Since the advent of personal computers, the name of the game has been miniaturization.

How small can we shrink down transistors? How many of those transistors can we cram onto a computer chip? This is one of the main strategies in making our computers faster and more powerful.

But we're quickly approaching an inconvenient plateau – very soon, the idea of shrinking down computer parts just won't be possible and won't make any sense. When an electronic component is just a few atoms wide, how do you improve on that?

We recently spent a week in Moscow surrounded by some of the world's brightest scientific minds to learn all about quantum technology – what it is, where it's heading, and how it can make our lives better. The International Conference on Quantum Technologies, sponsored by the Russian Quantum Center, saw professors, theorists, and physicists of all stripes come together to present their ideas to each other. The results were astounding.

"We're running out of ways to make computers faster and quantum technology is clearly the next step," Professor Vladimir Shalaev told Business Insider.

"Quantum technology" is a blanket term for technology that makes use of the weirdness of the quantum world to accomplish tasks. Some classic examples of this "weirdness" are most readily found in electrons, which are part of essentially every atom in the universe. They can move forwards and backwards in time, exist in two places at once, and can even teleport by way of a process called quantum tunneling.

This smacks of magic, but it's very real, having been confirmed by countless experiments over the past hundred years or so. Quantum mechanics, for all its quirks and idiosyncrasies, is one of the most tested and verified theories in physics.

In practical terms, quantum weirdness is already laying the foundation for unbreakable codes, computers that can crunch numbers at an unbelievable rate, and super-speedy database searches. We asked Sergeui Beloussov, serial entrepreneur and partner at QWave Capital, what it would take to get the average person to care about this stuff.

"The average person shouldn't care about quantum technology!" he said. "Do you care how your microwave works, or do you just care that it works?" He's a proponent of quantum technology that disappears into the background of whatever device you're using, leaving you free to enjoy its capabilities without worrying about the complicated math and physics that make it work.

Beloussov seems most intrigued by how quantum technology can change hardware companies. He used MRI design as an example: "If you've ever been in an MRI, you know it's not fun. It's noisy and you have to lay perfectly still for a long time. There's no reason for MRIs to suck like this. We could use quantum technology like an atomic magnetometer to shrink down the components of an MRI machine until they're so small and affordable that there's one in every doctor's office."

Perhaps the sexiest application of quantum technology is in computing. A quantum computer is one that uses quantum bits, called qubits, instead of standard bits to interact with information. Where the bits in your Mac or PC can only represent a one or a zero, a quantum computer's qubits can represent a one, zero, or a one and zero at the same time. This enables the computer to perform many calculations at once, significantly reducing the time required to solve a problem.

A computer that can carry out multiple operations at a time represents a great leap forward. Suddenly artificial intelligence can be a little less artificial. Huge numbers can be factored nearly instantly, an important development for code-breaking and Internet security.

There's an obvious and slightly cliched question to be asked here – when will we have quantum computers on our desktops?

"I don't think people need their own quantum computers," said Beloussov. "Not everyone needs their own power generator. They're expensive and complicated. I imagine we will be interacting with quantum computers over our mobile devices in the future."

It might not always be clear where quantum technologies will find their most pertinent applications, but scientists are staunch advocates that they should be fervently investigated.

Nobel laureate Wolfgang Ketterle put it this way during a conference panel: "People in the entertainment industry didn't discover lasers for DVDs and BluRays. That was the work of scientists. Dentists didn't discover X-rays for improved medical imaging. That was the work of scientists."

Harvard professor Misha Lukin told us that "not only should scientists be allowed to investigate technologies that might not have an obvious application, they should be encouraged to do so. Improved clocks are an important part of driverless cars. Improved sensors make it easier to find cancer. When you build a bridge to an uninhabited island, people move there, build houses, and start an economy. We're building these bridges."

It's obvious that quantum technology will radically transform a number of fields from medicine to cryptography to others that we haven't even anticipated yet. The only question: will you be ready for it?

Disclosure: Our trip to Moscow, including travel and lodging expenses, was sponsored by the Russian Quantum Center.

Join the conversation about this story »

Scientists may have just invented an amazing new way to clean up oil spills by mimicking the ingenious physics of cactus needles.

Cactus needles are not just for warding off animals trying get a taste of the plant's moist flesh. They also use a trick from physics to help them draw water from the air to keep the plant hydrated in its harsh desert environment.

Cactus needles are shaped like cones with — as many unfortunate victims have found — a sharp tip facing outward. The spines widen as they get closer to the body of the plant.

Physics in action

Once a needle catches a drop of water from accumulated molecules in the air, its shape uses a property of water to its advantage to move it. The bonds between water molecules exert a strong inward pressure — they all want to be together. This is what creates the spherical shape of a drop of water. When water hits the side of a needle, the curved shape of the needle forces the water to bend and droop out of that perfect spherical shape.

Meanwhile, an opposing force within the droplet — surface tension — is trying to pull the drop back into shape.

These dueling forces cause the droplet to slide up the side of the cone toward the base, where the flatter surface allows the drop to return to a more circular shape.

There, the needle has a more porous surface that absorbs the water into the plant.

See the cone in action here:

After making this realization, the researchers retooled this process in the hopes of using it to separate dispersed oil droplets from water — a major barrier to effectively cleaning up ocean oil spills.

We traditionally think of oil and water as immixable, but oil droplets can disperse in water and other liquids to the point that they are very difficult to collect. Salad dressings are often based in part on dispersed oil drops.

Separating oil and water

Dispersed oil droplets have a tendency to maintain a perfectly round shape, similar to the water on the cactus needle. So the researchers made cones out of substances that would attract oil, but not water — a substance called polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), which both attracts oil and is easy to mold.

