Particles of soot floating through the air and comets hurtling through space have at least one thing in common: 0.36. That, reports a research group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), is the measure of how dense they will get under normal conditions, and it’s a value that seems to be constant for similar aggregates across an impressively wide size range from nanometers to tens of meters.*

Piezoelectrics—materials that can change mechanical stress to electricity and back again—are everywhere in modern life. Computer hard drives. Loud speakers. Medical ultrasound. Sonar. Though piezoelectrics are a widely used technology, there are major gaps in our understanding of how they work.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) recently announced appointments to a newly created National Commission on Forensic Science.

Who cares about old plastic? Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) do, so that you won’t have to years down the road, when today’s plastic concoctions start to break down and disintegrate from weather exposure. Experiments* at NIST may help scientists devise better tests to make sure aging plastics won’t turn into environmental or health hazards as time goes by.

Institute for Molecular Engineering to help anchor Chicago’s effort to become high-tech hub.

Suggesting that quantum computers might benefit from losing some data, physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have entangled—linked the quantum properties of—two ions by leaking judiciously chosen information to the environment.