Cocktail Party Physics

Physics Week in Review: March 26, 2016

The physics of curling ribbons, the most detailed gravity maps yet of Mars, and how Superman's X-ray vision might work were among this week's physics highlights.

Me at Gizmodo:

How Physics Can Make You a Master Ribbon Curler. "Most of us know how to get a ribbon to curl, by swiftly pulling a scissor blade across the surface. You’ve probably heard that the faster you do this, the tighter the curl. Physics begs to differ. A slower movement—combined with a sharp blade and just the right amount of tension on the ribbon—produces optimal curls, according to the latest experiments by an international team of physicists."

The Science of Using a Damn Coaster When You Are a Guest in This House--or, Why Whisky Rings Are Different from Coffee Rings. "A few years ago, a Phoenix-based photographer teamed up with physicists at Princeton University to explore the unusually uniform rings a drop of whisky leaves behind when it dries. Now those same physicists have published their findings in Physical Review Letters." [Image: Ernie Button]

The Same Rules Apply to Elephants and E. Coli. Biologist Sean B. Carroll Argues for Universal Rules That Regulate Life at All Size Scales. "On the surface, herds of zebras roaming the Serengeti don’t seem to have much in common with the number of cells in our bodies. But what if there is an underlying hidden logic behind it all—a set of universal rules regulating the numbers of things that applies across all size scales? That’s the provocative thesis behind The Serengeti Rules: The Quest To Discover How Life Works and Why It Matters, the latest book from renowned biologist Sean B. Carroll. Gizmodo recently caught up with Carroll to learn more about this intriguing idea."

Wind Down Your Day by Watching These Pennies Melt Under the Sun's Intense Heat. "The Internet is a wonderful place. Case in point: there’s an entire YouTube channel called Let’s Melt This, devoted to videos of, well, stuff melting. In the latest installment, the team placed two pennies under a Fresnel lens to see how long it would take for them to melt under the concentrated heat of the sun."

Four Sets of Identical Twins Staged a Time Travel Prank on an NYC Subway. "Most NYC subway riders are pretty blasé when panhandlers hit them up for cash between stations. When a panhandler announced he was collecting funds to build a time machine, riders chuckled at the odd request—until another man boarded the train and announced he was the inventor’s future self. He implored them not to give any money because time travel will ruin everything. It sounds just like that X-Files episode (“Synchrony”) where a scientist travels from the future to stop his younger self from making the cryobiological compound that will one day enable time travel. But it’s actually an elaborate prank by Improv Everywhere:

Other Cool Links:

How Cold Atoms Might Help Physicists Understand Superconductors.

Crumpled Graphene Can Be Even Better Than the Flat Stuff.

The Long-Awaited Promise of a Programmable Quantum Computer. Related: This Chip Could Finally Make a Real Quantum Computer. Also: Getting a Fix on Quantum Computation. "The quest to fix quantum errors has improve(d) our understanding of other areas of physics."

Two steps closer to a possible discovery at CERN. "It'd be the best news since the invention of toasters!"Related: What It Means If CERN Discovers A New Particle.

Scientists Discover That James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Has an Amazingly Mathematical “Multifractal” Structure.

The Physics of Pokemon: Charizard’s flamethrower has more energy behind it than a thousand lightning bolts.

The next big LHC upgrade? Software.

CERN physicist Edda Gschwendtner explains why we need big machines to study tiny particles.

Dark Matter Particle Could be Size of Human Cell. Related: Could Dark Matter Not Exist At All?

New insights from neuroscience — aided by dancing animals — are revealing the biological origins of rhythm.

Sure, Superman Has X-Ray Vision. But How Would It Actually Work?

Soot And Diamonds: Progress And Perspective In The Practice Of Physics.

How physics and maths helped create modernist painting.

Sonification: Scientific data might be filled with important things waiting to be discovered. Just listen to them.

Why Did the Air Force Play with Cats in Space?

19 Times Someone Gets Thrown Into the Vacuum of Space, From Worst to Best.

Scientists May Have Spotted Buried Lava Tubes on the Moon.

Astronomers saw an exploding star’s shockwave for the first time ever.

The Most Detailed Gravity Maps of Mars Let Us Peer Inside the Planet.

