Cocktail Party Physics

Physics Week in Review: November 28, 2015

Room temperature entanglement experiments, physicists catch the perfect surfing wave, and a celebration of 100 years of relativity were among this week's physics highlights.

Me at Gizmodo:

Physicists Create "Urine Black Holes" To Solve the Splashback Problem. "Good news for khaki-clad men plagued by speckled staining of their trousers from urine splash back: physicists may have found the optimal splash-suppressing design for a urinal insert, thereby creating a “urine black hole.” Urine gets in, but it can’t get back out." 

Surfers Rejoice—Physicists Have Found the Perfect Wave. "Experienced surfers are great intuitive physicists, able to spot the best waves and manipulate the various forces at play because they’ve spent years actively developing those skills. French scientists at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris are quantifying what good surfers know intuitively by building their own mini surfing laboratory." 

This High-Speed Video of a Sneeze Will Make You Cover Your Mouth From Now On. "MIT scientists have captured high-speed video of phlegm being expelled during a sneeze. It’s as gross as you’d imagine. But learning more about how this mix of saliva and snot breaks into droplets, and spreads far and wide, could one day lead to better strategies for controlling the spread of disease outbreaks." 

More Blood Is Shed and a New Villain Is Born on Manhattan. "This week’s episode of Manhattan gives us a case study in how small compromises can eat away at a person’s integrity over time—as Jim Meeks makes a critical choice, that transforms him from well-meaning spy to true villain." 

Here Are All the Winners of This Year's Dance Your PhD Contest. "Science and interpretive dance met once again this year, as PhD students around the world took to the stage to bring their research to vivid life in the annual Dance Your PhD contest."

Watch Neil de Grasse Tyson on the Science of The Good Dinosaur. "Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur hits cinemas this Wednesday, just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday. And who better than Neil de Grasse Tyson to indulge in a bit of playful speculation about the film’s premise: what if the K-T asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago had missed Earth?" 

David Tennant Celebrates 100 Years of General Relativity in This Clever Animation. "Perhaps you’ve noticed all the fuss this week over Albert Einstein and his famous general theory of relativity, which turned 100 years old. Who better to give you a glimpse into what the theory is all about than a Time Lord — the Tenth Doctor himself?"

Other Cool Links:

Here's a sampling of some of the other items celebrating Einstein this past week. A Century Ago, Einstein’s Theory of Relativity Changed Everything. Einstein's niftiest notion: General Relativity turns 100. How Einstein's general theory of relativity killed off common-sense physics. The art and beauty of general relativity. Mark Alpert wrote about His Love Affair with Relativity. Einstein, Oppenheimer, relativity and black holes: The curse of fundamentalitis.

There was another big physics anniversary this week: Maxwell's equations and 150 years of light. Phil Plait at Bad Astronomy combined the two in his tribute. You can read about black holes online because of Einstein & Maxwell.  

There was plenty of holiday-themed fare for US readers. Your scientific guide to the ultimate Thanksgiving. Related: How Math Can Help You Avoid Talking about Politics at the Holidays: a few topics, with helpful links! Also: The Physics of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloons. Bonus: How To Deep Fry a Turkey With an Engine Hoist. Double Bonus: Astronaut Fred Gregory had Thanksgiving Dinner in Space -- Twice. Not so fortunate was this crew: A Broken Toilet in Space is a Special Brand of Thanksgiving Horror. 

Three computer scientists have solved a 50-year-old math problem central to a dozen far-flung mathematical fields. 

Physicists Can Now Achieve Quantum Entanglement at Room Temperature. Related: A Beginner’s Guide to Lukewarm Entanglement 

Three years after its discovery, physicists are still fascinated by the Higgs boson’s secrets.

Blue Origin sticks rocket landing, a major step toward reusable spaceflight. Related: Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk spar over gravity of Blue Origin rocket landing.

James Lovelock’s exquisitely sensitive electron capture detector. 

The Physics of Why Tony Hawk's Horizontal Loop is So Hard. 

Clever Physics Explains Why a Dropped Phone Lands Screen-Down. 

