Simply making nanoparticles spin coaxes them to arrange themselves into what University of Michigan researchers call “living rotating crystals,” a self-organizing behavior where the crystals take on a life of their own. Researcher Sharon Glotzer and her team discovered the behavior while investigating methods to make nanoparticles self-assemble. They found that when they spun individual […]
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“Freakish” asteroid resembles rotating lawn sprinkler
Using the Hubble space telescope, astronomers have discovered a “weird and freakish object” resembling a rotating lawn sprinkler in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Unlike all other known asteroids, which appear simply as tiny points of light, this asteroid, designated P/2013 P5, has six comet-like tails of dust radiating from it like spokes […]
Quantum-Hall Effect Observed, Sans Magnetic Field
The quantum-Hall effect (where electrons condense into an exotic quantum fluid) was thought to only occur in specially prepared materials under the influence of an intense magnetic field, but Princeton University researchers have observed the effect in a bulk crystal of bismuth-antimony without any magnetic field being present. In 1879 Edwin Hall discovered that in […]