Frictional experiment: artist’s impression of the metainterface between a rigid piece of glass (top) and a metasurface (bottom). The textured regions are where the glass and metasurface are in contact ...

Last week, Stanford researchers revealed that that they had built tiny drones that can open doors. I'm not sure I'm happy about this: How will we keep the robots out of our houses if they can just ...

It’s a moonless night. The wind howls outside. A door opens slowly, as if pushed by an invisible hand. “Cre-e-e-a-k.” That sound — a horror movie cliché — is the result of friction. A stealthier ...