NASA’s New Top Astrobiologist Is Spelunking for Alien Life on Earth.

Infinity Inside the Finite: Newtons Solution.

Bigger Than Chaos: Q&A with Philosopher Michael Strevens on complexity, probability theory, and more.

Is it possible to algorithmically distinguish different novelists based only on their punctuation habits?

Three Revolutionary Women of Mathematics.

You Can Solve Quantum Mechanics’ Classic Particle in a Box Problem With Code.

Dead Bodies Light the Way in This Biofuel-Powered Cemetery: Decomposition is converted to electricity.

The people who built the atomic bomb: A new website assembles biographies and oral histories from Manhattan Project. Related: All the Largest Nuclear Explosions in History.

Amid a Graying Fleet of Nuclear Plants, a Hunt for Solutions. Related: Do The Majority of Americans Oppose Nuclear Energy? Maybe Not. Also: Everything you need to know about mini nuclear reactors. Finally, Why Nuclear Fusion Is Always 30 Years Away.

Solar installations are soaring, but production is still very small.

Callum Ormond explains, TEDxly, how they learned to partially unboil an egg.

A Demo of Babbage's Difference Engine.

Echo Observatory: beautiful, tactile fractal explorer with knobs on.

Rant of the Week: Wired''s Rhett Allain is So Totally Over Newton’s Laws of Motion. Related: Newton’s Three Laws of Motion: Follow four astronauts on a six month journey from Earth to Mars.

Why Physicists Want Their Best Theory To Fail.

How a Nobel Laureate introduced students to physics.

Challenger Engineer Who Warned Of Shuttle Disaster Dies.

War of Currents, A Shocking Arcade Game Where Nikola Tesla & Thomas Edison Face Off in a Street Fighter Style Battle. 

Science in the World of Islam, 1: The Syllable Al.

Meet the largest science project in US government history—the James Webb Telescope.

Slowing Down In Space Is Easier With Yo-Yos.

You Can Now Build Giant Space Telescopes Out of LEGOs.

A Cambridge professor on how to stop being so easily manipulated by misleading statistics.

"If you like math, dominoes, and/or solving problems the hard way, this video is for you." 

How Ballerinas Can Keep Spinning Forever:

 

Physics Week in Review: March 19, 2016

A new theory on the emergence of life's complexity, BICEP3 starts taking new data, and the physics of how long it should take vampires to feed were among this week's physics highlights.

Me at Gizmodo:

The Quest to Hear Echoes From the Big Bang Enters Its Next Phase. "Back in 2014, physicists on a collaboration known as BICEP2 thought they had detected gravitational waves. Those claims quickly evaporated when it became clear that they had really seen patterns from cosmic dust. But they haven’t given up the hunt. An upgraded version of the experiment, BICEP3, began taking new data at the South Pole this week, in hopes of succeeding where its earlier incarnation failed."

NBA Players Chill With Neil deGrasse Tyson for a Bit of Star Talk. "What do NBA basketball players do when they have some down time in New York City? The Philadelphia 76ers dropped in on the American Museum of Natural History’s Hayden Planetarium to hobnob with director and famed astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson." 

Because we're never done arguing about the physics of Star Trek: There's No Cloning in Quantum Mechanics, So the Star Trek Transporter Really Is Suicide Box. "Remember last week’s video about the trouble with Star Trek’s transporter (a.k.a. a “suicide box”) by CGP Grey, delving into whether the teleported version of yourself would really be, well, you? Henry Reich of Minute Physics has posted a video response with his own resolution to the logical paradox. You know what that means.... NERD FIGHT!"

Other Cool Links:

The APS March meeting is by far the biggest meeting of the year, but probably not the most covered. Why? Money, says Chad Orzel at Forbes.

Physics Students Calculate How Long a Vampire Needs To Drink Your Blood.

How Do You Say “Life” in Physics? A new theory sheds light on the emergence of life’s complexity. Related: Biochemist David Deamer proposes that life evolved from a collection of interacting molecules.

An Ode To The Rice Cooker, based on the math of fuzzy logic.

Modeled After Ants, Teams of Tiny Robots Can Move 2-Ton Car.

