Experiments show that bundling of individual strands of an important protein polymer can occur through capillary forces, not just through molecular binding. Separated at birth. The chromosomes (blue) ...

Low-frequency radio observations delineate filamentary structures at the heart of a cluster of galaxies. Named after the musical symbol it resembles, the Treble Clef is an example of what astronomers ...

A laser-fusion scheme has achieved ignition—an important step on the road to energy production. Figure 1: Artist’s rendering of NIF’s laser beams entering through openings on either end of a hohlraum ...

Natural engineering. The bird’s nest achieves cohesion and flexibility by the interweaving of bendy rods in frictional contact. × A bird’s nest is a marvel of natural engineering: a disordered bundle ...

When a cloud of cold atoms goes through a supersolid phase transition, its coexisting superfluid and crystalline phases do not emerge simultaneously. Figure 1: (Left to right) The solid and superfluid ...

Physics looks back at the standout stories of 2013. Images from popular Physics stories in 2013. Images from popular Physics stories in 2013. × As 2013 draws to a close, we look back on the research ...

Gravitational waves emitted by the merger of two black holes have been detected, setting the course for a new era of observational astrophysics. Figure 1: Numerical simulations of the gravitational ...

Jungsang Kim is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Physics, and Computer Science at Duke University in North Carolina. He leads the Multifunctional Integrated Systems Technology group ...

A network-theory model, tested on the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, offers tools for quantifying the amount of information delivered to a listener by a musical piece. Great pieces of music transport ...

A coalition of astronomers calls for renaming the Milky Way’s two brightest satellite galaxies, along with other astronomical objects and facilities that bear the name of a Portuguese explorer who ...

A simplified model of how yarns interact shows that a piece of knitted fabric can have many stable resting states depending on its history of deformation. Despite the ubiquity of intertwined materials ...

The no-hair theorem was originally formulated to describe isolated black holes, but an extended version now describes the more realistic case of a black hole distorted by nearby matter. However, this ...