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FOCUS ON: Mind-bending physics
Walking the Planck: the weird world of the littlest measure

Walking the Planck: the weird world of the littlest measure

Can there be a distance too small to measure or a moment of time so brief that it can’t be timed? Welcome to the weird quantum world of…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Searching for the Standard Model’s missing pieces

Searching for the Standard Model’s missing pieces

Everyone loves a standard model, but who doesn’t yearn for an expansion set to add to it? Physicists feel the same about the building block…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Gravitational waves: Everything you need to know

Gravitational waves: Everything you need to know

The first direct detection of gravitational waves back in September 2015 was hailed as the discovery of the century, with the potential to…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Latest stories from across STFC
Life that fell between the cracks: mining the fingerprints of alien life

Life that fell between the cracks: mining the fingerprints of alien life

The north east of England might seem to be a strange place to search for alien life but, more than a kilometre beneath the surface, at…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Fluorescent nanoparticles: the super-powered cell mapper

Fluorescent nanoparticles: the super-powered cell mapper

In a surprising scientific crossover, nanoparticles designed for use in solar panels to harness the light of the Sun could be used to shine…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Meet the women charting unusual paths to discovery

Meet the women charting unusual paths to discovery

A hobby crafter, horse-riding instructor, and beauty therapist walk into a world-leading science facility… no it’s not a set up for a joke…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Underground Science: Exploring the Large Hadron Collider

Underground Science: Exploring the Large Hadron Collider

My name’s Emma Hattersley, I study physics and I’m currently on a year-long industrial placement at the STFC Particle Physics Department…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Sick plants, your drone doctor will see you now

Sick plants, your drone doctor will see you now

If you want to stop plant disease in its tracks, it’s essential that the damage is diagnosed as quickly as possible. To do that, you can…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
How the neutron was discovered (or, how small stuff hit the big time)

How the neutron was discovered (or, how small stuff hit the big time)

Without both the neutron and proton matter as we know it couldn’t exist, but it was the show-stealing positively-charged proton that…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Deep into that dark(matter)ness peering

Deep into that dark(matter)ness peering

Who doesn’t want a tenuously halloween-themed comic strip to celebrate the weirdness of dark matter on the day tenuously linked to…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
What is dark matter?

What is dark matter?

Explore the mystery of dark matter with our print-out-and-keep infographic guides (you don’t have to print it out, you can just look at it…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Dark matter: The search for the unseeable

Dark matter: The search for the unseeable

This Dark Matter Day, we think about the invisible substance that makes up most of the mass of the Universe and explore how STFC is aiding…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Investigating the stickiest glue in the Universe

Investigating the stickiest glue in the Universe

It turns out that even the Universe finds itself fragile enough to need a little glue to keep itself together.
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
SPEQTRE: Protecting data using the ‘spooky’ power of quantum mechanics

SPEQTRE: Protecting data using the ‘spooky’ power of quantum mechanics

Quantum technologies harness the quirks of the unimaginably small, so it’s only fitting that quantum cryptography is finding a home in tiny…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
MALTA3 the little detector chip built to handle big data

MALTA3 the little detector chip built to handle big data

Next-gen particle accelerators will smash more particles together faster and generate more data than ever before. MALTA3 is the next-gen…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
ZEPTO: the super-charged, energy-efficient magnet hero we need!

ZEPTO: the super-charged, energy-efficient magnet hero we need!

ZEPTO might sound like a minor character from a 1950s superhero comic, but it is actually a kind of magnet that could revolutionise future…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Gravitational waves: A timeline to discovery

Gravitational waves: A timeline to discovery

The first direct detection of gravitational waves in September 2015 came on the back of almost a century of theoretical and practical…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
The UK: Taking gravitational wave detection to infinity (and beyond)

The UK: Taking gravitational wave detection to infinity (and beyond)

It’s not just massive gravitational objects that have been making waves in the field of gravitational wave research, the UK has also been…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Meet the ultimate space-simulating, spike-lined, satellite test facility

Meet the ultimate space-simulating, spike-lined, satellite test facility

We explore a new facility where satellites will be shaken to near destruction, baked like a cake, and serenaded by gigantic speakers… and…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
How to beat a mind-controlling parasite

How to beat a mind-controlling parasite

If mice mothers told cautionary tales to their kids, one might be ‘don’t eat cat poo, or the cat poo eater might be eaten by the cat that…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Polar bears inspire paint that’s all white for the environment

Polar bears inspire paint that’s all white for the environment

In this article you’ll learn how structural colour can be used to make better paint, but your real take away will be that polar bears are…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Next-gen detectors for next-gen synchrotrons

Next-gen detectors for next-gen synchrotrons

When you ramp up a facility’s brightness from ten billion times that of the Sun to 700 million times brighter you need a serious detector…
Go to the profile of Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
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