Physics

First functional graphene semiconductor could power future chips

This one time at band gap... we managed to use wonder stuff as an electronic material for semiconducting

Systems09 Jan 2024 | 12

US fusion energy dreams edge closer to reality, Congress permitting

Yields could double next year – provided the budget is passed

Science02 Jan 2024 | 27

Uncle Sam plows $42M into nurturing fusion breakthrough

Experimerntal milestone needs work before it can be considered a candidate for power generation

Science08 Dec 2023 | 27

'Wobbly spacetime' is latest stab at unifying physics

Grudge match between quantum mechanics and general relativity attracts new effort to find harmony

Science06 Dec 2023 | 81

New information physics theory is evidence 'we're living in a simulation,' says author

But why would a simulation create El Reg? Mmm... pizza

Offbeat10 Oct 2023 | 168

CERN swells storage space beyond 1EB for LHC's latest ion-whacking experiments

A petabyte or more a day of readings? No problem, pal

Storage02 Oct 2023 | 12

Scandium-based nuclear clocks promise punctuality for next 300 billion years

It's about time!

Science02 Oct 2023 | 47

CERN experiment proves gravity pulls antimatter the way Einstein predicted

Why there is not a lot more of it is yet to be explained though

Science27 Sep 2023 | 34

A room-temperature, ambient-pressure superconductor? Take a closer look

It's OK to be skeptical if someone says they found the holy grail

Science27 Jul 2023 | 105

Ultra-rare Apple sneakers from the 1990s on sale for $50,000

Meanwhile, Einstein dismantles the creation myth in $125,000 letter

Offbeat24 Jul 2023 | 53

NIST boffins shrink atomic beam clock to the size of a postage stamp

It's not the most accurate atomic clock in the world, but the NIST team behind it believes they can fix that

Science27 Jun 2023 | 14

MIT discovery suggests a new class of superconductors

You who think superconductivity can't happen without spin polarization? Hold my FeSe

Science23 Jun 2023 | 23

Boffins snap X-ray closeup of single atom – and by closeup we mean nanometres

Achievement took 12 years of blood, sweat and science

Science01 Jun 2023 | 8

Brits and Yanks join forces to make fusion magnets cool again

How cool? About -250°C

Science31 May 2023 | 23

CERN spots Higgs boson decay breaking the rules

So much for the Standard Model of particle physics?

Science30 May 2023 | 46

LIGO cranks up the sensitivity to sniff out gravitational waves

The instrument that proved Einstein right is back

The Reg in Space26 May 2023 | 23

Laser-wielding boffins bend lightning to their will

Video Discovery could provide better protection for power stations, airports and launchpads

Science18 Jan 2023 | 30

Quantum entanglement discovery could enable futuristic comms tech, Nuclear physicists say

So that must be why the Russians might have hacked the DoE, right?

Science07 Jan 2023 | 47

20 years on, physicists are still figuring out anomaly in proton experiment

Anyone got the technical reference manual for this simulation we're living in?

Science23 Oct 2022 | 51

Physics Nobel Prize in a superposition between three quantum physicists

How apt

Science05 Oct 2022 | 42

CERN draws up shutdown plans to save energy

Particle accelerators could be next casualty of Russia's war on Ukraine

Science07 Sep 2022 | 74

Scientists unveil a physics-defying curved space robot

It can move without anything to push off from, but only via curved spacetime

Science11 Aug 2022 | 53

DARPA seeks portable muon-making machine to see through almost anything

We currently make muons at CERN, so this is quite the miniaturization job

Science25 Jul 2022 | 55

Engineers on the brink of extinction threaten entire tech ecosystems

Opinion Resting on its laurels is costing the industry its hardies

Systems18 Jul 2022 | 260

Large Hadron Collider experiment reveals three exotic particles

Tetraquarks and other discoveries as CERN revs up for Run 3

Science05 Jul 2022 | 78

Gas cloud around galactic nucleus reveals unified view of center

It's all about perspective

Science16 Feb 2022 | 8

Think your phone is snooping on you? Hold my beer, says basic physics

Opinion Information wants to be free, and it's making its escape

Networks18 Oct 2021 | 118

Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry awarded to boffins studying complex systems, organic catalysts

20m Swedish kronor – close to 2 million quid – to be shared

Science07 Oct 2021 | 6

CERN boffins zap antimatter with ultraviolet lasers in the hope of revealing the secret symmetry of the universe

If you can't measure it, you can't research it

Science06 Apr 2021 | 73

Boffins trap ultra-cold plasma-in-a-bottle, a move that may unlock secrets of exotic stars

Video Matter held not for long... but for long enough

Science02 Mar 2021 | 17

Physicists wrap neutrino detector in cosy blanket to shed light on the Sun's secondary fusion cycle

