Physics

The world’s fastest supercomputer has found opening just one window and one door diagonally opposite each other is the best way to ventilate an air-conditioned classroom to prevent the novel coronavirus from spreading.

Masks made of nonwoven fabric performed best in a Japanese supercomputer model of their ability to block virus-carrying respiratory droplets, but other types of masks also showed effectiveness.

An online column on using physics for novel coronavirus countermeasures run by The Japan Society of Applied Physics (JSAP) has become a hit with readers, despite its discussion of highly technical details about the virus and the pandemic, garnering some 10,000 pageviews since its July launch.

Japanese researchers have developed a new method for predicting large solar flares, which may lead to better space weather forecasts and prevent disruptions to satellites and communications networks on Earth.

Japanese researchers have succeeded in capturing images of the roots of a plant absorbing nutrients in the soil and microorganisms for nourishment, a world first.

A pair of Japanese companies have developed a novel way to be stylish and antiseptic at the same time: a clothing fabric that kills microbes with tiny electric shocks generated by the wearer's movements.

The way mosquitoes avoid obstacles to find their targets while flying in the dark holds the secret to engineering better collision avoidance technology for autonomous aerial drones, a new study proposes.

Shigehisa Ishii, a farmer in Susono, Shizuoka Prefecture, admires the “Nishina otome” variety of cherry blossoms that he developed jointly with the Riken research institute.

The T2K Collaboration has published new results showing the strongest constraint yet on the parameter that governs the breaking of the symmetry between matter and antimatter in neutrino oscillations. Using beams of muon neutrinos and muon antineutrinos, T2K has studied how these particles and antiparticles transition into electron neutrinos and electron antineutrinos, respectively.

A Japanese team of researchers has shown that time at Tokyo Skytree’s observatory — around 450 meters above sea level — passes four nanoseconds faster per day than at near ground level.

The finding, based on extremely precise “optical lattice clocks” that only go out of synch by one second every 16 billion years, proves Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity, which predicts that clocks in a strong gravitational field will tick slower than those in a field with weaker gravity.