Almost exactly 200 years ago, French physicist Sadi Carnot determined the maximum efficiency of heat engines. The Carnot ...

The department of physics has introduced a new approach to teaching 100-level physics classes that encourages students to work together in groups to solve problems in class. The method known as ...

A coronal mass ejection (CME) in a model; the CME is the gray cloud toward the lower right. The first large-scale, physics-based space weather prediction model is transitioning from research into ...

Magnetic reconnection is a fundamental phenomenon in magnetic confinement fusion as well as in space plasmas. The fingerprint of reconnection is the formation of intense current sheets and the release ...

Particle physics experiments are huge—they have to be, in order to accelerate particles with enough energy to properly study them. The Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland is nearly 17 miles around, ...

Nanomachines will depend on our knowledge of friction, heat transfer and energy dissipation at the atomic level for their very survival. In the scramble to revolutionize the world with nanotechnology ...

While movies show Earth as existing in a calm, pristine corner of the universe, in reality the near-Earth space environment is dangerous and dynamic. On any given day, hot charged particles and blobs ...

Until recently, scientists had never detected black holes in the “mass gap”—now, particle physicists are exploring ideas beyond the Standard Model that could explain them. On May 21, 2019, a ripple in ...