Direct observation published for first time

Science26 Nov 2020 | 20

Good news: Boffins have finally built room-temperature superconductors. Bad news: You'll need a laser, a diamond anvil, and a lot of pressure

Updated Lead scientist explains all to El Reg: 'Pressure is the most versatile parameter to create such conditions'

Science15 Oct 2020 | 62

Massive news, literally: Three super-boffins awarded Nobel Prize in physics for their black-hole breakthroughs

Congratulations to Sir Roger Penrose, Andrea Gehz, Reinhard Genzel

Science07 Oct 2020 | 36

CERN puts two new atom-smashers on its shopping list. One to make Higgs Bosons, then a next-gen model six times more energetic than the LHC

Needs about €21bn it doesn’t have and a whole lot of new science to make it feasible

Science22 Jun 2020 | 125

Broken lab equipment led boffins to solve a 58-year-old physics problem by mistake

The mystery of manipulating nuclear spins with electric fields could make it easier to build quantum computers in the future

Science12 Mar 2020 | 97

World-record-breaking boffins reveal the fastest spinning thing on Earth – and it's not George Orwell in his grave

Privacy's dead but, hey, we've got nanoparticles spinning at 300 billion RPM. So that's cool

Science21 Jan 2020 | 31

Halfords invents radio signals that don't travel at the speed of light

Or their marketing dept is talking utter hoop

Networks22 Nov 2019 | 224

A trio of boffins scoop the Nobel Prize in physics for the first exoplanet discovery and big bang model

James Peebles gets half, Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz each bag a quarter

Science08 Oct 2019 | 6

Boffins build a tiny nanolaser that can be inserted inside our cells

The glass gizmo emits visible light too

Science24 Sep 2019 | 39

MIT boffins turn black up to 11 with carbon nanotubes that absorb 99.995% of light

It's like, how much more black could this be and the answer is none. None more black

Science14 Sep 2019 | 103

Look, we know it feels like everything's going off the rails right now, but think positive: The proton has a new radius

0.833 femtometers also happens to be how close we are to losing our minds

Science06 Sep 2019 | 77

Mysterious 'glitch' in neutron stars may be down to an itch under the body's surface

Nature isn't perfect either, eh

Science13 Aug 2019 | 30

Monster magnet in my pocket: Boffins' gizmo packs 45.5-tesla punch and weighs just 390g

But don't get too excited, it can't do much at the moment

Science17 Jun 2019 | 95

What are we more likely to see? A smooth Windows 10 May release... or a xenon-124 decay? Oh dear, bad news, IT folks

And before Half-Life 3 arrives

Science26 Apr 2019 | 43

Boffins baffled by planet nugget whizzing round white dwarf that should have killed it

Solid small satellite where a year lasts for just two hours

Science05 Apr 2019 | 35

Geiger counters are so last summer. Lasers can detect radioactive material too, y'know

Boffins show how to nab radioactive contraband, by looking for 'electron avalanches'

Security25 Mar 2019 | 80

Astroboffins spot hefty pair swinging together. What? Um, we're talking about record-breaking massive binary stars...

What did you think we meant?

Science12 Mar 2019 | 28

'It's like painting with atoms'... Watch how boffins form armies of simple micron-sized bots from a silicon wafer

Video And they may be injected into your body one day

Science10 Mar 2019 | 54

Official science: Massive asteroids are so difficult to destroy, Bruce Willis wouldn't stand a chance

Videos 'Only a matter of time before these questions go from being academic to defining our response to a major threat'

Science05 Mar 2019 | 63

The Large Hadron Collider is small beer. Give us billions more for bigger kit, say boffins

Future Circular Collider hopes to rack up 100 tera electron Volts to probe physics

Science16 Jan 2019 | 164

Supernovae may explain mass extinctions of marine animals 2.6 million years ago

Deadly radiation bouncing around could have killed off animals in the Pliocene era

Science12 Dec 2018 | 66

Thought black holes were donut-shaped? It turns out they're more like deadly fountains

Japanese boffins argue for a new spin on astrophysics

Science30 Nov 2018 | 23

It's all a matter of time: Super-chill atomic clock could sniff gravitational waves, dark matter

These ultra-precise babies are not your average timepiece

Science29 Nov 2018 | 58

Boffins have fabricated microscopic sci-fi tractor beams for real

It can only hold millions of cold rubidium atoms for now though

Science31 Oct 2018 | 44

Astroboffins discover when white and brown dwarfs mix, the results are rather explosive

350-year monkish mystery could be down to a merger

Science10 Oct 2018 | 16

It's over 9,000! Boffin-baffling microquasar has power that makes the LHC look like a kid's toy

The first detection shows beams powered to over 25 trillion electron volts

Science05 Oct 2018 | 63