They formed the PDMS into tiny spikes less than one millimeter long, placed them in rows on a plastic sheet, and then sprayed them with mixtures of oil and water.

The simple setup caught 99% of the oil that hit it. Oil droplets continuously attached to the cones, slid up their sides and coalesced at the plastic sheet.

The results were reported in the August 6 issue of the journal Nature Communications.

In theory, oil spill cleanup could make use of a similar setup to the one pictured to the right. Oil-contaminated water could be fed across large plates covered in PDMS cones which could separate out the oil, and suction on the back of the plates would vacuum it up, leaving clean water.

The toxic results of spilled oil

A single oil spill can be a major environmental catastrophe. The Deepwater Horizon oil rig owned by BP leaked over 200 million barrels of oil— more than half the amount imported to the U.S. in a single day — into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

It seems like that would be pretty easy to clean up: Send a cargo ship with a suction device to the area and suck up the oil. But in reality the oil forms droplets smaller than the width of a human hair.

Because of that, these large spills can have devastating effects — the Deepwater Horizon spill contaminated almost 700 miles of coastline and killed at least 8,000 marine birds, sea turtles, and marine mammals.

These events are catastrophic, and we haven't found a good way to clean the up and minimize the damage they do. Strangely, current cleanup efforts often involve the use of dispersants — which spreads the oil out in the ocean in hopes of diluting it and reducing its toxicity and therefore the harm it does to the immediate ecosystem.

But a recent study, published in the journal Environmental Pollution, showed the chemicals used to disperse oil during the Deepwater Horizon spill actually raised the toxicity of the local environment more than 50 times, and generated 35 million gallons of dispersed oil — more than the daily OPEC nation exports.

A problem without a solution

There are a variety of cleanup methods currently used to contain and clean up an oil spill, which include burning the oil, deploying vast lines of absorbent material to contain or soak up the oil, or dumping oil-eating microorganisms into the water.

While these methods work reasonably well under certain circumstances, none are particularly effective on oil that has dispersed.

By collecting these droplets with synthetic PSDM cactus needles, cleanup time could be dramatically reduced and the devastating impact of oil spills decreased.

Of course, some outside experts are skeptical this technology in its current state will actually work in a disaster.

Igor Mezić, a professor of mechanical engineering and oil spill expert at UC Santa Barbara, who didn't work on the study, estimated that "a 0.3-by-0.3 meter array of oil-attracting needles could clean 1 liter of oil-contaminated ocean water per second"— not enough, he told Science News, to clean up large oceanic oil spills.

The researchers agree that the technology requires further testing and scale-up to be able to handle environmental disasters like the Deepwater Horizon spill.

But if successful, this new technology is a phenomenal example of using lessons from nature to solve problems.

"This excellent piece of work provides a perfect example of first describing an interesting biological system and then taking it one step further by solving an engineering problem," Joanna Aizenberg of Harvard University, who was not involved with the study, told the BBC. "It shows not only how we can learn from nature but also how to apply that knowledge in bio-inspired design."

SEE ALSO: The Incredible Science Behind How Nature Solves Every Engineering Problem

Join the conversation about this story »

Every now and again, cosmologists decide that the universe needs a rethink.

For example, for the past century, they have likened it to an inflating balloon, decorated with galaxies. Now one theoretical physicist has pricked this textbook idea by coming up with an heretical suggestion — namely, that the universe is not expanding at all.

The idea that the universe is unchanging — a constant backdrop that alters only with our parochial view of the heavens — was long ago consigned to the dustbin, thanks to the work of astronomers such as Edwin Hubble in the 1920s.

Hubble was based at Mount Wilson in Los Angeles County, where the 100-inch Hooker Telescope, then the most powerful in the world, had just been completed. He used it to analyse the light that the constituent atoms of galaxies emitted or absorbed, which comes in characteristic colours, or frequencies.

He knew these frequencies would appear shifted towards the red end of the spectrum if the galaxies were moving away from us, just as we hear the pitch of a police siren drop as it zooms past.

Sure enough, the telescope revealed that most galaxies exhibit such a “red shift” — and, moreover, that the extent of the red shift became greater as the galaxies became more distant. The only conclusion was that the universe was expanding. From the point of view of the inhabitants of any one of its galaxies, it looked as if your neighbours were rushing away from you.

This idea might sound humdrum. But it marked the dawn of a revolutionary new view of the nature, origin, and fate of the universe, suggesting that billions of years ago, the universe must have been far denser than it is now, and that it started in a Big Bang.

Now that conventional thinking has been turned on its head in a paper by Prof Christof Wetterich at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. He points out that the tell-tale light emitted by atoms is also governed by the masses of their constituent particles, notably their electrons. The way these absorb and emit light would shift towards the blue part of the spectrum if atoms were to grow in mass, and to the red if they lost it.

Because the frequency or “pitch” of light increases with mass, Prof Wetterich argues that masses could have been lower long ago. If they had been constantly increasing, the colours of old galaxies would look red-shifted — and the degree of red shift would depend on how far away they were from Earth. “None of my colleagues has so far found any fault [with this],” he says.

Although his research has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed publication, Nature reports that the idea that the universe is not expanding at all — or even contracting — is being taken seriously by some experts, such as Dr HongSheng Zhao, a cosmologist at the University of St Andrews who has worked on an alternative theory of gravity.

“I see no fault in [Prof Wetterich’s] mathematical treatment,” he says. “There were rudimentary versions of this idea two decades ago, and I think it is fascinating to explore this alternative representation of the cosmic expansion, where the evolution of the universe is like a piano keyboard played out from low to high pitch.”

