Carnegie Mellon Provost Mark Kamlet likes to say that he would have more respect for physicists if they could find out where they misplaced 95 percent of the universe. Behind his joke is a serious question—maybe the most fundamental question facing science today. The vast majority of the universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy, about which very little is known. Future discoveries about the nature and origin of the universe hinge on learning more about these mysterious substances.  More >

Pitt researchers have developed a way to create semiconductor islands smaller than 10 nanometers in scale, known as quantum dots. More >

The search for superconductors that function at higher temperatures has taken a step forward with new findings from Pitt professor of physics and astronomy Yadin Y. Goldschmidt and former Pitt postdoctoral associate Eduardo Cuansing. More >

Scientists from Pitt and Bell Labs reported that they have designed and demonstrated a two-dimensional semiconductor structure in which excitons exist longer and travel farther than previously recorded. More >

Both the ancient art of stained glass and the cutting-edge field of plasmonics rely on the oscillation of electrons in nanosize metal particles. But because electrons move nearly as fast as light, those oscillations have been difficult to observe and had never before been seen in motion. Now, in a paper published in the June 8 issue of the journal Nano Letters, Pitt researchers have demonstrated a microscopy technique that allows the movement of the plasmons to be seen for the first time, at a resolution a trillion times better than conventional techniques. More >

Frederick Reines, discoverer of the neutrino, described it as “the most tiny quantity of reality ever imagined by a human being.” Neutrinos are at least 10 million times lighter than electrons—but, until now, their true mass could not be determined. More >

“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy,” wrote one of America’s great scientists, Benjamin Franklin. He would no doubt be pleased to see the marriage of beer and science taking place at Café Scientifique, a worldwide phenomenon that arrived in Pittsburgh this fall. More >