http://www.physorg.com/ en-us Physorg.com internet news portal provides the latest news on science including: Physics, Nanotechnology, Life Sciences, Space Science, Earth Science, Environment, Health and Medicine. (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers say they have found a simple way to improve the semiconducting properties of the world`s thinnest material - by giving it a good tug. http://www.physorg.com/news173340834.html Nanotechnology Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:14:30 EST news173340834 (PhysOrg.com) -- Atoms have the habit of jumping through solids - a practice that physicists have recently been able to follow for the first time using a brand new method. This scientific advance was made possible thanks to the utilisation of cutting-edge X-ray sources, known as electron synchrotrons. The detailed findings of the project, backed by the Austrian Science Fund, were recently published in the prestigious journal Nature Materials. The work unlocks new potential for the study of material ageing processes at the atomic level. http://www.physorg.com/news172141084.html Physics Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:01:18 EST news172141084 (PhysOrg.com) -- Composite materials such as fiberglass, which take on a mix of properties of their constituent compounds, have been around for decades. Now, an MIT materials scientist is taking composites to the nanoscale, where entirely new properties, not found in any of the original compounds, can emerge. http://www.physorg.com/news165075237.html Physics Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:20:02 EST news165075237 (PhysOrg.com) -- By controlling the collective spin state of highly mobile electrons in semiconductors, researchers in the Materials Sciences Division (MSD) at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have taken a major step forward in the technology of spintronics. At the same time they have discovered a new conservation law, an important advance in fundamental physics. http://www.physorg.com/news157889543.html Physics Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:12:51 EST news157889543 (PhysOrg.com) -- `The concept of matter waves is at the heart of quantum mechanics,` Oliver Morsch tells PhysOrg.com. `At the beginning of the last century, scientists discovered that solid particles could exhibit properties of waves, such as interference and diffraction. Until then, it was assumed that only light behaved as a wave. But in the quantum world everything is basically a wave.` http://www.physorg.com/news157375449.html Physics Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:25:06 EST news157375449 (PhysOrg.com) -- Large, perfect diamonds are precious to almost all of us but to some scientists, it is the defects that really matter. This is because defects can form nanoscopic color centers, which play a key role in the development of both quantum computing and quantum cryptography. A research team at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen has now probed these color centers inside the crystal with unprecedented resolution using an optical microscope. Using STED microscopy, the scientists identified even densely packed color centers and determined their position inside the crystal with a precision better than 0.15 nanometers, corresponding to the dimension of an atom. (Nature Photonics, 22nd February 2009). http://www.physorg.com/news155233957.html Physics Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:33:30 EST news155233957 Physicists at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland have proposed a recipe for turning ultracold `boson` atoms -the ingredients of Bose-Einstein condensates -into a `supersolid,` an exotic state of matter that behaves simultaneously as a solid and a friction-free superfluid. While scientists have found evidence for supersolids in complex liquid helium mixtures, a supersolid formed from such weakly interacting gas atoms would be simpler to understand, potentially providing clues for making a host of new `quantum materials` whose bizarre properties could expand physicists` notions of what is possible with matter. http://www.physorg.com/news151090051.html Physics Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:27:31 EST news151090051 (PhysOrg.com) -- Scientists at U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory used inelastic neutron scattering to show that superconductivity in a new family of iron arsenide superconductors cannot be explained by conventional theories. http://www.physorg.com/news150729937.html Physics Fri, 09 Jan 2009 13:25:37 EST news150729937