Moths Inspire Anti-Glare Coatings That Grab Light and Don’t Let Go.

Why Ball Tracking Works for Tennis and Cricket but Not Soccer or Basketball.

Someone Put Giant Megaphones in the Woods So You Can Listen to the Forest.Per Twisted Sifter: "In September, students from the Interior Architecture Department at the Estonian Academy of Arts installed three gigantic wooden megaphones that let you listen to naturally amplified sounds of the surrounding forest. The student project was executed in collaboration with the Estonian Forest Management Centre and the multi-purpose megaphones also double as a sitting and resting area as well as a stage for small events." [Photo: Tõnu Tunnel]

Capturing infrared to give solar cells a lift. Quantum dots could help solar devices break efficiency limit. 

It's not all about the multiverse: all the cool real-world advances in theoretical physics since the 80's.

Career path: Hiranya Peiris on exploring fingerprints from the Big Bang.

Is Earth Growing a Hairy Dark Matter 'Beard'?

Watch A 10-Year-Old Aspiring Journalist Interview The Head Of NASA.

The Physics of Star Wars’ BB-8 Bouncing Around the Millennium Falcon.

How This Unlucky, Irritable, Disorganized Astronomer Was Thwarted by Uranus.

Hypercolor Architecture: Paints React to Light, Heat & Touch.

An 80-Year-Old Prank Revealed, Hiding in the Periodic Table.

Why math? JHU mathematician on teaching, theory, and the value of math in a modern world.

Not Even Scientists Can Easily Explain P-values. 

Why Does This Nuclear Reactor Have a National Park Sign?

Finally, here is Alan Lightman asking the ultimate metaphysical question: Is There Time?

Alan Lightman: Is There Time? from Chicago Ideas Week on Vimeo.

 

Physics Week in Review: November 20, 2015

More proof that spooky action at a distance is real, a big grant for tabletop laser accelerators, and celebrating the 100th anniversary of Einstein's general theory of relativity were among this week's physics highlights.

Me at Gizmodo:

Physicists Prove That Spooky Action At a Distance Is Real. Entanglement is one of the strangest aspects of quantum mechanics, whereby two subatomic particles can be so closely connected that one can seem to influence the other even across long distances. Albert Einstein dubbed it 'spooky action at a distance,' and two new experiments have now definitively shown that the phenomenon is real."

Moore Foundation Gives Stanford $13.5 Million To Build 'Accelerator on a Chip.' "Today’s particle accelerators are massive machines, but physicists have been working on shrinking them down to tabletop scales for years. Now the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has awarded a $13.5 million grant to Stanford University to develop a working “accelerator on a chip” the size of a shoebox over the next five years."

Pretty Fractal Patterns Pop Up in Maine's Tidal Ponds. "There are multiple examples of fractal patterns in nature, from peacock feathers, snowflakes, and leaves, to cloud formations and coastlines. Now a group of graduate students at MIT and the University of Santa Barbara have spotted similar fractal geometries in the ponds that form at low tide on a tidal flat in Maine."

These Budding Pigeon Pathologists Can Read Your Next Mammogram. "There’s a long, colorful history of using pigeons in research, particularly in the behavioral and psychological sciences. Now scientists have trained a flock of pigeons to be feathered pathologists, able to spot telltale signs of breast cancer in medical images nearly as well as their human counterparts." 

Engineer Says Final Destination V's Grisly Bridge Scene Is Surprisingly Accurate. "Hollywood isn’t exactly known for the most accurate depictions of science and scientists — hence the long tradition of nerd gassing over the details any given film gets wrong. Add one more disgruntled engineer to their ranks who takes special issue with the way bridges are depicted on film."

The Physicist Who Defied the Temperance Laws of 1905 Berkeley. "Ludwig Boltzmann is best known as the Austrian physicist who wrote down the statistical formula for entropy, but if the physics thing hadn’t worked out, he would have made an excellent travel writer. The travelogue he composed of his 1905 trip to Berkeley, California, is chock-full of amusing anecdotes, keen observations, and local history of dubious accuracy. It’s pure joy to read."

