Engineers get a grip on slippery surfactants
A Rice University group's innovative surfactant theory removes limitations of a 100-year-old model for interfacial behavior in enhanced oil recovery.
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New theory shows how strain makes for better catalysts
Brown University researchers have developed a new theory to explain why stretching or compressing metal catalysts can make them perform better. The theory, described in the journal Nature Catalysis, could open new design ...
The current ability to test theories of gravity with black hole shadows
Can we tell black holes apart? Astrophysicists at Frankfurt, the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, and Nijmegen, collaborating in the project BlackHoleCam, answer this question by computing the first images ...
Measurement of the fine-structure constant casts doubt on dark photon theories
A team of researchers from the University of California and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has conducted an ultra-precise measurement of the fine-structure constant, and in so doing, have found evidence that casts ...
No, Facebook doesn't secretly listen via your microphone to target ads at you
Whatever you might have heard, Facebook doesn't listen in on everything you do through the microphone on your phone, mining the information for clues on what ads to send you.
The thermodynamics of computing
Information processing requires a lot of energy. Energy-saving computer systems could make computing more efficient, but the efficiency of these systems can't be increased indefinitely, as ETH physicists show.
For identical quantum channels, order matters
Physicists have demonstrated that using two quantum channels in different orders can enhance a communication network's ability to transmit information—even, counterintuitively, when the channels are identical. This result ...
Study reveals who is spreading online conspiracies
Due to the Internet, conspiracy theories are on the rise and playing an increasingly significant role in global politics. Now new research from The Australian National University (ANU) has analysed digital data to reveal ...
New math bridges holography and twistor theory
The modern-day theoretical physicist faces a taxing uphill climb. "As we learn more, reality becomes ever more subtle; the absolute becomes relative, the fixed becomes dynamical, the definite is laden with uncertainty," writes ...
Study suggests Earth's water was present before impact that caused creation of the moon
A team of researchers from the U.K., France and the U.S. has found evidence that suggests that most of the water on Earth was present before the impact that created the moon. In their paper published on the open access site ...
