Charged surfaces in contact with liquids—such as biological cell walls or battery electrodes—attract oppositely charged ions from the liquid. This creates two distinct charged regions: the surface itself and a counter-charged region in the liquid: the so-called electrical double layer. While pivotal to energy storage devices, the speed of its formation has remained elusive.

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In every scientific discovery in the movies, a scientist observes something unexpected, scratches the side of his or her forehead and says “hmmmmm.” In just such a moment in real life, scientists from Canada observed unexpected flashes of curved green light from a red light-emitting polymer above its surface. The flashes were reminiscent of the […]

In 2023, EPFL researchers succeeded in sending and storing data using charge-free magnetic waves called spin waves, rather than traditional electron flows. The team from the Lab of Nanoscale Magnetic Materials and Magnonics, led by Dirk Grundler, in the School of Engineering, used radiofrequency signals to excite spin waves enough to reverse the magnetization state […]

Classical physics theories suggest that when two or more electromagnetic waves interfere destructively (i.e., with their electric fields canceling each other out), they cannot interact with matter. In contrast, quantum mechanics theory suggests that light particles continue interacting with other matter even when their average electric field is equal to zero.

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To learn more about the nature of matter, energy, space, and time, physicists smash high-energy particles together in large accelerator machines, creating sprays of millions of particles per second of a variety of masses and speeds. The collisions may also produce entirely new particles not predicted by the standard model, the prevailing theory of fundamental […]

Filipino scientists have discovered a simple, affordable way to make dynamically adjustable water-based lenses that have a wide variety of potential future applications—from classrooms and research labs to cameras and even wearable gadgets. Their research is published in the journal Results in Optics.

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Scientists have achieved a major milestone in the quest to understand high-temperature superconductivity in hydrogen-rich materials. Using electron tunneling spectroscopy under high pressure, the international research team led by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry has measured the superconducting gap of H3S—the material that set the high-pressure superconductivity record in 2015 and serves as the […]

An innovative algorithm for detecting collisions of high-speed particles within nuclear fusion reactors has been developed, inspired by technologies used to determine whether bullets hit targets in video games. This advancement enables rapid predictions of collisions, significantly enhancing the stability and design efficiency of future fusion reactors.

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