On Manh(a)ttan, Terrible Things Happen When You 'Wake The Dragon.' "Events are on the brink of going critical on this week’s episode of Manh(a)ttan. Frank Winter tries to rally the scientific troops to his cause—and wrestles with an infamous plutonium core." 

We Already Know How To Build a Time Machine -- In Theory. "New Scientist’s fledgling Explanimator series on YouTube has already explored the burning questions of how many friends you can have, and when you would be considered dead. Now the series has tackled that favorite sci-fi staple, time travel."

Other Cool Links:

The New Yorker celebrated the general relativity anniversary with a trifecta of fun articles. First: The Space Doctor's Big Idea: Einstein's general theory of relativity explained using only the 1000 most common words in the English language. Second: Einstein’s First Boyhood Proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. Finally: Albert Einstein’s Sci-Fi Stories.

A Satellite Mishap Is Letting Physicists Test Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

Quantum source of space-time: some physicists believe that entanglement may be the essence of space-time geometry. Also check out Quanta's two-part series from earlier this year, one one by me, the other by the marvelous K.C. Cole. 

"Critical Slowing" in complex systems warns of future disasters.

The Quantum Reality Paradox: How the search for God’s limits led to the discovery of "quantum contextuality".

Can We Test Dark Energy Using The Solar System? 

The Moon's Two Sides Look So Different Thanks To 4.5 Billion-Year-Old Physics.

New model explains how the Earth stole the Moon’s lighter elements. 

An Astronomer Proposes a New Mathematical Definition for What Counts As a Planet.

Rhett Allain at Wired Calculated How Hard Holly Holm Kicked Ronda Rousey in the Face: 50 pounds of force!

This Chemist Discovered How to Salvage Useless Photos with a Dash of Radioactivity. 

Three Ways a Starkiller in the New Star Wars Could Work. 

Artist Jaden Hastings Used Her Own Blood To Hack an Industrial Revolution-Era Printing Technique. "Hastings is a bioartist who uses living tissues and organisms as her medium. To make the prints, which she calls “plasmatypes” after the plasma in blood, she drained half a pint of her own blood." [Photo credit: Jaden Hastings, Primitiae (2015)] 

Scientists Say We Could Build a Space Elevator Using Microscopic Diamond Chains. Related: Meet the People Who Dream of Building a Space Elevator in this new documentary. 

Quantum Mechanics Is Putting Human Identity on Trial. If our particles have no identity, how can we? 

Not one, but two robot astronauts straight out of sci-fi are headed to Boston for training.  …

Neil deGrasse Tyson Says Sex in Space Would Involve a Lot of Belts. 

It's Edwin Hubble's birthday! He's the man who expanded our view of the universe.

Ten Science Fiction Transportation Technologies That Make No Sense. 

How to Put a Power Source in Your Footwear. 

Physicist Ben Still's beginner's guide to the subatomic world via the 1960s scifi series Thunderbirds. 

Forget Graphene and Carbon Nanotubes, Get Ready for Diamond Nanothread. 

This Is Why It's Hard to Recognize a Black Hole.

Gravity, Who Needs It? We Do, And 4 Other Things For Long-Distance Space Travel Too.

Flexible, Stretchable, Implantable LEDs Could Show Us Why We Feel Pain. 

Rotational Motion of a Bouncing Football. 

It's not easy being clean: Why "Clean room" is a verb. 

The Promise—and Perils—of Predictive Policing Based on Big Data.

The making of Jodrell Bank radio telescope. 

Behold the Ocular Harpsichord, the Laser Light Show of the 18th Century.

Math on the Run: If you ran a race at an average pace of 3:07 per kilometer, did you run any single kilometer in exactly 3:07?

Inside the mind of mathematician John Conway -- on the true nature of numbers, and why game-playing is so important. 

A simple, mathematical formula for packing your perfect carry-on. 

The mathematical case for hypocrisy. 

The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Mathematician’s Life Comes To The Movies. 

The Common Experience of "Math Trauma."

9 Questions That Show How Common Core Math is Ruining America. 

Taking the Leap: Teaching Math Through Dance. 

Breaking: ITER fusion project to take at least 6 years longer than planned. 

