Tracking the Meissner effect under pressure
In the last two or three years, groups of scientists from around the world have made several claims that they had discovered a room-temperature superconductor. Many of these claims concerned high-pres…
magnetic field
5 posts
A new source of cosmic rays?
The International Space Station carries a suite of instruments conducting scientific experiments and measurements in low-Earth orbit. One of them is the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS), which studie…
How do you study a laser firing for one-quadrillionth of a second?
I'm grateful to Mukund Thattai, at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bengaluru, for explaining many of the basic concepts at work in the following article. An important application of…
Weyl semimetals make way for super optics
A Weyl semimetal is a crystal whose lattice has the uncommon ability to carry electrical energy at room temperature.…
Second star found to have magnetic-field flips also flips them fast
Tau Bootis A is a Sun-like white-dwarf star about 51 light-years from Earth. Its magnetic field changes polarity once every year as opposed to the 11 years it takes our Sun. While astronomers don'…