How are research papers typeset?
The examples that you show look like quite similar to either typical IEEE paper formats or ACM paper formats.  Engineering conferences and journals tend to use this type of extremely dense format, and often provide templates (like those linked above) in both LaTeX and Word.  

Yes, you can do these things in Word, especially following a provided template, but you probably should not: LaTeX is very widely used in the scientific world because it is much better at precisely typesetting scientific papers, especially mathematical equations.  LaTeX is also much easier to do collaborative writing with, since its textual format is well-suited for diffs and merges with version control software. If you contemplate a career in engineering or mathematical research, you are well advised to invest a little bit of time in learning LaTeX, as it will make many things in your life much easier.  Life sciences, on the other hand, tend to leave all of the formatting to the journal and submit everything in arbitrarily formatted Word.