The First Nuclear Reactor Lived Under Some Bleachers by a Football Field. 

Daimler is reusing electric vehicle batteries to store renewable energy. 

Hawaii court halts construction of world’s largest telescope on volcano. 

"Sea Organ" Makes Haunting Music With Ocean Waves. 

On Shakespeare's Hamlet and astronomy. 

How To Turn A Candy Cane Into A Sound Machine and Make Sweet Holiday Music.

The Still Point of the Turning World: T.S. Eliot Reads His Timeless "Ode to the Nature of Time" in a Rare Recording. 

This BBC Video Takes You on a Real-Time Journey Through Space. 

Watch This Amazing Animation That Imagines Famous Scientists as Superheroes. Per Gizmodo: "If [you like] the idea of Marie Curie and Sigmund Freud battling Nazis, zombies and anti-science villains—and frankly who doesn’t?—then take a look." 

Super Science Friends: Episode 1 from Tinman Creative Studios on Vimeo.

 

Physics Week in Review: November 14, 2015

Jen-Luc Piquant is grieving for her beloved Paris this weekend; our hearts are with all residents of the City of Light. But there was also plenty of physics stuff this week: the first measurement of a nuclear strong force for antimatter, a new round of winners for the Breakthrough Prizes, and a surprising connection between pi and quantum mechanics were among the highlights.

Me at Gizmodo:

May the Antimatter Strong Force Be With You. For the First Time, Physicists Have Measured the "Strong Force" of Antimatter. "The nuclear strong force binds the smallest bits of matter together to form atoms, thereby making our material world possible. Now physicists at Brookhaven National Laboratory have made the first-ever measurement of a similar strong force for antimatter — the mirror image of regular matter that lies at the heart of one of our biggest cosmological mysteries."

Super-Sticky Gecko Feet Inspire Strapless Bra Design. "Ladies, don’t say physics never did anything for you. Your days of awkwardly pulling up your slipping strapless bra during a night on the town—thereby ruining the illusion of glamorous savor faire—may finally be over, thanks to the physics of tiny gecko feet." 

There's a Hidden Connection Between Pi and Quantum Mechanics. "Physicists have uncovered a hidden connection between a famous 350-year-old mathematical formula for pi, everyone’s favorite irrational number, and quantum mechanics. At least one mathematician has pronounced the discovery 'a cunning piece of magic.'” [Image: Still from Irrational Numbers: Pi and Pies, a ClickView original Mathematics series.]

This is Why You Sometimes Get Chatter in Your Tibetan Singing Bowl. "Tibetan singing bowls are known for their soothing harmonic tones, ideal for meditation. But they can also produce “chatter,” a kind of knocking sound. A group of Florida undergraduates think they’ve figured out why this happens."

Back-Flipping Fish Look Before They Leap Across Land. "Mummichogs are a type of oxygen-breathing fish that flourish in the small pools that form as the tide recedes. But sometimes that pool evaporates or becomes toxic for the fish. So mummichogs have figured out how to move short distances across land in search of the next shallow pool via a series of backward tail flips, propping themselves up between jumps to re-orient themselves."

These Trampolining Water Droplets Seem to Defy Physics (But Not Really). "Winter is coming, bringing with it inevitable flight delays as ground crews scramble to de-ice all those airplane wings before takeoff on cold wintry days. Wouldn’t it be awesome if all that moisture never had a chance to freeze, and instead just bounced right off the surface? Swedish scientists think they may have found a way to achieve just such a solution, via specially engineered silicon surfaces that repel water droplets so vigorously, the drops literally bounce, as if on a trampoline."

A Cockroach Can Bite Five Times Stronger Than a Human. "The cockroach is a resilient little beast, and now it turns out they have the proverbial jaws of death. They can bite with a force 50 times stronger than their own body weight, and with five times more force than a human being." 

Manhattan Tightens the Screws on the Most Troublesome Physicist of All. "This week’s episode of Manhattan is all about controlling the wild card that is rogue physicist Frank Winter. Colonel Darrow tightens the screws, to reveal just how ruthless he’s prepared to be when it comes to maintaining discipline in his camp." 

