News by Subject Chemistry & Physics

Scientists have for the first time captured and filmed atoms bonding together, using advanced microscopy methods they captured a moment that is around half a million times smaller than the width of a human hair.

A team of physicists from McMaster University has developed a process to modify red blood cells so they can be used to distribute drugs throughout the body, which could specifically target infections or treat catastrophic diseases such as cancer or Alzheimer's.

'Strange metals' could be the key to finally understanding high-temperature superconductors. After years of research, scientists have now found a way to analyze these materials, answering important questions in materials science.

Los Alamos scientists have incorporated meticulously engineered colloidal quantum dots into a new type of light emitting diodes (LEDs) containing an integrated optical resonator, which allows them to function as lasers. These novel, dual-function devices clear the path towards versatile, manufacturing-friendly laser diodes. The technology can potentially revolutionize numerous fields from photonics and optoelectronics to chemical sensing and medical diagnostics.

Nine sources of extremely high-energy gamma rays comprise a new catalog compiled by researchers with the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory. All produce gamma rays with energies over 56 trillion electron volts (TeV) and three emit gamma rays extending to 100 TeV and beyond, making these the highest-energy sources ever observed in our galaxy. The catalog helps to explain where the particles originate and how they are accelerated to such extremes.

A new method of infrared spectroscopy developed at BESSY II makes single-measurement observation and analysis of very fast as well as irreversible reaction mechanisms in molecules feasible for the first time. Previously, thousands of such reactions have had to be run and measured for this purpose. The research team has now used the new device to investigate how rhodopsin molecules change after activation by light -- a process that is the basis of how we see.

A 50-year-old puzzle in statistical mechanics has been solved by an international team of researchers who have proved that two-dimensional (2D) liquids have fundamentally different dynamical properties to three-dimensional (3D) liquids.

One of the last obstacles hindering the photography and filming of processes occurring on a scale of attoseconds, i.e. billionths of a billionth of a second, has disappeared. The key to its removal lies in the random nature of the processes responsible for the formation of X-ray laser pulses.