Electron

Electronic Arts Hackers Say Slack Was Their Secret Weapon: Report

A "representative" for the EA hackers involved say the heist took $10, a bit of code, and a lot of slacking.

Tech News Shoshana Wodinsky Jun 11

Physicists Get a Good Look at an ‘Exciton’ for the First Time

After nearly a century of probing the nature of tiny, ephemeral objects called excitons, researchers finally managed to image the structure, hinting at the true location of an electron. The findings could eventually help physicists create new states of matter or new quantum technologies. Excitons occur inside semiconductors and other materials like insulators. When a…

Physics & Chemistry Isaac Schultz Apr 21

Rocket Lab’s Adorable Rocket Just Blasted Into Space For the First Time

While rocket launches aren’t typically thought of as “cute,” watching the maiden voyage of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket is the closest we’ll get to seeing the Brave Little Toaster go to space. Today, the 56-foot (17 meter) carbon fiber rocket blasted off from New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula and made it to the edge of space. Though…

Space & Spaceflight Rae Paoletta May 25

Electron “Lifespan” is at Least 5 Quintillion Times the Age of the Universe

Basic physics suggests that electrons are essentially immortal. A fascinating experiment recently failed to overthrow this fundamental assumption. But the effort has produced a revised minimum lifespan for electrons: 60,000 yottayears, which is — get this — about five-quintillion times the current age of the Universe. That’s a Yotta Years An electron is the lightest…

Physics & Chemistry George Dvorsky Dec 11

Shortest-Ever Laser Pulses Can Image Electrons Orbiting Atoms

A team of scientists has smashed the record for the shortest-ever laser pulse, producing one that lasts just 67 billionths of a billionth of a second—which is short enough to use it to image individual electrons orbiting the nuclei of atoms. The team of researchers, from the University of Central Florida, has built on technology…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe Sep 6

Spintronic Breakthrough Promises Better Flash Memory

Scientists have long spoken about the possibility of using the natural spin of electrons as digital storage—but it’s never been a reality because of the transient nature of the effect. Now, though, IBM researchers have found a way to keep the effect alive long enough for it to actually be useful. Known as spintronics, the…

Tech News Jamie Condliffe Aug 13

These ticks shrug off airless vacuums and powerful electron beams like they’re no big deal

These bugs might just be the hardest organisms on the planet. They’re the only creatures observed alive inside an electron microscope that actually survived this airless, high-radiation environment. This discovery could mean big things for life on other worlds. One of the basic tenets of scanning electron microscopes (SEM) is that, if you actually want…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Apr 3

How a spritz of oil from a perfume bottle let scientists measure the charge of an electron

Can you find the charge of an electron in a spritz of oil? It seems like the subatomic world is too tiny ever to be meaningfully measured. But that’s exactly what two scientists did in 1909. Find out how, with a box, a microsocope, a spritz of oil, and a sensitive voltage meter, people figured…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jan 28

What if every electron in the universe was all the same exact particle?

There’s an idea that suggests all the universe’s electrons are actually one particle forever traveling backwards and forwards in time. It’s a simple, elegant idea that solves some of physics’s biggest mysteries. There’s only one tiny problem. It’s complete nonsense. This is the story of that bizarre thought experiment and John Archibald Wheeler, the brilliant,…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Jan 17

Gillette Is Writing Ads on Strands of Hair with a Freaking Electron Microscope

Gillette took a step away from the “plaster ads on every surface in the civilized world” school of marketing to do something pretty cool. They rounded up a few doctors of electron microscopy and had them stick a whole ad on a strand of hair. The hair used in the ads actually came directly off…

Tech News Kyle Wagner Jun 10

What do electrons look like? Now we know.

If you’ve ever looked at a model of the atom, you’d probably guess that electrons are spherical. But these elementary particles are actually slightly egg-shaped…and proving that could mean trouble for one particular model of subatomic physics. Now, make no mistake – even if you made an electron big enough to be seen with the…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins May 25

World’s First Single-Electron Transistor Works Like a Teeny, Tiny Etch-A-Sketch

It’s amazing what an electron can do. Researchers, lead by a team from the University of Pittsburgh, have built the world’s first operational single-electron transistor, the SketchSET, which could become an essential component of all sorts of futuristic technologies; from super-dense, high-capacity solid-state drives to quantum processors. The idea is simple: start with an “island”…

Tech News Andrew Tarantola Apr 18

Balloons over Antarctica aim to solve space radiation mystery

Earth is surrounded by two huge regions of charged particles like protons and electrons, and these areas are known as the Van Allen radiation belts. These belts can mysteriously change their intensity, posing a threat to astronauts and sensitive electronics. To get to the bottom of what makes the Van Allen belts tick, two experiments…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Mar 20

Gravity finally starts cooperating with quantum mechanics…maybe

Gravity is usually the arch-nemesis of quantum mechanics, stubbornly refusing to play nice with the forces governing the interactions of subatomic particles. Now we’ve discovered a rare instance where gravity actually assists quantum interactions, which just might help unify physics. There are four fundamental forces: gravity, the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Nov 5