The Real-Life Scientific Dilemma Behind the Latest Episode of Manhattan. "The physicists assigned to developing the gun model design for the atomic bomb hit a major obstacle that threatens to sink the gun model for good. It’s a dilemma ripped straight from the history books, along with the eventual solution." 

There's Physics Behind These Cool Wind Tunnel Skydiving Acrobatics. "A hardy band of Czech wind tunnel enthusiasts hover and flip in a dazzling display of acrobats inside Prague’s Skydive Arena, in this video from the folks at Outrageous Acts of Science. The underlying physics is pretty cool, too."

Other Cool Links:

I also wrote an essay for the Fall issue of BOOM California, based in part on this blog post for Scientific American. Forget the deficit model: it takes a phase transition to change a mind.

A New Way of Thinking About Spacetime That Turns Everything Inside Out. Maybe all of the cosmos is connected & isolation is an illusion.

Gravity's Most Extreme Effects Can Now Be Tested In A Laboratory 

The hottest ticket in Silicon Valley last night was a celebrity-packed gala for the hard sciences. These Amazing Scientists Shared This Year's $22M Breakthrough Prizes. Related: Breakthrough prize billionaire wants scientists to be heroes. Also: Behind the Scenes at the Breakthrough Prizes, the Glitzy Oscars for Science. 

How Chemistry Is Rescuing Our Audio History from Melting. 

Chinese scientists develop radar-absorbing active “stealth” material that can be tuned to absorb diff bandwidths. 

Scientists have inaugurated the new XENON1T experiment at Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy.

Why A Russian Super-Radioactive Atomic Torpedo Isn’t The News You Think It Is. 

This Heat-Sensitive Metal Can Walk and Fold Itself Up Like Origami. 

The Secret Origins of an Infamous, Plutonium-Filled Kids Toy. 

Mathematician claims breakthrough in complexity theory. 

Real-Life Tricorder Could Find Land Mines, Tumors. 

Why Does Radio Static Go Away Whenever You Touch the Dial? 

The Physics of the Star Wars Trailer’s TIE Fighter Formation. 

Creative Man Builds a Functioning, Full-Size Version of the Millennium Falcon's Holochess Table. 

Quantum Physicists Superimpose Past and Future Events. 

A New Laser Could Make Materials Hotter Than the Sun Almost Instantly

No, That Tennis Drop Shot Did Not 'Defy Physics.'

The Physics of Why Airplane Wings Oscillate in Turbulence.

What Happened to Vulcan? Or, Science Doesn’t Work the Way People Think It Does. 

What's a Planet? There's a Test (and Pluto Flunked it). 

Ice volcanoes on Pluto. Forget planets, tiny ice worlds are kicking ass. Related: Pluto’s Heart Has Been Broken for Billions of Years.

Astronomers Use Earth as a Model for Climate Change on Saturn’s Moon. 

TED Grant Goes to Archaeologist Who Combats Looting With Satellite Technology.

Quietly, the new space race between SpaceX and Boeing burns hot. 

Ar ar humor: Generating jokes algorithmically with Wolfram Mathematica.

Outer Space Vodka, A Multi-Distilled Spirit That Comes in a Bright Green Glass Alien Head Bottle. 

New Study Finds Cats Have The Surface Area Of A Ping Pong Table. 

Geometric Collages Created From Layers of Vintage File Folders and Index Cards. "Cataloging the tools once used for the very same purpose, Augustine Kofie creates collages that utilize file folders, index cards, and steno notepads from the ’50s through ’80s that were found while scouring the contents of Los Angeles estate sales." 

The Online Afterlife of Manhattan Project Physicist Philip Morrison 

Fundamental Physics Measurements with LEGO. 

Football Physics: Putting G-Forces In Perspective. Related: Football Physics (With Bonus Rugby): The Physics Of Bouncing Balls. 

Inside The Z Machine, Where Scientists Turned Hydrogen Into Metal.

The (late) physicist Leo Kadanoff on reductionism and models.

The Long And Short Of Plasma Turbulence.