Prof Wetterich takes the detached, even playful, view that his work marks a change in perspective, with two different views of reality: either the distances between galaxies grow, as in the traditional balloon picture, or the size of atoms shrinks, increasing their mass. Or it’s a complex blend of the two. One benefit of this idea is that he is able to rid physics of the singularity at the start of time, a nasty infinity where the laws of physics break down. Instead, the Big Bang is smeared over the distant past: the first note of the ''cosmic piano’’ was long and low-pitched.

Harry Cliff, a physicist working at CERN who is the Science Museum’s fellow of modern science, thinks it striking that a universe where particles are getting heavier could look identical to one where space/time is expanding. “Finding two different ways of thinking about the same problem often leads to new insights,” he says. “String theory, for instance, is full of 'dualities’ like this, which allow theorists to pick whichever view makes their calculations simpler.”

If this idea turns out to be right — and that is a very big if — it could pave the way for new ways to think about our universe. If we are lucky, they might even be as revolutionary as Edwin Hubble’s, almost a century ago.

Roger Highfield is director of external affairs at the Science Museum

Find Us On Facebook — Business Insider: Science

Join the conversation about this story »

Quantum teleportation has taken another step forward, thanks to two complimentary experiments, one from ETH Zurich and one from the University of Tokyo. The researchers have demonstrated the most reliable yet version of quantum teleportation — what Nature is calling "quantum teleportation on demand."

A quick explanation of quantum teleportation, from the Nature abstract:

Generically, teleportation protocols proceed by three steps (Fig. 1): a pair of quantum systems in an entangled state is produced and distributed, one to a sender (Alice) and the other to a receiver (Bob); Alice makes a joint measurement of her member of the entangled pair and the unknown state she wishes to teleport, and sends the measurement result to Bob; Bob uses the measurement result he receives from Alice to manipulate his quantum system in a predetermined way.

After this manipulation, Bob's quantum system ends up being in the unknown state, that teleported from Alice to Bob, with the only direct communication being a classical message — Alice's measurement result.

Quantum teleportation has some pretty significant implications for communications; it works in a way not that dissimilar from the PGP-secured email we outlined here, except there's literally no physical link between the sender and receiver. (Read more about the implications for communications in Rebecca Boyle's excellent explainer.)

In the new experiments, conducted at the 100-micrometer scale and at temperatures of around 20 millikelvins, "Alice" and "Bob" from the example above are separated by about 5 mm. The University of Tokyo experiment managed to induce entanglement deterministically, which had only been done before at distances about 1,000 times smaller.

And those previous experiments had only managed to do so reliably about 1 percent of the time, compared to this experiment, which teleported a qubit about 40 percent of the time (and reproduced it on the other end with about an 88 percent accuracy). So this is a huge leap forward!

You can read the two papers here and here.

Find Us On Facebook — Business Insider: Science

Join the conversation about this story »

These mesmerizing GIFs of Jell-O falling, flattening, then bouncing back has been making the rounds of the Internet today. The original post, from the FreshPhotons Tumblr, has been re-blogged more than 3,000 times. 

These images may have you saying WTF, but really you should be asking WTP — P for physics. Watch the gelatin bounce, then read our explanation of the how and why behind gelatin's jiggle below:

The video came from ModernistCuisine YouTube Channel, taken at 6200 frames per second. They probably didn't use actual Jell-O, since the film says gelatin but the desserts properties are similar:

The amazing physics of this fruity desert come from its chemical make up. Originally gelatin is a flavorless protein, isolated originally from animal by-products but also found in seaweed. It gives the desert its wiggly texture. 

So... Is it a solid or a liquid? Actually.. it's neither. It's a colloid gel because it is actually liquid suspended in a matrix of solids. 

When the gelatin is heated up with water, sugar, and flavorings, it protein loses its shape and dissolves into the liquids. But, as it cools down, the protein falls out of solution and solidifies into a matrix of strands of protein and which trap the liquids into a solid-looking shape called a colloidal gel, according to a post from the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

These physical properties give the Jell-O a very high elastic limit — the point where the solid stops bouncing back from being deformed. That makes the squares of Jell-O bounce back to their original shape without breaking.

When you warm the Jello-O up again, by putting it in your body, it dissolves back into the water and turns liquid again. Boxed Jell-O has added flavorings and sugar, which interferes with the gelatin's ability to congeal, so it is typically softer than pure gelatin would be.

SEE ALSO: The Physics Of The Curve Ball

SEE ALSO: This Mesmerizing Video Will Convince You That Physics Can Be Fun

Join the conversation about this story »

Physicist Stephen Hawking says he thinks terminally ill patients should have access to assisted suicide, as long as there are checks to prevent abuse.

"I think those who have a terminal illness and are in great pain should have the right to choose to end their lives, and those who help them should be free from prosecution," Hawking told the BBC.

In the interview, which the Cambridge University professor gave in advance of the release of a documentary about his life, Hawking recalled his experience being on life support after pneumonia. His wife had the option of turning off the life support, but he wanted to continue living.

Assisted suicide is one of the most divisive issues around the globe. It is legal in Oregon, Washington and Vermont, as well as several European countries — but not in the United Kingdom, where Hawking comes from.

Proponents argue that allowing people who are terminally ill and in incredible pain to end their lives is compassionate. Opponents argue that legalizing assisted suicide will allow caregivers to pressure or trick the disabled, the elderly and the financially insolvent into consenting in order to avoid becoming burdens. [Top 10 Leading Causes of Death]

Hawking said that risk had to be addressed.

"There must be safeguards that the person concerned genuinely wants to end their life and are not being pressurized into it or have it done without their knowledge and consent as would have been the case with me," Hawking told BBC.

