The toroidal dipole is a localized electromagnetic excitation, distinct from the magnetic and electric dipoles. While the electric dipole can be understood as a pair of opposite charges and the ...

Before scientists discovered the new state of matter last week, we were basically all used to just three states of matter. After all, during our daily lives we encounter some variety of solids, ...

Students will learn how to categorize matter as either pure substances or mixtures. Students will apply tests, based on physical properties of matter samples, to determine whether a mixture is ...

At the edge of two exotic materials, scientists have discovered a new state of matter called a "quantum liquid crystal" that behaves unlike anything we've seen before. When a conductive Weyl semimetal ...

At the end of a lecture on astronomy, describing how the planets orbit the Sun, a little old lady at the back of the room stood up and said: "What you've told us is all rubbish. The world is really a ...

In the last three decades, condensed matter physicists have discovered a wonderland of exotic new phases of matter: emergent, collective states of interacting particles that are nothing like the ...

Paul M. Sutter is an astrophysicist at SUNY Stony Brook and the Flatiron Institute, host of "Ask a Spaceman" and "Space Radio," and author of "How to Die in Space." Sutter contributed this article to ...