A previously unnoticed property of prime numbers seems to violate a longstanding assumption about how they behave.

This week we celebrated Pi Day, and folks had a lot to say about it. Can You Determine Pi With a Pendulum? Why yes, you can! Related: The Pi Day Recipe Book, from Math With Bad Drawings: for instance, The Tower of Babel: "This tower is what mathematician’s call a continued fraction." Also: The Gravity of Pi: Martin Krzywinski’s latest “Pi Day” graphic re-imagines numerical digits as physical masses. Here's a fun fact: Pi might look random but it's full of hidden patterns. Steven Strogatz in the New Yorker on Why Pi Matters: "The beauty of pi, in part, is that it puts infinity within reach."  Hey, remember The Time Indiana Tried to Change Pi to 3.2? Finally, Vi Hart is back with another amazing Pi Day rant: 

Most Americans Now Oppose Nuclear Energy. Related: Space Tech Is Helping Engineer the World's Biggest Nuclear Fusion Reactor. Also: Our Best Shot at Nuclear Fusion Needs Magnets That Weigh as Much as a Boeing 747.

Let Swarm Intelligence Optimize Your Tournament Bracket. Related: Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on March Madness, brackets and basketball on Mars. (Hey, when Aldrin speaks, folks listen.) Also: March madness and quantum memory.

The Search for New Physics at CERN (first of eight parts): physicist Matt Buckley in The Boston Review. Related: Giant atom-smasher gears up to chase whiff of new physics.

This Amazing Expanding Material Is Based on Islamic Art.

Five new studies on Pluto show just how weird the little planet is.

What Was That Glowing, Gassy Fountain That Crowned Last Week’s Eclipsed Sun?

The Gravity Wave Hunter: An astrophysicist sits down with Nautilus to discuss cosmology and culture.

10 Quantum Truths About Our Universe.

Why Do Shower Curtains Billow Inward? Short answer: Blame it on hot air, or swirling air, or something else.

Ask Ethan: Could Our Universe Be A Hologram? Related: Could Dark Energy Recycle The Universe? 

Clocking the Extreme Spin of a Monster Black Hole. Related: Super Massive Black Holes Explained by PhD Comics. 

How the ExoMars mission could sniff out life on Mars – and what to do next.

When Life Gives You Lemons, Start a Fire. 

Artists can apply for a residency at CERN -- the home of the world’s largest particle collider.

Simply stunning! Fractal Architecture: 14 Intricate Ceilings of Historic Iran. Per Web Urbanist: "an architectural photographer in Iran has begun documenting schools, mosques and cultural centers around the country, with a focus on their most mesmerizing feature: the ceilings." [Image credit: Mehrdad]

Incredible Cardboard Flying Machines are da Vinci's Dreams. Related: A cool DIY project straight out of the 15th century: Build This Mini Catapult, Based on Designs by Leonardo da Vinci.

You decide: What is the most beautiful equation?

Algebra: It’s More Than Just Parabolas. 

"If we take an infinite collection of sets, is there a way to choose exactly one element from each of them?"

Unpacking the fallacy that Velveeta is one molecule away from plastic.

How can ecological models include the cumulative effects of floods, heat waves and cold snaps?

The “Shadow” of a Hiroshima Victim, Etched into Stone Steps, Is All That Remains After 1945 Atomic Blast.

A Beautiful Instrument (mechanical fourier analyzer) Displaying sound on paper.

This Short Documentary Explores the Science Behind 2001: A Space Odyssey.

No, that's not a Hubble photo of "Cosmic Ice Sculptures."

One of the World’s Largest Solar Facilities (Ivanpah in California) Is In Trouble.

These Self-Assembling  Nanowires Could Grow Into the Computer Chips of the Future.

Where Probability Meets Literature and Language: Markov Models for Text Analysis.

Crank Out Infinite Geometric Designs With The Wooden Cycloid Drawing Machine.

AlphaGo beat Lee Se-dol in the last game of Go. Final score: Machine Learning 4, Humans 1. But Don’t Forget Humans Created The Computer Program That Can Beat Humans At Go. Related: Why a Machine Defeating a Human Does Not Signal the Apocalypse. Also: The Chess Engine that Died So AlphaGo Could Live.