In recent years, Hawking has aired his views on a number of controversial subjects: He has argued that the Big Bang didn't need God and that human survival depends on space colonization.

Hawking, now 71 years old, is known for his theoretical work on the origin of the universe and black holes. He was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, at the age of 21. The neurodegenerative disease causes the nerve cells that control movement to degenerate, and is almost always fatal.

Though Hawking has been wheelchair bound for decades and lost his ability to speak without an electronic voice in 1985, that hasn't stopped him from working on physics. He published his iconic popular physics book, "A Brief History in Time," in 1988.

The documentary "Hawking" by Vertigo Films is slated for release in Britain on Sept. 20.

Follow Tia Ghose on Twitter and Google+.FollowLiveScience @livescience, Facebook& Google+. Original article on LiveScience.

• The 9 Biggest Unsolved Mysteries in Physics
• The 9 Most Bizarre Medical Conditions
• 8 Shocking Things We Learned From Stephen Hawking's Book

SEE ALSO: 11 Great Stephen Hawking Quotes For His 71st Birthday

Join the conversation about this story »

You are down to the wire with your kid's science fair project — It needs to get done and it needs to get done quick. That's we've provided a few great science experiments you can do at home, in one night, with things you most likely already have on hand. 

When trying to think of a science fair experiment to perform at home, keep in mind some simple rules. Some of the most impressive experiments are the simplest, and demonstrate fundamental scientific concepts.

These are also great rainy-day activities with your kids, even if there isn't a science fair in sight.  

QUESTION: Does the color of food affect whether or not we like the taste of the food?

Procedure: You can use any white food for this experiment, but we recommend plain yogurt. Divide the yogurt into four batches. Use food coloring to dye one batch red, one yellow, and one blue. The fourth batch is unchanged and acts as the control.

Put the same amount of each yogurt into unmarked plastic cups. Invite 10 friends over to your house. Give each friend one of each yogurt sample and ask them to identify the flavor and whether or not they like it.

The experiment will identify the link between color and taste (For example, does yellow-colored yogurt taste like lemon or banana flavor?), and if it affects appetite even if taste and smell are the same.

QUESTION: What is the best way to keep an ice cube from melting?

Procedure: Gather a bunch of different materials including waxed paper, aluminum foil, newspaper, and Styrofoam. Line a cardboard box with each of these materials, or other household items that might act as an insulator.

Place a cube of ice in each box  and record how long it takes to melt compared to when it is left out in the open air. The experiment will determine what makes the best ice box.

QUESTION: What's the fastest way to cool a can of soda?

Procedure: Grab four cans of soda at room temperature. Open the sodas and record the temperature, then reseal the top with plastic wrap and a rubber band.

Place one soda can in a bucket of ice, one in a bucket of water with ice, one in the freezer, and one in the freezer with a wet paper towel around it.

Check the temperature of the cans in five-minute intervals for 20 minutes.

QUESTION: Which type or brand of soap produces the most suds?

Procedure: Fill a container, such as a two-liter soda bottle, with two cups of water. Measure out one tablespoon of different types of soap, including laundry detergent, dish detergent, and hand soap, and dump into the bottle. Repeat this step with different brands of soap, such as Joy, Palmolive, and Dawn for different dish soaps.

Put the cap on the bottle and shake it for 30 seconds. Quickly measure the height of the suds and how long they take to dissipate to figure out which is bubblier. 

SEE ALSO: 15 Of The Coolest Science Fair Projects You've Ever Seen

Join the conversation about this story »

Thomson Reuters, which has been predicting the Nobel Winners for more than 10 years, released its annual list of potential winners Wednesday. 

The media outlet has successfully predicted 27 wins using data from the Web Of Science website, including how many times a given set of scientific literature has been cited — the more times a paper is cited, the more important and influential the work.

That doesn't mean these are the only contestants — there are other dark horse candidates that may not have made this list.

The Nobel prizes will be announced Oct. 7-14.

CHEMISTRY: A. Paul Alivisatos, Chad A. Mirkin, and Nadrian "Ned" C. Seeman for their contributions to the field of DNA Nanotechnology. Together, they've worked to design tiny objects made with DNA with applications in fields like nano-medicine.

A Paul Alivisatos is the Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the
University of California, Berkeley.
Chad A. Mirkin is a professor at Northwestern University.
Nadrian C. Seeman is at New York University. 

DNA is the molecule that makes up your genome. But it can also be manipulated to create tiny physical structures. That's where nanotechnology comes in. Tiny robots made of DNA can be used to move and control other tiny objects.

Supposedly Seeman was inspired to develop the field in the fall of 1980, while at a pub, inspired by the M. C. Escher woodcut "Depth." He envisioned using DNA to make a lattice-like structure that could support other larger molecules so that scientists could work with them. He didn't achieve that goal until 2009.

Why use DNA instead of another molecule? Strands of DNA fit together in a very specific way, since individual "base pairs"— the A, T, G, and C — can only bind to each other.

When they bind, these strands form strong, rigid structures.

Because we understand how these base pairs fit together, we can design DNA structures that will self-assemble based on these rules.

These DNA objects can even be changed after they are created, turning them into molecular robots.

CHEMISTRY: Bruce N. Ames for the invention of a test to determine how likely a compound is to create mutations, called the Ames test.

Bruce N Ames is affiliated with Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute and the University of California, Berkeley.

The Ames test easily and cheaply determines how "mutagenic" a compound is. These compounds could be anything from a new drug or a food additive, to a cleaning product or hair dye. If a compound is mutagenic, it's more likely to cause cancer, because a buildup of mutations is what makes cells form tumors.

