For the first time, researchers have played matchmaker between two specific atoms, joining them together to form a molecule. Typically, chemists make molecules by mixing up many constituent atoms, ...

How materials behave depends on the interactions between countless atoms. You could see this as a giant group chat in which atoms are continuously exchanging quantum information. Researchers from ...

Sharing is exciting: Two or more atoms in an optical cavity can absorb a single photon, according to theory. (Courtesy: Physics World) When two atoms are placed in a small chamber enclosed by mirrors, ...

Physicists have just upped their ante: Not only have they split atoms but, even trickier, they've put them back together. Their secret? Quantum physics. A team of scientists was able to "split" an ...

One morning last week, I arrived on campus at the same time as a colleague from the History department who studies the history of physics. As we were walking toward the center of campus from the ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about physics, science, academia, and pop culture. In a previous post, I went on for a bit about how the cool patterns of ...

Researchers have created the world's "thinnest unsupported gold" that is just two atoms thick. A team from the University of Leeds in the U.K. say the material measures only 0.47 nanometers in ...

Bigger than a bacterium: comparing the size of a bacterium to that of a giant molecule made from weakly bound Rydberg atoms. The separation between the two atoms is about 1 micron. (Courtesy: Heiner ...

How materials behave depends on the interactions between countless atoms. You could see this as a giant group chat in which atoms are continuously exchanging quantum information. Researchers have now ...

Physicists have just upped their ante: Not only have they split atoms but, even trickier, they've put them back together. Their secret? Quantum physics. A team of scientists was able to "split" an ...