What engineers can learn from the design of the penis: mechanics of the erection may have applications for robotics.

Why do we live in three dimensions? Gravity could help explain why we don't live in 2D or 4D.

 

Physics Week in Review: March 12, 2016

This week's physics highlights: measuring a black hole's spin, the trouble with Star Trek's transporters, and physicists successfully created the first "Majorana" particles for topological quantum computing.

Me at Gizmodo:

Physicists Create 'Pseudo-Particles' for Error-Free Quantum Computing. "We may be one step closer to quantum computing that’s inherently protected from errors. Physicists at the University of Copenhagen have successfully created an exotic type of pseudo-particle (anyons) that is immune to outside interference. The results are described in a new paper in Nature." 

That Time Star Wars' BB-8 Visited the Robots at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Not so long ago, in our very own Milky Way galaxy, a plucky little droid named BB-8 roamed the hallowed halls of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, rubbing elbows with its robotic brethren. Happily, a photographer was on hand to capture this moment for posterity." [Image credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech]

A Violin's Warm, Mellow Sound Comes From Its Varnish. "Violin makers routinely finish their instruments with a thick coat of varnish, the better to protect and preserve the wood. Now Swiss scientists claim that this varnish also plays a role in the overall sound quality of the instrument. As described in a new paper in Applied Physics A, Marjan Gilani and her colleagues at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Material Science and Technology (EMPA) studied how a varnish’s chemical composition, thickness, and degree of penetration into the wood affected the acoustics of the instrument."

These Animated Riffs on 1870s Galloping Horse Footage Are Delightful. "Animation students at Carnegie Mellon University were recently tasked with reimagining classic film footage of a galloping horse from the late 19th century. They did not disappoint, drawing on Burger King, space aliens, rainbow centaurs, and modern art for inspiration. The footage in question was taken by British photography pioneer Eadweard Muybridge in the 1870s." 

The Problem With Teleportation. "Teleportation is a safe, convenient mode of travel in the Star Trek universe. But what if the Star Trek transporter is essentially a “suicide box” instead? That’s the unnerving conclusion of a new animated video from CGP Grey about the trouble with transporters.... [T]his video goes beyond the usual purely scientific discussion to delve into deeper metaphysical questions, like the philosophical puzzler known as the Ship of Theseus, and the problem of consciousness."

Gravitational Waves Explained to the Beat of 'Can't Feel My Face' Sounds Aca-Awesome. "Are you tired of hearing about how awesome it is that we’ve discovered gravitational waves? LIGO is so last month, right? Here’s something to make the topic seem fresh and wondrous again: a delightful a cappella parody music video, set to the tune of The Weeknd’s “Can’t Feel My Face,” by A Capella Science."

Other Cool Links:

A Timely Fix for a Grand Theory of Nature. A disarmingly simple model of ecology does everything well — except for predicting how rapidly nature can change. Can it become more realistic while still avoiding biology’s messy complexities?

Astronomers exploit a remarkable supermassive black hole binary system to measure the primary black hole's spin.

Are the Constants of Physics Constant? So far, they seem to be—but nobody really understands why.

Superconductivity Hypothesis Gets Some Experimental Confirmation.

How Does Superman's Heat Vision Work?

Could Right-Handed Neutrinos Solve The Dark Matter Puzzle? 

Art of Darkness: The Dark Energy Survey’s art show offers a glimpse of the expanding universe.

Obviously Don’t Set Off Nukes to Do Cool Science. Obviously.

If you can turn a vacuum into an improvised weapon, DARPA may want your help.

Putting the Science in Science Fiction with Actress and Sciren Taryn O’Neill. 

Brian (full name Dolomedes briangreenei in honor of physicist Brian Greene) loves hunting fish, going swimming, and being a spider.

New Material Can Fold From Full 3D to Flat All By Itself.

The Physics of Buster’s Epic End in the MythBusters Finale.

These Statistical Models Predict when Steph Curry’s streak will end. "This is why no one likes nerds: math kills beautiful dreams."

Big Data Analysis Is Changing the Nature of Sports Science.

Joel Butler will lead the LHC's CMS experiment starting in September.

