In the air people breathe, the water on Earth, the stars in the sky and more, atoms are the building blocks that make up the ...

In the beginning, there was no magnetism. Immediately after the Big Bang, the universe contained an awesomely hot cloud of electrically charged protons, electrons, helium and lithium nuclei. Each ...

Scientists at ETH Zurich have discovered a new type of magnetism. Experiments show that an artificially produced material becomes magnetic through a mechanism that hasn’t been seen before. The most ...

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Amid the roilings of the Milky Way, immense pockets of gas coalesce into clouds where stars are born. In this process, there is a hidden ...

The search is on to discover new states of matter, and possibly new ways of encoding, manipulating, and transporting information. One goal is to harness materials' quantum properties for ...

Researchers have for the first time managed to use electricity to switch on magnetism in a material that’s normally non-magnetic. This could be a step towards making electronic components out of ...