The strange behavior of positronium could unlock the secrets of the universe

Positronium is a particle created when you bind together an electron and its antimatter counterpart, the positron. It doesn’t interact with other atoms in the way we would expect, and this discovery could help us solve the universe’s biggest mysteries. Positronium is sort of like a hydrogen atom, except if you took away the lone…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Nov 4

The Ultimate Field Guide to Subatomic Particles

Muons, neutrinos, supersymmetric partners, the infamous Higgs boson – with so many different subatomic particles flying about, it’s no wonder theoretical physics can be so confusing. That’s why we made this (reasonably) simple guide to all the different elementary particles. This is, as you might imagine, a pretty big topic, so we’re splitting it into…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Sep 16

The Ultimate Field Guide to Subatomic Particles: Elementary Particles Cheat Sheet

Quarks: Up Quark: Mass: 2.4 MeV Charge: +2/3 Spin: 1/2 Status: Predicted in 1964 by Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig, discovered in 1969 at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory Antiparticle: Antiproton containing two up antiquarks theorized in 1933 by Paul Dirac, discovered in 1955 by Emilio Segrè and Owen Chamberlain Down Quark: Mass: 4.8 MeV Charge:…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Sep 16

Strained Graphene Creates Pseudo-Magnetic Fields Stronger Than Any Before Seen

Putting the right kind of strain on a patch of graphene can make super-strong pseudo-magnetic fields, a new study says. The finding sheds new light on the properties of electromagnetism, not to mention the odd properties of graphene. When graphene is stretched to form “nanobubbles,” the stress causes electrons to behave as if they were…

Tech News Rebecca Boyle - Pop Sci Jul 31

The Void Between Protons and Electrons Makes Us All Phantoms

Are you real? You may seem real and solid, but you are mostly made of empty space. To demonstrate it, someone enlarged an electron to the size of one pixel, proportionally showing its distance from a equally scaled proton. Click image above to zoom in This is all basic stuff to anyone who’s taken a…

Tech News Jesus Diaz Mar 12

I Want A Broad-Shouldered, 7ft Tall Man Robot To Rear My Children Too

Buried in a site devoted to early robots is my dream man, Electron. Russian, born in 1967, he has 4ft-wide shoulders, waltzes, plays chess, and while he only understands 112 commands, his steely gaze is reassuringly paternal. [CyberneticZoo via BotJunkie]

Tech News Kat Hannaford Mar 9

Electronic Arts Hackers Say Slack Was Their Secret Weapon: Report

Physicists Get a Good Look at an ‘Exciton’ for the First Time

Rocket Lab’s Adorable Rocket Just Blasted Into Space For the First Time

Electron “Lifespan” is at Least 5 Quintillion Times the Age of the Universe

Shortest-Ever Laser Pulses Can Image Electrons Orbiting Atoms

Spintronic Breakthrough Promises Better Flash Memory

These ticks shrug off airless vacuums and powerful electron beams like they’re no big deal

How a spritz of oil from a perfume bottle let scientists measure the charge of an electron

What if every electron in the universe was all the same exact particle?

Gillette Is Writing Ads on Strands of Hair with a Freaking Electron Microscope

What do electrons look like? Now we know.

World’s First Single-Electron Transistor Works Like a Teeny, Tiny Etch-A-Sketch

Balloons over Antarctica aim to solve space radiation mystery

Gravity finally starts cooperating with quantum mechanics…maybe

The strange behavior of positronium could unlock the secrets of the universe

The Ultimate Field Guide to Subatomic Particles

The Ultimate Field Guide to Subatomic Particles: Elementary Particles Cheat Sheet

Strained Graphene Creates Pseudo-Magnetic Fields Stronger Than Any Before Seen

The Void Between Protons and Electrons Makes Us All Phantoms

I Want A Broad-Shouldered, 7ft Tall Man Robot To Rear My Children Too

In Letter, OpenAI Reportedly Says Elon Musk and Meta Are Coordinating ‘Attacks’ Against It

Artemis 2 Day 6: Follow the Mission With Our Live Updates 🔴

Anonymous Sources Detail Sam Altman’s Alleged Untrustworthiness in New Report

Steven Spielberg Still Wants to Make a Horror Film ‘Someday’

Waymo Has Stopped Testing Its Robotaxis in New York City and No One Knows What Happens Next

Samsung Pushes Monitor Deals Further, the 34″ ViewFinity Hits a Record Low at Nearly 40% Off

The Best Anti-Meta Smart Glasses Are About to Have Tough Competition

The Artemis 2 Mission Is Leaning in on the ‘Project Hail Mary’ Love

HP Omen Max 45L Review: 4K60 Gaming Has Never Been So Easy

Ecovacs Winbot W3 Omni Review: Window Cleaning Robots Have a Long Way to Go

AirPods Max 2 vs. Bose QuietComfort Ultra Headphones (2nd Gen): Which ANC Headphones Win?

The Best Gadgets of March 2026

AirPods Max 2 Review: Still Ridiculously Expensive and Ridiculously Nice

DJI Osmo 360 Review: The Best 360 Camera for the DJI-Pilled

Aqara Smart Lock U400 Review: Hands-free Unlocking at Its Best

MSI Prestige 14 Flip AI+ Review: A Solid 2-in-1 Laptop With Some Glaring Flaws

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