Five years later, Fukushima’s contamination is slow to fade. 

Everything You Should Know About Sound.

Consciousness is a mathematical pattern: Max Tegmark's TEDx talk.

What is the celebrity uncertainty principle?

Why Are We Still Listening to Music in Two Dimensions?

Mathematics meets music: “The Entropy of Music: How Many Possible Pieces of Music Are There?”

This Flexible Film Uses Liquid Metal to Absorb Radar and Cloak What It Covers.

How to Sew like a Mathematician: An investigation of toroidal bias tape.

Unleash Your Inner Mad Scientist with This DIY Jacob’s Ladder.

You probably missed this week's total solar eclipse. Here are some of the most spectacular photos. [Image credit: Exploratorium]

SpaceX’s Rocket Loses Its Battle Against a Robot Boat (Again).

Spacecraft finds “magic island” in hydrocarbon seas of Titan.

Statisticians Found One Thing They Can Agree On: It’s Time To Stop Misusing P-Values.

Meet the real ironman of spaceflight: Valery Polyakov.

Scientists made cutting edge 'smart skin' with Post-its, foil and tape.

Scientists just grew vegetables in 'Martian' soil – but there's a catch.

Why did Blue Origin leave so many female space reporters out of its big reveal?

Perfect Invisibility Cloaks May Actually Be Physically Impossible.

Scientists are the surprise stars of Facebook Live.

The Definitive Science of Super Mario.

Marvel's Agent Carter: Check Out the FX Behind Zero Matter.

How Many Lego Bricks Would It Take to Build Famous Sci-Fi Structures and Vehicles. Related: Mathematical! Lego Reveals It's Finally Making an Adventure Time Set. 

Learn the Actual Science Behind Ghostbusters.

This Animated Particle Physics Book Isn't Just For Kids.

The Jesuit Priest Who Believed in God and the Singularity.

No, science is not faith-based.

The Chart of Cosmic Exploration Elegantly Details 56 Years of Human Adventures into Space.

Play This Puzzle Game to Help Program a Quantum Computer.

Half of inventions “arise unexpectedly” from serendipity—not directed research.

Nature Physics editorial charges physicists with failure to explain the LIGO advance properly.

An A-Z of Women Pushing Boundaries in Science and Tech. Related:  15 Works of Art Depicting Women in Science. Also: Nine Outstanding Women Working In Science And Technology. Bonus: The women who mapped the universe and brought America to the moon.

Orson Welles Hosted a NASA Documentary About Aliens in the '70s and It Is Amazing.

Finally, this 360 Video of the LHC Is an Amazing Reminder of How Big the Damn Thing Is.

Physics Week in Review: March 5, 2016

Jen-Luc Piquant caught a nasty virus this week, but still managed to pull together a bunch of awesome physics links. This week: graphene patterned after moth's eyes, the physics of Stephen Curry's game-winning three-point shot, and fast radio bursts get complicated.

Me at Gizmodo:

Graphene Patterned After Moth Eyes Could Give Us 'Smart Wallpaper.' "Tweaking the structure of graphene so that it matches patterns found in the eyes of moths could one day give us “smart wallpaper,” among a host of other useful technologies. Using a novel technique called “nano texturing,” scientists at the University of Surrey in England have successfully modified ultra-thin graphene sheets to create the most efficient light-absorbent material to date, which is capable of generating electricity from both captured light and waste heat."

Scientists Are Still Arguing About That Chopra Bullshit Study. "Remember last November when Canadian scientists published a study using the tweets of Deepak Chopra to demonstrate how some people can interpret utter bullshit as deeply profound observations? It’s now sparked a counter-argument and a sharp rejoinder—two respectable scientists arguing about the meaning (or lack thereof) of bullshit."

UCLA Scientists Think Poo Could Power Our Cars. "Forget hybrids, electric vehicles, or hydrogen cars. Scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, want your poo to fuel the cars of the future. The United States produces a mountain of manure (human and otherwise) every year: more than 1 billion tons. All that waste matter is being wasted in turn, according to UCLA graduate student David Wernick, pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to boot. That’s why he and his colleagues are trying to use it to produce new kinds of biofuels." 