Scientist At Work: Searching For Tiny Neutrinos In The South Pole’s Thick Ice. 

500-Million-Year-Old Brains and Life in the Universe.

Claimed Computer Science Breakthrough Downgrades One of the Field’s Most Challenging Problems.

XX Files Podcast: Listening to the universe – Catching gravitational waves.

Ingenious: Walter Murch: The legendary film editor on underlying patterns in the cosmos. 

Rebekah Higgitt makes the case for Newton’s Principia as most influential academic book, as opposed to Darwin's Origin of Species, and a more imaginative approach to ‘best of’ lists.

The Strange Story of Edison’s Last Breath. When he died, Edison left a test tube containing his final breath to his best buddy, Henry Ford.

Gorgeous glass cabinets of curiosity. "Danish artist Steffen Dam creates exquisite, minimalist "cabinets of curiosity" fashioned from glass and containing specimens of his own creation." [Image credit: Steffen Dam]

Saving Tim Hunt: The campaign to exonerate Tim Hunt for his sexist remarks in Seoul is built on myths, misinformation, and (masterful) spin. Related: Here’s How Geoff Marcy’s Sexual Harassment Went On For Decades. Also: Professor Geoff Marcy and Abuse of Power: How Sexual Harassment in Science Departments Goes Unchecked. 

There's an awful cost to getting a PhD that no one talks about.

Lawrence Berkeley and the Origins of Big Science. 

Why Mantis Shrimp Send Secret Messages Using Twisted Light.

Math Is Fun When You're Renting A Shipping Container For Your Crappy Ass Car. 

Unusual boron-based molecule found in ancient algae fossil throws light on natural product evolution.

Many physics degree programs excel at preparing students for academic career, but more than half head to industry. 

Polish students got a physics exercise that asked them to push Syrian refugees off a raft. 

The Telephonoscope (1879): Punch cartoon predicting the advent of video chat more than 100 years before Skype. 

What Computational Physics Is Really About. 

Artist makes tattoos inspired by old scientific sketches. 

The Unlikely Struggle Of The Family Whose Neighbor Is Area 51. 

The Forgotten Kaleidoscope Craze in Victorian England. 

“Science arose from poetry, when times change the two can meet again on higher levels as friends.”

An Xkcd/Minute Physics Video Explains How to Get to Space in the Most Basic Terms Possible. 

Physics Week in Review: November 7, 2015

Sound waves can speed up your data, denser quantum crystals, and an improbable claim of evidence for a multiverse are among this week's physics highlights.

Me at Gizmodo:

We Probably Haven't Found Evidence for the Multiverse. "Perhaps you saw the news this week about new evidence that we do, indeed, live in a multiverse. A scientist claims he’s found signs in the cosmic microwave background radiation — the afterglow, so to speak, from the Big Bang — that our universe collided with another universe early in our cosmic history. I don’t mean to burst your bubble, but we haven’t found definitive proof that we live in a multiverse."

Remember, Remember: There's a Downside to All Those Guy Fawkes Bonfires. "It’s that time of year again, when eager Brits celebrate Guy Fawkes Night with extravagant fireworks displays and bonfires to burn the traitorous Fawkes in effigy. But a new study says that all that extra smoke and debris in the air wreak havoc with visibility."

There's Always More Room at the Quantum Hilbert Hotel. "Physicists have created a quantum version of a famous thought experiment: the so-called Hilbert Hotel, which is always full and yet a vacancy can always be found for additional unexpected guests."

Why Is Ireland's Giant's Causeway Shaped Like That? "Visitors to the coast of Northern Ireland have always marveled at the so-called Giant’s Causeway — a field of some 40,000 interlocking basalt columns arranged in a tidy hexagonal pattern. German physicists have devised a new model to help explain just how those neat geometric patterns emerge through natural processes."

Soon We Will Hunt Like Predator With This New Night-Vision Sensor. "Graphene could make it possible to build ultra-thin, flexible thermal sensors for built-in night vision technology — just like that lethal alien in the Predator franchise."

