Science

Day and night: as sunlight wanes, the fabric can switch from cooling to heating mode. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/PK-Studio) Researchers in China have unveiled a new concept for solar-powered clothing that can regulate its wearer’s body temperature. Created by Ziyuan Wang and colleagues at Nankai University, the design combines electrocaloric devices with state-of-the-art flexible solar cells. The

Hot and cold: schematic showing the nanoribbon waveguide between the hot and cold reservoirs. (Courtesy: Yu Pei et al/Nature Communications) Materials with high thermal conductivity are sought after for use in electronic devices because they swiftly remove excess heat, allowing for optimal performance. However, as devices become smaller and run faster, removing heat is becoming

Photomolecular effect: At the water-air interface, light can, under certain conditions, induce evaporation without the need for heat, according to a new study by researchers at MIT. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Valenty) Under certain conditions, light can cause water to evaporate directly, without heating it first. The process works by cleaving water clusters from the water-air interface, and

Setting priorities Margaret Gardel in her lab at the University of Chicago. (Courtesy: Margaret Gardel) What skills do you use every day in your job? That’s an interesting question, because they are skills I would never have expected would be so important when I was an undergraduate studying physics. I use a lot of time

What’s the buzz: a brood cicada photographed in the US. (Courtesy: Pmjacoby/CC BY-SA 4.0) Welcome to this year’s first instalment of the Red Folder, which has two tales from the wonderful world of insects. Fire raft ants have a remarkable ability to survive floods – something that could come in handy in the UK, which

Random numbers are used in several important technologies including cryptography and numerical simulation. However, large sequences of truly random numbers are notoriously difficult to generate – and correlations lurking within sequences can have dire consequences. Quantum systems are inherently random, so they offer a way to generate random numbers. In this episode of the Physics

Cooling apparatus: The laser setup the Princeton team used to cool, control, and entangle individual molecules. (Courtesy: Richard Soden, Department of Physics, Princeton University) Ultracold molecules are a step closer to being a viable platform for quantum technology thanks to two independent teams of researchers who showed they could entangle pairs of molecules and encode

Quantum designers: Florian Marquardt (left) and Leopoldo Sarra have shown how deep Bayesian experimental design can be applied to quantum many-body systems. (Courtesy: Leopoldo Sarra) As quantum technology improves, researchers are able to connect increasing numbers of components to create nascent quantum computers. An important challenge is knowing what components and configurations have the most

I’m a Barbie role model: UK space scientist and science educator Maggie Aderin-Pocock with here one-of-a-kind Barbie doll (Courtesy: Mattel) From the fastest woman to run across the US to the mechanics of dancing peanuts, physics has had its fair share of quirky stories this year. Here is our pick of the best 10, not in any

(Courtey: iStock/wildpixel) This year, the Physics World team selected a medical innovation as the Breakthrough of the Year: the development of a digital bridge that restores communication between the brain and spinal cord, enabling a man with paralysis to stand and walk naturally. We also reported on several other neural engineering advances, including a neuroprosthesis

(Courtesy: Shutterstock/Roman-Sigaev) It’s been another banner year for quantum science and technology, with academic research groups and tech firms celebrating significant achievements in quantum computing, quantum communications and quantum metrology as well as fundamental quantum science. Three of these advances – a quantum repeater that transmits quantum information over a distance of 50 km; a

Modified wood Researchers at Linköping University, together with colleagues from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, have developed the world’s first electrical transistor made of wood. (Courtesy: Thor Balkhed) There are many physicists working on materials and every year we look forward to writing about some of the most exciting research in this field. This

Sidney Perkowitz explains what Isaac Newton has to do with a huge, glitzy entertainment dome in Las Vegas Dome in the desert The Sphere in Las Vegas has the highest-resolution wrap-around LED screen in the world. (Courtesy: iStock/ALFSnaiper) Spheres, globes or orbs: call them what you like, they have always been part of physics even

Acoustic touch A research team member who is blind uses the new smart glasses to locate and reach for an item on the table. (Courtesy: CC-BY 4.0/Lil Deverell at the Motion Platform and Mixed Reality Lab in Techlab at the UTS) Researchers in Australia are developing smart glasses for blind people, using a technology called

The QUANT-NET research consortium is building the first quantum network testbed for distributed quantum computing applications in the US. Joe McEntee visits Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) in California to check out progress on the enabling quantum technologies Quantum engineering From left to right, QUANT-NET researchers Erhan Saglamyurek, Hartmut Häffner, Inder Monga and Wenji

(Courtesy: Shutterstock/Mr-Aesthetics) Physics isn’t a popularity contest, but the 10 most read articles published on the Physics World website in 2023 nevertheless make an interesting collection of highlights, lowlights and every kind of light in between. If you didn’t spot these stories when they first appeared, here’s your chance to find out what the fuss

An illustration of the experiment showing two gold electrodes atop a thin magnetic layer. In the middle lies a superconducting electrode. With the left gold electrode, the researchers generate spin waves in the magnetic material, which travel to the right. On top of the electrodes is a square diamond membrane, which allows the researchers to