Superconducting materials, capable of conducting electricity without resistance, have fascinated scientists for over a century. They’ve also been in the news recently as scientists hunt an elusive room-temperature superconductor which could transform civilisation. The latest edition of Periodic Graphics in C&EN examines what superconductors are, how they’ve been found, and how we use them. View the full graphic on the C&EN site.
2022 was a significant year for nuclear fusion, touted as a future solution to our energy problems. First came the announcement, in February, that a record for power generation that has stood for 24 years had been surpassed. Then, in December, for the first time ever, more energy was output from a fusion reaction than was put in (with the caveat that accounting for the full energy costs of the process still led to more energy being used than was produced).
In the latest edition of Periodic Graphics in Chemical & Engineering News, we look at fusion reactors and their history. View the full graphic on the C&EN site here.
The current energy crisis has re-energised conversations around the switch to renewable resources. Solar panels are one of the options, so in this month’s edition of Periodic Graphics in Chemical & Engineering News, we take a look at how these panels generate electricity and some of the present and potential materials used in them. View the full graphic on the C&EN site.
The 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann “for the physical modelling of Earth’s climate, quantifying variability and reliably predicting global warming”, and to Giorgio Parisi “for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales.”
The second of the science Nobel Prizes awarded this year was in Physics. The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 was awarded with one half to Roger Penrose, “for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity”, and the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez “for the discovery of a supermassive compact object at the centre of our galaxy”.
The 2019 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to with one half to James Peebles “for theoretical discoveries in physical cosmology”, and the other half jointly to Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz “for the discovery of an exoplanet orbiting a solar-type star.” This graphic takes a look at the prize-winning research.
