Research Highlights

Data on the reflection of seismic waves reveal chambers of frozen magma below the Earth's crust, supporting the theory that the crust was generated by multiple magmatic bodies.

The miniaturization of electronic components continues apace with the demonstration of a transistor made entirely of carbon nanotubes.

Photonic measurements carried out on three-dimensional quasicrystals reveal surprisingly simple, yet potentially valuable, optical properties.

Electromagnetic fluctuations within the heart of a controlled magnetic reconnection experiment could provide an explanation for the unusual rates observed, and provide another piece in the puzzle of how magnetic fields couple to plasmas.

For the computer industry, there is nothing like silicon. Thanks to a new twist to an old plot, this could remain so in the future.

For two atoms to react they must first collide. The use of light to control collisions between ultracold atoms provides a potentially useful tool for studying chemical reactions.

Discovery of a distinct class of plasma vortex at the cusps of the Earth's magnetosphere provides new insight into the nature of turbulence in magnetized plasmas.

A new record has been set for the acceleration of particles in a plasma wakefield — an energy gain of more than 2.7 GeV in a 10-cm-long device.

Quantum physics is full of counterintuitive twists, but a proposed concept in quantum information theory could help to relieve some of the perplexities.

Honeybees can be trained to locate landmines with an accuracy of better than 97.5%. Tracking them with laser-based radar could provide a fast and effective means of clearing the world’s minefields.

The orbits of extrasolar planets have greater eccentricities than those of Solar System planets. Could this be attributed to the effects of stellar jets and winds?

Numerical models are offering fresh insight into flame physics, and are set to become much more than just a supplement to theory and experiment.

Neutrinos originating from inside the Earth have at last been detected — a landmark discovery that will lead to a deeper understanding of the radioactive make-up of our planet, and of its overall heat budget.

Apart from applications, branched nanostructures can also be used to explore fundamental issues such as the wave–particle duality of electrons. In a tetrapod transistor, an electron appears to be true to its nature.

Juggling microparticles with optical tweezers can create three-dimensional quasicrystals with tuneable photonic bandgaps.

Combing through the data from the explosion of a neutron star, astrophysicists have found X-ray oscillations that could provide the first direct clues to the inner workings of these mysterious stellar objects.

New developments in the field of laser physics could at last make extreme ultraviolet wavelengths accessible for high-precision spectroscopy.

Components installed for the ATLAS detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider report their first signals — not yet the Higgs boson, but the tell-tale tracks of cosmic muons.

Complementary signatures of inflation that could be found in the cosmic background radiation and through the direct detection of gravitational waves would pinpoint how the early Universe evolved.

Light transmitted by an optical cavity containing a trapped atom shows a certain selfishness — one photon prevents another from entering the cavity.