The test uses the salmonella bacteria, which is much easier to manipulate and grow in the lab than animals are. The bacteria rely on a compound called histidine to thrive, because they have a mutated gene. In the lab, the bacteria are grown in the compound to be tested without histidine. If the bacteria are able to mutate back into their natural state and thrive without histidine, the compound they were exposed to is likely to be mutagenic, and have pushed the bacteria to make more mutations. Those mutations let it survive without histidine.

His findings using this test even led to some chemicals being withdrawn from commercial products.

Eventually, using his findings that man-made compounds aren't necessarily any worse than "natural" chemicals to argue against pesticide bans, led to a split with environmentalist groups.

CHEMISTRY: M.G. Finn, Valery V. Fokin, and K. Barry Sharpless for the development of a type of reaction that quickly and reliably joins small units together to form desired substances.

M.G. Finn is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Valery V. Fokin and K. Barry Sharpless are researchers at The Scripps Research Institute. 

The quick creation of substances by joining together smaller units is called "modular click chemistry." These types of reactions are meant to mimic how proteins and other compounds are put together in cells — at body temperature and normal pH — without making any toxic byproducts.

Often these natural reactions use enzymes, very specific proteins that fit like a lock and key onto the compounds they are changing. In these reactions there is only one favored outcome.

Click chemistry is an overarching idea or approach — one that could be used in countless applications from drug discovery and nanotechnology to applications in the lab when doing other research.

The idea was described by Sharpless in 2001. If selected, this would be Sharpless’ second Nobel Prize — he won the Chemistry prize in 2001. The Scripps institute owns a cadre of patents on the idea. 

Have you ever wondered how the legendary Stephen Hawking thinks about the universe? He has worked on some of the most mind-boggling physics and cosmology questions, like what's at the center of a black hole. This video from The Guardian's Made Simple series, animated by Scriberia, explains some of the main ideas of Hawking's complex theories from his book A Brief History of Time, in just 150 seconds.

Here are some of the highlights from the video.

What actually is at the center of a black hole? A singularity — or tons of matter packed into a tiny space. That high concentration of matter basically creates infinite gravity — that's why nothing can escape a black hole.

What happens when a black hole disappears? It explodes, and the explosion has a force equivalent to a million nuclear bombs.

Why is Stephen Hawking so well-known? His work suggests that at one point, everything in our universe was squeezed into one of those singularities. Then, it exploded into the universe as we know it now.

We found the video through Brain Pickings — check it out:

SEE ALSO: 11 Great Stephen Hawking Quotes For His 71st Birthday

Join the conversation about this story »

Scientists have created a new type of matter in which light actually acts like it has mass.

"The physics of what’s happening in these molecules is similar to what we see in the movies," Harvard physics professor Mikhail Lukin told the Harvard Gazette. "It’s not an inapt analogy to compare this to lightsabers."

Normally light doesn't interact with other light — when two lasers collide, nothing happens. By cooling light and shooting it through a cloud of atoms, however, the researchers were able to get the light to interact, even binding together to create molecules. Before this finding, the state of matter was only theoretical.

They did it by supercooling a bunch of rubidium atoms in a vacuum then hitting them with two photons of light. The photons entered separately but left the cloud of atoms together, having pushed and pulled each other through the cloud and bound into one packet.

As the individual photons moved through the atoms they excited then, then took that energy back as it moves away from the atom. The energy level transferred to the atoms is at level called a Rydberg state. Two atoms can't be in the same Rydberg state, so this slows the photon down as it passed from one atom to the next.

The photon traveling behind the first has to wait for the next atom to be ready to accept its energy and reenter the Rydberg state, so it is essentially twinned with the first photon, linking the two together.

They compared this to lightsabers from the Star Wars series of films, because the light in those make-believe weapons is able to interact with the physical world, cutting quickly through flesh. They actually aren't fully sure what kind of physics it would take to make a real lightsaber. 

When The Guardian's Ian Sample asked study first author Ofer Firstenberg about the lightsaber connection, he said: "I don't know what to say. The lightsaber is fictitious," he said. "We don't know what the physics is behind a lightsaber."

The matter is only created at very cold temperatures, and the machine weighs about a ton so don't expect lightsabers any time soon. The researchers aren't even sure what this new matter could be used for — they still need to study it.

"What it will be useful for we don’t know yet," Lukin said. "But it’s a new state of matter, so we are hopeful that new applications may emerge as we continue to investigate these photonic molecules’ properties."

One potential application is in quantum computing. And Lukin even said that in the future we might be able to make 3-D structures, like crystals, out of light. The finding was published Sept. 25 in the journal Nature.

SEE ALSO: See The World's First Images Of Actual Hydrogen Bonds

Join the conversation about this story »

Physics World, the monthly magazine of the Institute of Physics, has identified the most important physics discoveries of the past 25 years in an apparently arduous decision.

Physics World reporter Tushna Commissariat told the BBC that making the list was "harder than choosing Nobel laureates," adding that there have been "so many eye-popping findings that our final choice is, inevitably, open to debate."

The magazine, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary, also published four other lists of five, two of which we've included here.

Here are the most important discoveries of the past 25 years, in chronological order:

• Quantum teleportation (1992)
• The creation of the first Bose-Einstein condensate (1995)
• The accelerating expansion of the universe (1997)
• Experimental proof that neutrinos have mass (1998)
• The sighting of the Higgs boson at Cern (2012)

Here five future discoveries that could change the world:

• Hadron therapy - targeting tumors with miniature, table-top particle accelerators.
• Quantum computing
• Graphene - for electronics and super-strong materials.
• Nanoscopic "superlenses" using evanescent light.
• Power on the go - kinetic energy harvesting using triboelectrics.

