Ajay Kumar

The Sun constantly emits a stream of charged particles, mostly hydrogen — the solar wind. Sometimes the Sun ejects dense blobs of magnetized gas, inside which calm usually reigns. But in 2000, scientists noticed two regions inside one such cloud where the gas was churning.

A crystalline film thinner than a human hair lies on a rigid substrate like a carpet nailed to the floor. The substrate prevents the film from freely changing shape when heated: it expands and contracts stiffly, losing sensitivity. In the new work, the film was separated from the substrate by dissolving an intermediate layer in water.

A piece of europium-indium alloy, when cooled in a magnetic field, behaves like water that does not freeze all at once but first in one corner of the glass, then in another.