Physical Sciences News

Astronomy & Astrophysics, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Physics, and Mathematics

The Latest

Mathematician Awarded Guggenheim Fellowship

Professor Kiran Kedlaya has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, to further his work in number theory, one of the most classical branches of mathematics.

Discovery Could Lead to Novel Therapies for Fragile X Syndrome

Scientists studying the most common form of inherited mental disability—a genetic disease called “Fragile X syndrome”—have uncovered new details about the cellular processes responsible for the condition that could lead to the development of therapies to restore some of the capabilities lost in affected individuals.

Unveiling the Universe’s Earliest Secrets

It's the faintest light, yet it carries information from the beginning of time. A telescope trained on the Antarctic sky has picked up swirling patterns of light believed to be the imprint of the violent expansion of the universe a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after it burst into being.

Cosmologists Report Evidence for Cosmic Inflation

Cosmologists have detected curling patterns in the faint glow of the universe's oldest light that appear to be traces left by cosmic inflation, an exponential expansion of the universe thought to have occurred fractions of a second after the Big Bang, they announced today.

Crystals Ripple in Response to Light

Light can trigger coordinated, wavelike motions of atoms in atom-thin layers of crystal, scientists have shown. The waves, called phonon polaritons, are far shorter than light waves and can be "tuned" to particular frequencies and amplitudes by varying the number of layers of crystal, they report in the early online edition of Science March 7.

The Surface of the Sea is a Sink for Nitrogen Oxides at Night

The surface of the sea takes up nitrogen oxides that build up in polluted air at night, new measurements on the coast of southern California have shown. The ocean removes about 15 percent of these chemicals overnight along the coast, a team of atmospheric chemists reports in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of March 3.