Join the conversation about this story »

Francois Englert, 80, and Peter Higgs, 84, won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for the theory of how particles acquire mass.  

Englehart and Higgs separately proposed this theory —what became known as the Higgs mechanism — in 1964. The theory also rests on the existence of the Higgs particle — a subatomic particle that provides proof of an invisible field that gives mass to matter. 

But nearly five decades would pass before scientists could confirm the existence of a Higgs boson. 

On July 4, 2012, physicists using the Large Hardon Collider at CERN announced they had found a new particle that had the properties of the long-sought boson. The discovery was hailed as the biggest scientific breakthrough of this century.  

Higgs, now a professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh, is notoriously modest about his involvement with the particle that bears his name. 

As the Guardian writes: "Higgs plays down his role in developing the idea, but there is no dismissing the importance of the theory itself."

Join the conversation about this story »

British physicist Peter Higgs along with Belgian physicist Francois Englert won the 2013 Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for the theory of how particles acquire mass, proposed nearly fifty years ago.  

In this theory, a particle obtains mass through interactions with the Higgs particle. 

This idea was confirmed in July 2012 by the discovery of a Higgs particle at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC smashes together beams of protons at nearly the speed of light. 

In a video posted by Science Museum, Higgs explains how the largest particle collider in the world works. 

Join the conversation about this story »

Early Tuesday morning, the Royal Swedish Academy of Science awarded this year's Nobel Prize in Physics to two theoretical physicists — Peter Higgs and François Englert — who each independently predicted the existence of the Higgs boson in 1964.

The Higgs boson is impossibly difficult to explain. But the fact of the matter is, if the Higgs boson did not exist, we would not be able to explain why fundamental particles, like electrons, have mass.

Without it, we could not exist. The universe could not exist.

Right now, we are all surrounded by something called the Higgs field. The Higgs field is always on. It is invisible to us, but within the field are little bosons that are popping up and vanishing all the time. Particles obtain their mass by plowing through the field.

"If the field wasn't around you, the electrons in your body would not have mass, and you would disintegrate," said Paul Padley, a physicist at Rice University who has been involved with experiments to discover the Higgs boson.

That's probably why the Higgs boson was nicknamed the "God particle," a term that the majority of physicists abhor, particularly Mr. Higgs who is an atheist.

There have been lots of alternative explanations to the Higgs boson. Ideas have come and gone in the 50 years that it took to actually find the particle bearing the name of today's Nobel Prize winner.

On July 4, 2012, physicists announced that they had discovered a Higgs boson using the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Padley is one of thousands of scientists who contributed to the discovery, but a limit of three people can win the Nobel prize, so it went to the first people to theorize the process of how particles obtain mass — finding the particle is proof that this process is real.

Below you can find a lightly edited transcript of our interview with Padley, who describes the science behind the elusive particle and the significance of its discovery.

Business Insider: Can we say for certain that scientists found a Higgs boson?

Paul Padley: Initially there was hesitation — we knew we had found something. But at this point CERN and the Nobel Prize committee have basically declared that this is a Higgs boson.

BI: You were involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson — as were thousands of other physicists on the experimental side. Do you believe it was fair to recognize just two recipients and why do you think this decision was made?

PP: They [Englert and Higgs] published the first papers on this Higgs mechanism. There are other people who contributed theoretically, but they were a bit later. The Nobel Prize committee is very strict that it just goes by order of publication. I don't know how they could ever award a Nobel Prize for the experimental work. The experiments are worthy of the Nobel Prize, but the current rules of the Nobel Prize committee are that they only give it to up to three individuals, and we're a lot more than three individuals.

BI: What is the biggest misconception about the Higgs particle?

PP: Everybody has trouble understanding exactly what it is. It's really hard to explain it because it's quite intricate mathematically. Fundamentally, physics is a mathematical science. And when you try to explain it using English, or any language other than mathematics, you're going to come up short. In order to learn the mathematics behind the Higgs mechanism, you really have to go to graduate school in physics.

The underlying theoretical framework is something called relativistic quantum field theory. Take quantum mechanics, put special relativity on top of that, and then you have to apply that quantum mechanics and special relativity to the Higgs field. It's another level of abstraction mathematically from regular quantum mechanics. And that's actually the right framework to do things in.

BI: How did physicists know was properties they were looking for to confirm the existence of a Higgs particle?

PP: In the Large Hadron Collider, we take two protons and smash them together and scan through the debris looking to see what came flying out. When you create a Higgs particle, you don't measure it directly. It falls apart right away. We troll through the data looking for decay patterns that would correspond to something like a Higgs boson. For example, the theory predicts that the Higgs boson would decay to two photons some fraction of the time. So we look to see if we see these two photon decays, and we do see that.

BI: What role did you play in the discovery?

PP: I worked for a number of years on helping to construct and commission the CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment and participated in the analysis of the data. In particular, at Rice here we helped contribute some of the electronics that selects Muons — a type of fundamental particle that comes flying out of the detector. One of the ways in which the Higgs boson was discovered was by measuring it decay into two Z bosons. Those two Z bosons subsequently sometimes decay into muons. There was a large U.S. contribution — over a dozen universities and 100 people — that helped build the muon system.

BI: What's the practical benefit of this discovery?

PP: There's often a huge delay between when the theoretical idea is confirmed and when it turns into practical devices. We're at the forefront of knowledge. We're just trying to understand the basic laws of physics. Hopefully some day those will be put to good use. I think the immediate practical benefit is the technological advances that we have to make in order to do these experiments. These experiments are so technically challenging that sometimes we have to invent technology.