Mimicking Insect Mating Calls Could Combat Citrus Greening. "Citrus greening is a disease that turns oranges sour and half-green, and it’s been ravaging orange groves in Florida for years. A novel strategy for controlling its spread may be found by mimicking the mating call of a tiny aphid-like brown insect called the Asian citrus psyllid."

Cheering Loudly for Your Sports Team Won't Help Them Win. "Bad news, diehard sports fans: all that raucous cheering during games doesn’t really help your team win. The good news is that it doesn’t seem to interfere with players’ performance either."

It's a Fine Line Between Historical Fact and Fiction on Manhattan. "The physicists on the Hill face a crisis of leadership in their quest to build an atomic bomb on this week’s episode of Manhattan, as Robert Oppenheimer contemplates relinquishing the throne for love. And it makes for an interesting case study of the challenges involved in the fictional portrayal of a beloved historical figure."

Other Cool Links:

The SETI Institute looked at oddly dimming “E.T.” star, found nothing. hopes for a Dyson sphere also dimming. 

Leo P. Kadanoff, Physicist of Phase Transitions, Dies at 78.

The Particle Physics of You: Not only are we made of fundamental particles, we also produce them and.

Matthew Fisher's brain might be a quantum computer. Yours, too!

Ballistic Pendulums Are as Awesome as They Sound.

How Ta-Nehisi Coates Inspired a Book About the Hunt for Vulcan. "The hunt for a hypothetical planet called Vulcan near Mercury fascinated author Tom Levenson for years. It took some tough talk from Ta-Nehisi Coates to get him to finally write a book about it." 

Wormholes Explained in Under Three Minutes. 

The Light Side of Dark Matter. New technology and new thinking push the dark matter hunt to lower and lower masses.

The Bicentennial of George Boole, the Man Who Laid the Foundations of the Digital Age.

The Clocks of the Future Will Only Lose One Second Every Five Billion Years. 

Sing To Your Data and It Will move Faster: certain types of sound waves can move data quickly, using minimal power.

These Atomic Tourists Have Visited 160 Forgotten Nuclear Sites Across the U.S. 

Nuclear Fission Works Fine, But Not Fusion. Here’s Why. 

Black Magic, Nazi Scientists and Nuclear Panic: How We Got to Outer Space.

How Politics Shaped General Relativity.

Denser 'quantum crystal' will help unlock secrets of exotic materials. 

Babbage's brain & Galileo's finger: six macabre scientific relics.

Would A Scientist Bet Their Life On A Theory? 

These spectacular wave-like clouds are the result of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. (Image credit: Breckenridge Resort)

Data Mining Reveals the Extent of China’s Ghost Cities.

Why Debating the Nature of Light Matters for Science Education. 

The Science of How Modern Hoverboards Work. 

NASA Releases Harrowing New Photos of Last Year’s Antares Rocket Explosion.

Energy Dissipation in a Physics Toy.

There's Finally Battle-Safe Foam Lightsabers That Actually Glow. Related: Some Genius Gave Dancing Peacock Spiders Lightsabers.

The mathematical case for not freaking out about first dates. 

Interactive Flowers Bloom to Provide Shade and Light to Pedestrians in Urban Jerusalem.

Technological Determinisms of Victory at the Battle of Agincourt.

Can These Glasses Help the Colorblind? Gizmodo Put En Chroma to the Test.

TSA airport screeners’ ability to detect weapons declared “pitiful.” 

Is "Protecting" Mars from Contamination a Half-Baked Idea? 

Scientists Built This Molecular Playground in Minecraft to Teach Kids Chemistry.

November's "Astronomical Blackout" is Unmitigated Bullshit.

Halloween Is Way Creepier In Zero Gravity.

An Augmented Reality Planetarium: Take The Universe With You (Review).

A microscopic view of bubbles gets totally trippy.

Spinning Wet Foam in Slow Motion Makes Galaxies. 

The Instrument That Makes Music With Color. How color organs connect light and sound.

How to Solve the Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever. A step-by-step guide to True, False, and Random. 

In This Trippy Short Film, a Man Meets Every Possible Future Version of Himself.

Therefore I Am from Peter McCoubrey on Vimeo.