorado, on 7 F

An international team of physicists that includes a Texas A&M University professor has announced discovery of a new spintronic effect in semiconductor chips, the intrinsic spin Hall effect, which puts a new twist on future technology and the possibility for novel circuits with low energy consumption.

The team is formed by physicists Dr. Jörg Wunderlich and Dr. Bernd Kaestner from the Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory, U.K.; Prof. Tomás Jungwirth from the Institute of Physics of the Aca

Intermetallics could be the key to faster jets and more efficient car engines. But these heat-resistant, lightweight compounds have stumped scientists for decades. Why do so many break so easily? A team from Brown University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and UES Inc. used the world’s most powerful electron microscope to see, for the first time, atomic details that may provide the answer for the most common class of intermetallics. Their results – which could open the door for new materials fo

Ultrathin superconducting wires can withstand stronger magnetic fields than larger wires made from the same material, researchers now report. This finding may be useful for technologies that employ superconducting magnets, such as magnetic resonance imaging.

As described in the Jan. 14 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have created high-quality superconducting wires with molecular dimensions, and measured

The Hubble Space Telescope’s latest image of the star V838 Monocerotis (V838 Mon) reveals dramatic changes in the illumination of surrounding dusty cloud structures. The effect, called a light echo, has been unveiling never-before-seen dust patterns ever since the star suddenly brightened for several weeks in early 2002.

The illumination of interstellar dust comes from the red supergiant star at the middle of the image, which gave off a pulse of light three years ago, somewhat sim