SEE ALSO: THE SUMMIT: The Story Of The Deadliest Day On The World's Most Dangerous Mountain

Join the conversation about this story »

On Tuesday, Peter Higgs, of the United Kingdom, and François Englert, of Belgium, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in physics for theorizing how particles obtain mass in separate papers published in 1964.

Englert, 80, and his colleague Robert Brout, who died in 2011, were actually first to describe the invisible field, now known as the Higgs field, that pervades all of space and slows particles down, in turn, giving them mass.

Higgs' paper came along several weeks later, although it was the first to predict the existence of a new particle that exists within the invisible field. This became known as the Higgs boson.

Three other theoretical physicists — Carl Hagen, Gerald Guralnik, and Tom Kibble — also published a paper in 1964 about how some elementary particles get their mass. All three are still alive, and therefore eligible for the Nobel, but none of them were recognized for their work.

The Royal Swedish Academy, which selects the Nobel Prize winners, says that a maximum of three living people can split the prize. No exceptions. It would be impossible to recognize Hagen, Guralnik, and Kibble without bending the rules.

"The Nobel Prize committee is very strict that it just goes by order of publication," said Paul Padley, a physicist at Rice University who has been involved with experiments to discover the Higgs boson."They [Englert and Higgs] published the first papers on this Higgs mechanism. There are other people who contributed theoretically, but they were a bit later."

Hagen, a professor of physics at the University of Rochester, wishes the committee had strayed from the rulebook in this case.

"The Swedes have their rules, but it was proposed to have a wider set of rules,"Hagen told Democrat & Chronicle."I would have hoped that they would've found in their heart of hearts to include all five of us."

Kibble seemed equally disappointed. He told Reuters: "Our paper was unquestionably the last of the three to be published in Physical Review Letters in 1964 — though we naturally regard our treatment as the most thorough and complete."

And Guralni? The professor at Brown University, said to The Washington Post that "it stings a little," but also views Englert and Higgs' recognition as "a great day for science."

There were thousands of scientists involved in the actual discovery of the Higg boson at CERN last year, a monumental achievement that confirmed the theories presented in 1964. But again, the Nobel's committee strict limit of three makes it difficult to recognize those on the experimental side.

"I don't know how they could ever award a Nobel Prize for the experimental work," said Padley. "The experiments are worthy of the Nobel Prize, but the current rules of the Nobel Prize committee are that they only give it to up to three individuals, and we're a lot more than three individuals."

SEE ALSO: What Is A Higgs Boson?

SEE ALSO: THE SUMMIT: The Story Of The Deadliest Day On The World's Most Dangerous Mountain

Join the conversation about this story »

Peter Higgs had already made it clear that he would be off the grid when the Nobel Prize in Physics was announced on Tuesday.

So when a former neighbor pulled up in her car as he was retiring from lunch that afternoon and asked if he had heard the news, he responded: "'Oh, what news?"

So she told him.

Higgs, 84, along with Francois Englert, 80, split a $1.2 million prize for their theory on how particles obtain mass, which they separately proposed in 1964.

Their ideas were confirmed nearly 50 years later when scientists announced they had found a Higgs boson— the subatomic particle that the theory predicted — in July 2012.

The Nobel Committee unsuccessfully tried to reach Higgs by phone on the day of the announcement.

"Peter Higgs was not reached by Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences yet, email sent," a Twitter account associated with the committee said shortly after the prize was awarded.

The retired professor, who does not own a cell phone, had been enjoying a meal of draft beer, soup, and sea trout in Edinburgh's port area when the announcement was made, according to the The Telegraph.

"I conveniently got out of the way while the telephone messages mounted up," Higgs told Bloomberg.

SEE ALSO: Here Are The Tortuous Things You Had To Do To Become The First American Astronaut

Join the conversation about this story »

Three giant mirrors that have been installed on a Norwegian mountainside are about to be used for the first time, bringing sunlight to a small town for the first time during winter.

Rjukan, located at the bottom of a valley floor in Southern Norway, does not receive direct sunlight between September and March because the sun's rays are blocked by the surrounding high mountains.

The mirrors, which cost around $825,000 to build, were mounted on the steep slopes back in July using helicopters. Together, the mirrors measure about 550 square feet, which is about the size of a two-car garage.

Each mirror is equipped with sensors that, when turned on, automatically adjust to follow the sun, reflecting its rays down into Rjukan's main square and lighting it through the day.

"The square will become a sunny meeting place in a town otherwise in shadow," according to the project's official website.

Rjukan's roughly 3,000 people are already excited about the project — taking pictures in the sun puddle according to the Reuters video below.

PHOTOS: Tour The Gorgeous Florida Estate Where Thomas Edison Spent His Winters

SEE ALSO: 18 Stunning Pictures Of Yosemite National Park

Join the conversation about this story »

A galaxy known as "z8_GND_5296"— the red blob in the box to the right — has just been confirmed as the oldest known galaxy we've seen, formed just 700 million years after the universe's birth.

The galaxy seems to be pumping out new stars much faster — hundreds of times — than modern galaxies like our Milky Way.

The findings were reported Wednesday, Oct. 23, in the journal Nature.

Most astronomers believe that the universe was created 13.7 billion years ago in the "Big Bang," when an unimaginably dense clump of matter exploded outwards.

For around 300,000 years after the Big Bang, the universe was filled with a hot, dense fog of plasma that was opaque to ultraviolet light. The universe only became truly transparent during an epoch known as known as "reionization"— between 200 million and 1 billion years after the Big Bang — when the first stars and galaxies formed. Ultraviolet light could be seen through the fog of hydrogen gas for the first time.

