Genetic mutation may drive evolution, but not all by itself. Physics can be a powerful co-pilot, sometimes even setting the course.
General Physics
Nov 27, 2017
1
199
For researchers pursuing the primordial history of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, a new study might sour some "Eureka!" moments. A contemporary tool used to trace oxygen by examining ancient rock strata can produce false positives, ...
Earth Sciences
Nov 17, 2017
3
105
Imagine a tiny donut-shaped droplet, covered with wriggling worms. The worms are packed so tightly together that they must locally line up with respect to each other. In this situation, we would say the worms form a nematic ...
Condensed Matter
Oct 23, 2017
0
130
A ceramic-based mechanical pump able to operate at record temperatures of more than 1,400 degrees Celsius (1,673 Kelvin) can transfer high temperature liquids such as molten tin, enabling a new generation of energy conversion ...
Engineering
Oct 11, 2017
16
868
The primordial soup that sloshed around billions of years ago, and eventually led to first life on our planet, might have been teeming with primal precursors of proteins.
Biochemistry
Sep 4, 2017
9
525
More than 30 years after Voyager 2 sped past Uranus, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers are using the spacecraft's data to learn more about the icy planet. Their new study suggests that Uranus' magnetosphere, the ...
Space Exploration
Jun 26, 2017
1
181
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Peking University have found a new use for the ubiquitous PowerPoint slide: Producing self-folding three-dimensional origami structures from photocurable liquid polymers.
Materials Science
Apr 28, 2017
0
289
For much of its first two billion years, Earth was a very different place: oxygen was scarce, microbial life ruled, and the sun was significantly dimmer than it is today. Yet the rock record shows that vast seas covered much ...
Environment
Apr 17, 2017
0
151
Experiments led by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology suggest the particles that cover the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, are "electrically charged." When the wind blows hard enough (approximately ...
Space Exploration
Mar 27, 2017
2
312
Using a Bose-Einstein condensate composed of millions of sodium atoms, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have observed a sharp magnetically-induced quantum phase transition where they expect to find entangled ...
Quantum Physics
Feb 3, 2017
1
2058
