Emily Conover

Washington, D.C.

Physics Reporter at Science News

Physics reporter at @sciencenews. Find me on threads (@emcconover) and bluesky (@econover.bsky.social) She/her

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Articles

Muons’ magnetism matches theory, easing an enduring physics conundrum

3 days ago | sciencenews.org | Emily Conover

One of the most enduring mysteries of particle physics may be finally resolved, two new studies suggest. The oddities of muons, subatomic particles that are relatives of electrons, are starting to make sense. Muons have an internal magnetism that scientists have struggled to pin down: Measurements of a magnetic quirk of the particles have long clashed with theoretical predictions.
Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ plan has a major obstacle: Physics

2 weeks ago | sciencenews.org | Emily Conover

In sports, the best offense is often a good defense. It’s not clear if the same applies in nuclear war. In the face of nuclear threats from adversaries like Russia, China and North Korea, some politicians are clamoring for a system to reliably protect the United States from incoming missiles.
Scientists used a levitating magnet to hunt for dark matter

2 weeks ago | sciencenews.org | Emily Conover

In a first-of-its-kind test, scientists used a levitated magnet to search for dark matter, the unidentified substance believed to be present throughout the cosmos. If dark matter is made up of ultralight particles, it could behave like a wave that would subtly jostle the magnet. Although no signs of such jostling appeared, a few tweaks could improve the experiment’s sensitivity to dark matter’s potential influence, the researchers report in a paper to be published in Physical Review Letters.
The unsung women of quantum physics get their due

2 weeks ago | sciencenews.org | Emily Conover

Women in the History of Quantum PhysicsEdited by Patrick Charbonneau, Michelle Frank, Margriet van der Heijden and Daniela MonaldiCambridge Univ., $49.99In the 1920s, when quantum mechanics was young, physicists Jane Dewey and Laura Chalk performed some of the first experimental tests of the theory, based on a phenomenon called the Stark effect.
As quantum mechanics turns 100, a new revolution is under way

2 weeks ago | sciencenews.org | Emily Conover

One hundred years ago on a quiet, rocky island, German physicist Werner Heisenberg helped set in motion a series of scientific developments that would touch nearly all of physics. There, Heisenberg developed the framework of quantum mechanics. At the time, quantum theory was just a loose collection of ideas about the quirks of physics on the scale of atoms. In June 1925, the 23-year-old Heisenberg cloistered himself on the island of Helgoland, in search of relief from a nasty attack of hay fever.
Physicists explain how cheese rosettes form

1 month ago | sciencenews.org | Emily Conover

The Swiss cheese known as Tête de Moine or “monk’s head” is served in a peculiar fashion. A specially designed blade scrapes off thin slices of the cheese wheel, rotating around its surface like a hand of a clock. This process forms thin, frilly cheese rosettes. Now, scientists have uncovered the physics behind these cheese flowers. It all comes down to the friction between the cheese and the blade, physicist Jishen Zhang and colleagues report in a paper accepted to Physical Review Letters.
Physics explains why clapping sounds like it does

1 month ago | snexplores.org | Emily Conover

acoustic: Having to do with sound or hearing. colleague: Someone who works with another; a co-worker or team member. develop: To emerge or to make come into being, either naturally or through human intervention, such as by manufacturing. dimension: Descriptive features of something that can be measured, such as length, width or time. Helmholtz resonator: Named for the 19th century German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz, this is basically some hollow volume of air with a short, narrow neck.
Newfound imitation dark matter axions might reveal the real thing

1 month ago | sciencenews.org | Emily Conover

If imitation is a form of flattery, then scientists are enamored with the axion. The hypothetical subatomic particle has long eluded scientists. But it’s now been conjured up in imitation form within a thin sheet of material, researchers report April 16 in Nature. If axions exist, they could explain dark matter, an invisible form of matter inferred from observations of the cosmos. But efforts to spot the particles have been unsuccessful. The newfound axion imitators are the next best thing.
Neutrinos’ maximum possible mass shrinks further

1 month ago | sciencenews.org | Emily Conover

Neutrinos are known to have tiny masses. A new result proclaims the subatomic particles to be even tinier still. The electrically neutral particles, produced in radioactive decays and in reactions in the sun and elsewhere in the cosmos, have a mass of less than 0.45 electron volts, physicists report in the April 11 Science. The result, from the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino, or KATRIN, experiment slashes the experiment’s previous upper limit for neutrino mass by nearly half.
Physicists have confirmed a new mismatch between matter and antimatter

2 months ago | sciencenews.org | Emily Conover

There’s a newfound mismatch between matter and antimatter. And that could bring physicists one step closer to understanding how everything in the universe came to be. For the most part, particles and their oppositely charged antiparticles are like perfect mirror images of one another. But some particles disobey this symmetry, a phenomenon known as charge-parity, or CP, violation.