Scientists observe the faint light from distant galaxies to determine their distance, and therefore, age. The light from a galaxy is redshifted, or stretched to longer wavelengths, by the expansion of the universe. So, the farther the galaxy, the greater the redshift.

Young galaxies in the universe can often be identified by the emission of Lyman-alpha radiation generated by hydrogen gas because it produces the brightest ultraviolet emission line. However, the Lyman-alpha line of hydrogen emitted by older galaxies is often hard to see because it gets red-shifted out of the spectrum that most telescopes can detect. Although there are many galaxy candidates with high redshifts, it's hard to confirm the existence of those with a redshift that is greater than seven. 

Now, a new, more sensitive instrument on the Keck I telescope has allowed researchers to see the lyman-alpha emission of one galaxy with a redshift of 7.51, meaning it was formed when the universe was only 700 million years old. This is a new distance record.

There are potentially many older galaxies out there, but their existence can't be confirmed due to the limitations of measuring galaxy redshift. As our instruments improve, including the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in the next decade, we will be able to positively identify even more distant galaxies.  

SEE ALSO: Here Are The Tortuous Things Men Withstood To Become The First American Astronauts

SEE ALSO: Crazy Photo Will Make You Feel Like You're Flying Through A Crater On Mars

Join the conversation about this story »

The boomerang is one of humanity's oldest heavier-than-air flying inventions.

King Tutankhamen, who lived during the 14th century BC, owned an extensive collection, and aboriginal Australians used boomerangs in hunting and warfare at least as far back as 10,000 years ago. The world's oldest boomerang, discovered in Poland's Carpathian Mountains, is estimated to be more than 20,000 years old.

Anthropologists theorize that the first boomerangs were heavy projectile objects thrown by hunters to bludgeon a target with speed and accuracy. They were most likely made out of flattened sticks or animal tusks, and weren't intended to return to their thrower — that is, until someone unknowingly carved the weapon into just the right shape needed for it to spin. A happy accident, huh?

Darren Tan is a PhD student in physics at Oxford University. He donned a ninja suit as the "Science Samurai" in a video for high school science students about boomerangs. In his video, he demonstrates how to fashion a boomerang from three strips of cardboard, by crossing and stapling them together so that they jut radially outward from the center.

Proper wing design produces the lift needed for boomerang's flight, says John "Ernie" Esser, a boomerang hobbyist who works as a postdoctoral researcher at University of California and Irvine's Math Department. "The wings of a boomerang are designed to generate lift as they spin through the air," Esser said. "This is due to the wings' airfoil shape, their angle of attack and the possible addition of beveling on the underside of the wings."

But a phenomenon known as gyroscopic precession is the key to making a returning boomerang come back to its thrower. "When the boomerang spins, one wing is actually moving through the air faster than the other [relative to the air] as the boomerang is moving forward as a whole," explains Tan. "As the top wing is spinning forward, the lift force on that wing is greater and results in unbalanced forces that gradually turns the boomerang." The difference in lift force between the two sides of the boomerang produces a consistent torque that makes the boomerang turn. It soars through the air and gradually loops back around in a circle.

Protip: To really make a boomerang soar, hold it vertically and give it a good spin — and be careful where you aim!

Find us on Facebook: The Science Behind A Mesmerizing GIF Of Bouncing Jell-O

Join the conversation about this story »

Liquid nitrogen can do some really cool things. We found these videos from Jefferson Labs on Mental Floss. The team there just loves playing with liquid nitrogen. They have a whole series of  YouTube videos.

We put together some awesome GIFs from their videos that demonstrate some of the coolest (heh heh) liquid nitrogen properties.

Liquid nitrogen is made of two nitrogen atoms bonded into a molecule, just like the nitrogen in the air. The only difference is that it is a liquid instead of a gas because it's kept colder than its boiling point — the temperature at which liquid turns into a gas.

Liquid nitrogen is really cold — it boils at negative 321 degrees Fahrenheit. (Water boils at 212 Fahrenheit, which is why you need to heat it to turn it into steam.)

So because liquid nitrogen is so much colder than room temperature, if you spill it then it instantly boils and turns into a gas. Makes for an easy cleanup.

But if you spill it on a smooth surface, you could have other problems:

Something called the Leidenfrost Effect makes liquid nitrogen skitter across surfaces like this, as the liquid touching the smooth surface boils and holds the rest of the droplet away from the warmth.

The Leidenfrost Effect is a cool phenomenon that happens when something really cold — like liquid nitrogen — comes into contact with something much hotter than its boiling point. A layer of vapor forms between the liquid nitrogen and the hotter surface that keeps the liquid nitrogen from boiling right away.

You would expect that touching something so cold would mean instant frostbite. But the Leidenfrost Effect can protect you as long as you don't stay in contact with the liquid nitrogen for too long. The GIF below is actually from a NerdRage video, "Hand vs. Liquid Nitrogen — Revisited"

Even pouring small amount of liquid nitrogen into your hand won't hurt, as long as you get a few seconds of recovery time between pours.

Liquid nitrogen can also make things like this Koosh ball implode. The volume of the gas inside the ball decreases when it gets colder, so it makes sense that the koosh ball shrinks as it gets colder.

The liquid nitrogen leaves the ball so cold that it shatters when its dropped on the table.

Nitrogen gas produced by the boiling liquid is heavier than air, so it decreases the amount of oxygen in the air. You can see it snuff out a flame (which requires oxygen) as the N2 gas fills the bottom of this container.

SEE ALSO: A Man Is In A Coma After Liquid Nitrogen At A Jägermeister Pool Party Created A Toxic Brew

SEE ALSO: 19 Scientists Share Their Favorite Element

Join the conversation about this story »