Physics & Math / Light

Big Idea: Physicists Carve a Niche in Time

Six years ago, physicists hid an object behind an invisibility cloak for the first time. Now they're cloaking actual events. 05.07.2012

Is Einstein's Greatest Work All Wrong—Because He Didn't Go Far Enough?

From a farmhouse in the English countryside, gentleman scientist Julian Barbour plots to take relativity to its logical extreme and redefine the very nature of gravity, space, and time. 05.01.2012

7 Animals That Harnessed Nanotechnology Long Before Humans

The animal kingdom boasts many an impressive form, from arching giraffe necks to spoon-shaped bird beaks to gigantic beetle claws. But evolution has worked on much smaller scales too, producing nanostructures that help animals climb, slither, camouflage, flirt, and thrive. 04.03.2012

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Clouds

Some are visible only after sunset, none are created by seeding, and one chewed on a fighter pilot for half an hour before spitting him out, alive. 01.30.2012

#11: Scientist of the 
Arab Spring

At Caltech, Ahmed Zewail is a world-class chemist. In Egypt, he is a national hero. 01.03.2012

#88: Visualizing the Violent Cosmos

A new map shows the hotspots of energetic activity in our galaxy and beyond. 12.27.2011

This Is What It Looks Like When Black Holes Collide

“Pictures like these are worth a billion pieces of data,” says legendary physicist Kip Thorne. 09.19.2011

Cosmic Eye Exam Shows Jaw-Dropping Accuracy of Webb Telescope's Optics

The scope's main mirror must hold its shape even down to temperatures near absolute zero. 09.03.2011

5 Questions for the Galaxy Finder

Jeff Cooke looked heavenward and discovered Golden Boy, which showed astronomers how galaxies collide and merge. 08.31.2011

Anton Zeilinger Dangled From Windows, Teleported Photons, and Taught the Dalai Lama

What started out as totally intellectual, impractical experiments could help pave the way for a revolution in computing. 08.29.2011

Invisibility Cloaks Hit the Big Time

"This is not simply an illusion," says the creator of one cloak. "Even scientific instruments will not be able to detect the object." 06.22.2011

How to Build the Ultimate Naval Defense: Uber-Powerful Lasers

The U.S. Navy wants to put powerful lasers on its ships to shoot down artillery shells and even cruise missiles at the speed of light (and really, who wouldn't). But there are a few scientific details to sort out before sailors can deploy the beams. "First we want to make sure the physics is right before throwing buckets of salt water over the thing," says Ed Pogue. 06.21.2011

The 100 Top Science Stories of 2010

Every year DISCOVER sorts through the scientific accomplishments of the past 12 months, and assembles a list of the coolest experiments, most brilliant discoveries, and most world-changing events. As you page through the countdown to the #1 science story, we think you'll come to the same conclusion we did: 2010 was quite a year. 12.16.2010

4-D Microscopy Captures the Movements of Individual Atoms

New technique shows hearbeat-like "drumming" in atoms in graphite and may one day let us see reactions in living cells 04.21.2010

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Light

The first light in the universe, the light used to push spacecraft, and the light produced by kicking the head of a walrus. 04.09.2010

Our Brightest Hopes for Keeping Up With Moore's Law

Scientists are trying out strange technological tricks to make computer chips tinier and more powerful. 03.01.2010

8 Marine Creatures that Light Up the Sea

How bioluminescence makes the ocean go round. 02.01.2010

Are Black Holes the Architects of the Universe?

Long known for their obliterating power, black holes may also have been a creative force: New evidence suggests that they gave order to the chaotic mess produced by the Big Bang. 01.04.2010

Discover Interview: Miles of Wire, Reams of Print-Outs, and a Giant Discovery

Jocelyn Bell Burnell worked through old-school equipment and old-school sexism to find the first pulsar—the beginning of an extraordinary life in science. 12.29.2009

#79: Sonic Black Hole Created in Lab

No atoms could escape the void within the cloud: “It’s like trying to swim upstream in a river whose current is faster than you.” 12.22.2009

#83: Like Magnets, Light Can Attract and Repel Itself

The attraction and repulsion effects make up what is known as the “optical force,” a newly observed phenomenon that works on microscopic scales. 12.21.2009

What Is This... A Hi-Tech Pin Cushion?

