Emily Conover
Physics, Senior Writer, Science News
Physics writer Emily Conover loves physics for its ability to reveal the secret rules about how stuff works, from tiny atoms to the vast cosmos. Before becoming a science journalist, she studied physics at the University of Chicago. There, she investigated the weird ways of tiny particles called neutrinos. She has previously written for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Science Magazine and the American Physical Society. She is a two-time winner of the D.C. Science Writers’ Association Newsbrief award.
All Stories by Emily Conover
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Physics
Efforts to create ultrafast light pulses win 2023 physics Nobel
Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier won the prize for creating light bursts that last billionths of a billionth of a second.
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Space
Newfound gravitational waves may be from the biggest black holes in the universe
Observations of dead stars hint that ripples in spacetime — ripples light-years long — roll through our universe.
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Plants
A single particle of light can kick off photosynthesis
In a new experiment with bacteria, a lone photon sparked the process of turning light to chemical energy.
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Math
An ‘einstein’ shape eluded mathematicians for 50 years. Now they found one
The shapes can form an infinite tiled pattern that never repeats. The first is a 13-sided shape nicknamed “the hat.”
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Physics
Shouting into the wind may seem futile — but it’s really not
Sending a sound upwind, against the flow of air, actually makes the sound louder — only it doesn’t sound that way to the person making the noise.
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Materials Science
Laser light transformed plastic into tiny diamonds
The technique could be used to make nanodiamonds for quantum devices and other technology.
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Physics
Scientists used lasers to make ‘smoke rings’ of light
Physicists had a bright idea: Make light into swirling, ring-shaped vortices, similar to smoke rings or bubble rings.
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Physics
When dominoes fall, how fast the row topples depends on friction
Two types of friction help determine how quickly a line of dominoes collapses, computer modeling shows.
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Computing
A new supercomputer just set a world record for speed
Able to perform more than a quintillion calculations per second, it will allow scientists to study exploding stars, subatomic particles and more.
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Physics
Muons reveal the inner worlds of pyramids, volcanoes and more
Tracking these subatomic particles can uncover surprising hidden structures.
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Space
Gravitational waves ‘kicked’ a newborn black hole across space
Two black holes merged into one, and then sped off at around 5 million kilometers (3.1 million miles) per hour.
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Space
We finally have an image of the black hole at the heart of our galaxy
New observations from the Event Horizon Telescope reveal the chaotic region around the Milky Way’s central black hole, Sagittarius A*, in extreme detail.