One of the big science stories at the end of last week was an announcement from MIT that researchers there have used a small quantum computer to factor the number 15. That might not seem like much of ...

Physicists at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching near Munich, have now gained fundamental insights into a particular kind of atomic ensemble – a so-called Rydberg gas – that might ...

Gerd Binnig shared The Kavli Prize in Nanoscience in 2016 for inventing the atomic force microscope. What transformative impact has this invention had on nanoscience? This podcast was produced for The ...

Despite a deep understanding of the properties of individual atoms -- the 'ingredients' that make up a crystal -- scientists found that, when they are combined they often display new, unanticipated ...

Richard Feynman, a famous theoretical physicist who won the Nobel Prize, said that if he could pass on only one piece of scientific information to future generations, it would be that all things are ...

The quantum world has a reputation for being elusive, but physicists are now starting to watch it unfold in real time. For ...

The Bohr model, introduced by Danish physicist Niels Bohr in 1913, was a key step on the journey to understand atoms. Ancient Greek thinkers already believed that matter was composed of tiny basic ...

Scientists have finally glimpsed chemistry at its smallest level after capturing the first-ever X-ray of a single atom. Atoms are the tiniest particles in our universe, and they're the basic ...

"Suppose you knew everything there was to know about a water molecule — the chemical formula, the bond angle, etc.,” says Joseph Thywissen, a professor in the Department of Physics and a member of the ...

Scientists have uncovered that some atoms in liquids don't move at all—even at extreme temperatures—and these anchored atoms dramatically alter the way materials freeze. Using advanced electron ...

SP hybridization occurs when one s orbital and one p orbital from the same atom combine to form two new orbitals of equal energy. These new orbitals are linearly oriented 180 degrees apart, leading to ...