Hint: There are a lot fewer of them now than there were a few years ago. 11.18.2009

Visual Science: Polishing a Cosmic Spyglass

A tune-up for one of the most sophisticated imaging devices ever made 11.02.2009

Visual Science: A Stimulating View

Researchers are using a new laser-like technique for looking inside of tissues. 10.23.2009

Set Your CT Scanner to "Kill" and Look Inside Some Fossils

Penetrating chunks of amber and ancient rock, powerful new imaging machines render 3-D portraits of fossil creatures concealed for millions of years. 08.26.2009

The Universe's Most Powerful Magnets

Nuclear fusion reactors, particle colliders, and other big-science rely on giant magnetic fields. But nature's most powerful magnets blow even our best efforts away. 08.21.2009

3-D Scanning: How to Put the Real World Into Your Computer

The recent imaging of two 300-million-year-old proto-spiders was just the tip of the iceberg: Here are 12 new scanning technologies that are bringing amazing 3-D images into Hollywood, medical care—and home PCs. 08.12.2009

Countdown to Fusion: National Ignition Facility in Pictures

Researchers at Livermore National Lab expect to be producing energy with a controlled, self-sustaining fusion reaction within three years. 04.14.2009

Metamaterial Revolution: The New Science of Making Anything Disappear

Engineers are working with metamaterials to create super-microscopes, optical computers, and yes, invisibility cloaks. 03.10.2009

What is This? A Psychedelic Place Mat?

Actually, you'd be more likely to see this pattern in your wine glass. 01.14.2009

Is Quantum Mechanics Controlling Your Thoughts?

Science's weirdest realm may be responsible for photosynthesis, our sense of smell, and even consciousness itself. 01.13.2009

#7: Invisibility Becomes More than Just a Fantasy

Researchers are cloaking materials from light, sound, and even matter itself. 12.21.2008

#26: Sun Catcher Promises Cheaper Solar Power

Using laser technology, scientists build a low-cost solar concentrator. 12.17.2008

#43: Next-Level Quantum Spookiness

Photons instantaneously send signals over 11 miles. Einstein remains perplexed. 12.14.2008

The Most Amazing Things the Sky Can Do

Rainbows, mirages, halos, and more: Tim Herd explains the gamut of visual wonders in the book Kaleidoscope Sky. 12.04.2008

Nevermind The Black Hole Hoopla: Here's How the LHC Could Blow Up the World (of Physics)

The collider might find extra dimensions, dark matter, some unknown unknown, and—just maybe—nothing at all. 09.10.2008

An Essential, Concise History of the LHC, 2002–2008

DISCOVER's been all over the Large Hadron Collider since it was just a big hole in the ground. 09.10.2008

Visual Science: The Laser to End All Lasers

Scientists are completing the world's largest laser—but will it work? 06.25.2008

One Hundred Movies on Just One Disk

Holographic digital storage will let consumers store a DVD library on a single disk. 05.08.2008

Is That a Gun in Your Pocket or Are You a Size 2?

Radar peers beneath clothes to find weapons—and the perfect pair of jeans. 03.31.2008

Einstein Didn't Grok His Own Revolution

He thought black holes and quantum mechanics were too weird to be true. 03.10.2008

Teleportation? Very Possible. Next Up: Time Travel.

Some of the most far-out sci-fi is eminently do-able. 02.28.2008

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Relativity

Galileo invented it, Einstein understood it, and Eddington saw it. 02.25.2008

58. Discovery Channel 2020: Living-Cell TV

"Hyperlenses" and "superlenses" could let us watch living cells in real time. 01.17.2008

Solar Power, At Last?

The long-sought mechanism for a superior solar cell may now be at hand. 11.16.2007

Amazing Tiny Photos

The best microphotography of the year brings the very small world into very sharp focus. 10.05.2007

Microscopy Approaches Fundamental Limits

If God can’t pin down tiny atoms, what hope do mere mortals have? 06.13.2007

Einstein vs. the Nobel Prize

Why the Nobel Committee repeatedly dissed this "world-bluffing Jewish physicist" 09.28.2006

How To Make Anything Look Like a Toy

It's a small world after all that frame tilting. 07.01.2006

Sky Lights

Scientists celebrate 100 years of understanding cosmic speed limits 12.01.2005

Sky Lights

Scientists celebrate a strange universe in which space can bend and time can stop 05.01.2005

Sky Lights

Even in the darkest depths of space, there's no escaping light pollution 04.28.2005

Light Flight

01.02.2004

The Next Photography Revolution

Here comes a digital-camera chip that could change everything 12.01.2002

Future Tech

Scientists reverse the laws of optics in a quest to create the perfect lens 04.01.2002

Photography, Old & New Again

Photography, Old & New Again 02.01.2002

Physics

Year In Science 01.13.2002

Trapping Light

This is the future, and it moves at 186,000 miles per second. 04.01.2001

Sky Lights

What's that light in the western sky? Hint: It's not ET 03.01.2001

They Invented it

02.01.2001

The Year in Science: Technology 1997

Slow Light 01.01.1998

Let There Be Matter

12.01.1997

X-ray Dreams

Scientists of all stripes yearn for the incredibly powerful beacon of an X-ray laser. Charles Rhodes wants one so badly that he's willing to reinvent physics to get it. 07.01.1995