Watch These Two Rattlesnakes Battle It Out in Elaborate 'Combat Dance.' "A Phoenix woman hiking along a trail stumbled across a couple of male rattlesnakes locked in an elaborately orchestrated “combat dance.” Frankly, it looks a lot like a mating ritual, especially when you consider that this behavior is usually only seen during breeding season. But apparently they really are fighting." 

Other Cool Links:

That Blast of Radio Waves Produced By Colliding Dead Stars? Not So Fast.  Related: Arecibo Observatory spots a fast radio burst that keeps on bursting.  Mysterious Cosmic Radio Bursts Just Got Even More Interesting. 

An MIT physicist analyzes Stephen Curry's "impossible" game-winning three-point shot.

The explanation for some strange experimental results could lie in undiscovered particles called sterile neutrinos. 

Seeing mice: New improvements in particle detectors and medical imaging.

Hunting Ghosts Across the Cosmos: "This ghost, at least, seems to be the real deal." 

Blurring Causal Lines: Quantum experiments mix past and future on the microscopic scale. 

You can now 3D print aerogels, one of the world's lightest materials. 

Physics Brain Teaser: Bee in a Jar. 

Watch Couscous Produce Geometric Patterns, Thanks to Physics. 

Is an iPod more dangerous for your ears than a NASCAR race car? 

How to Measure the Gravitational Field of a Quantum Object. 

The Physics of Dropping Out of a Plane in an Inflatable Ball. 

How the maths of network resilience could help us preserve at-risk ecosystems. 

Why these scientists are using high-tech radar detectors to measure asparagus. 

Norway's Radioactive Reindeer. 

What Mars Would Look Like Mapped by Medieval Cartographers. 

New Circuit Material Can Be Stretched and Twisted Like Chewing Gum.

Only One Artist Can Use Blackest Material In The World.   Related: At M.I.T., Science Embraces a New Chaos Theory: Art.  Also: The Man Who Changed How Artists and Scientists Work Together.

Turbulent Liquid Mercury Creates Stunning Scientific Art. Per Gizmodo: "The fine golden lines actually show how liquid mercury moves across the bottom plate of heated cylinder. The motion, known as Rayleigh-Bénard convection, is a result of the distribution of temperature in the metal."

Meet NASA’s new X-planes: “Quiet” sonic booms and engines at the back. Related: NASA Thinks It Can Make a Supersonic Jet With No Boom. 

Antimatter Space Propulsion Possible Within A Decade, Say Physicists. 

Working Lego Model of the Earth, Moon, and Sun Is Remarkably 97 Percent Accurate.

NASA’s foremost solar system explorer says Europa lander a “necessity.”

Spud Launchers: Three Girls, Their Potatoes, and the International Space Station.

New Hubble photo shows a serene blue 'bubble' in space. 

Study suggests a new trick for finding alien civilizations. 

A Transparent Bubble Dome That Lets Campers See the Stars They're Sleeping Under.

That one time a man deliberately crashed at 632mph to pull max Gs. 

The Most Entertaining Explanation Of Differentials Around Came Out In 1937.

Alan Turing's Contributions to Biology and His Mesmerizing Hand-Drawn Diagrams of Dappling Patterns. 

This renowned mathematician is bent on proving academic journals can cost nothing.

Why the Math Curriculum Makes No Sense. 

How Math Geeks Almost Doxxed Banksy. 

World's Greatest Scientists Transformed Into Ass-Kicking Arcade Fighters. 

Quantum Break’s time-bending gameplay gets caught in the uncanny valley.

You’re a Genius If You Can Figure Out This Complex In-Browser Cycloid Machine.

Rare Globes From the 1600s Are Being Digitized So You Can Spin Them Online. 

Bioluminescent Bacteria Could Light Up The Streets Of Paris.

This Ludicrous New Instrument Makes Music with 2,000 Marbles. 

The 4 Most Important Things MythBusters Taught the World. 

What the Sound of the End of War Looked Like, 11/11/1918.

The Distortion of Politics, or the Geometry of Gerrymandering. Related: Gizmodo's Guide to the 2016 Presidential Election.  Also: why the 2016 presidential candidates should care about science.