Cocktail Party Physics

Physics Week in Review: April 30, 2013

Wormholes might be supermassive black holes laced with dark matter, a weasel shuts down the Large Hadron Collider, and the physics of peacock tail feathers were among this week's physics highlights.

Me at Gizmodo:

Wikipedia Is Basically a Corporate Bureaucracy, According to a New Study. "Wikipedia is a voluntary organization dedicated to the noble goal of decentralized knowledge creation. But as the community has evolved over time, it has wandered further and further from its early egalitarian ideals, according to a new paper published in the journal Future Internet. In fact, such systems usually end up looking a lot like 20th century bureaucracies."

Scientists Have Been Using a Flawed Method to Diagnose Pain. New Study Casts More Doubt on Notion of the Brain's 'Pain Matrix.' "For many years, neuroscientists believed they had identified a specific pattern of brain activity acting as a kind of “signature” for pain in the brain. Recently this so-called “pain matrix” has been called into question, and a new study by British researchers may have shattered the myth once and for all." 

The Physics of Peacock Tail Feathers Is Even More Dazzling Than We Realized. "Male peacocks shake their brilliantly-hued, long tail feathers to attract females in a courtship display known as “train-rattling.” But scientists had never closely examined the biomechanics behind this behavior—until now. A new paper in PLOS One concludes that the frequency at which those feathers vibrate can enhance this iridescent display—even as the eyespots remain almost perfectly still." [Image: Roslyn Dakin/PLOS One]

Bacteria Evade White Blood Cells Like Antelope Evade Hungry Tigers. "Mathematically speaking, the way a tiger charges a herd of antelope resembles a white blood cell attacking a colony of bacteria. That’s the conclusion of a new paper by an international team of physicists, just published in Journal of Physics A: Mathematical and Theoretical. This, in turn, could shed light on the intricate dynamics of animal behavior, as well as how bacterial invaders can evade attack and survive despite the best efforts of the immune system."

This Candidate for President Claims He's Traveled Through Time. "If the current frontrunners in this year’s presidential race just don’t appeal to you, perhaps you’d like to really think outside the box. Seattle lawyer Andrew Basiago is also running for president, as an independent. And he cites his extensive experience traveling through time as one of his strongest qualifications for office." 

Finally, An Invention That Can Tell You What Your Cat Is Really Saying. "Convinced that when your cat meows, it’s truly trying to tell you something? Now there’s a 3D printed talking cat collar to pick up on Fluffy’s varied vocalizations and “translate” them via an app on your smart phone. Yes, just like the one worn by Dug the talking dog in Pixar’s Up (“Squirrel!”). It’s called the Catterbox, and it’s the creation of the feline-friendly folks at Temptations Lab (a division of Temptations Cat Treats)."

Other Cool Links:

Report: A Weasel Shut Down the Large Hadron Collider.  Related: Five Small Animals That Messed With Big Science.

Physicists Hunt for the Big Bang’s Triangles. The story of the universe’s birth — and evidence for string theory — could be found in triangles and myriad other shapes in the sky.

Theorists perplexed by hints of unexpected new particle.

Dark Matter + Black Hole = Wormhole? Maybe. "According to a paper posted to the arXiv pre-print server last week, the difference between an everyday supermassive black hole and a space-time tunneling wormhole may be a lacing of dark matter. "

Images of distorted galaxies provide a new resource for studying dark matter and dark energy.

'Axion-like Particles' Probably Not a Dark Matter Answer.

We Finally Know What Happened to Japan's Lost Black Hole Satellite. R.I.P. Hitomi.

This Laser System Foreshadows A New Era In Ground-Based Astronomy.

Can a Titanium Captain America Shield Stand Up to Shots From a .45? It's not vibranium, but it is close.

The train goes up, the train goes down: a simple new way to store energy using gravity.

Physicist Frank Wilczek on quantum entanglement, "many worlds" and why they shouldn't be so shrouded in mystery. Related: Murray Gell-Mann on foundations of quantum mechanics. He and Feynman would browbeat people into accepting many-worlds.

A Dozen Black Holes Are Mysteriously Spewing Energy In the Same Direction.

Brain Greene on the future after gravitational wave detection. Illustration by John Hersey. Related: Why Does Gravity Move At The Speed Of Light?

Physicists discover a promising route for combined optical and solid state-based quantum information processing.

Mushroom glow mystery. A Japanese researcher believes he has solved part of the puzzle of fungal bioluminescence.

Where Nature Hides the Darkest Mystery of All: There’s no boundary quite like a black hole boundary.

Rumors Emerge of a Second Leak at Washington's Radioactive Waste Site.  Related: German nuclear plant’s fuel rod system swarming with old malware. At least it's not connected to the Internet. Also: Why Nuclear Fusion Reactors Won't Blow Up. Oh, and China Plans To Build 20 Floating Nuclear Power Plants In The South China Sea.

The Battles of Chernobyl: How the meltdown happened 30 years ago, and how it will be remembered. Related: Forget Fukushima: Chernobyl still holds record as worst nuclear accident for public health. Also: We still don't really know the health hazards of a nuclear accident. Bonus: Engineers Race to Entomb the Decaying Chernobyl Reactor. "A giant arch will enclose the crumbling sarcophagus before radiation leaks get worse, even as plans advance to turn the area into a nature preserve."

Who's Scamming Whom? Cold fusion is back. And it’s still a mess. 

How The 'Impossible' Space Drive Engine May Work (but probably not).

There’s Only One Way You Could Personally Visit an Exoplanet: Cryosleep. io9 editor Charlie Jane Anders goes out with a bang. Jen-Luc Piquant wishes her all the best in her new career as a full-time novelist.

Say cheese: this flexible sheet-like camera lens may lead to cameras that can wrap around cars.

New State for Water Molecules Behaves Unlike Any Solid, Liquid or Gas.

A GUT Feeling About Physics: Scientists want to connect fundamental forces of nature in one Grand Unified Theory.

The Dice You Never Knew You Needed: a die with a hundred and twenty sides.

ManyBody Physics: Casimir forces: 2+1 is not always 3.

Neuroscientist David Eagleman on what is possible in the cosmos.

How to Look at Art: a Mathematician's Perspective.

Stop telling kids you're bad at math. You are spreading math anxiety 'like a virus.' Related: Girls are still afraid of math, even when their moms are scientists.

How weird is quantum mechanics, really?

Why doesn’t physics help us to understand the flow of time?

Teaching children the ancient "mental abacus" technique boosted their maths skills. 

Pluto's 'Little Sister' Makemake Has a Moon.

Researchers Discovered New Observations of the 1006 AD Supernova.

A brief history of menstruating in outer space.

How to Make a Beautiful Space Themed Black Velvet Nebula Cake.

Watch 3-D-printing robot spiders crawl around a manufacturing lab in Princeton, NJ.

Symbols that Math Urgently Needs to Adopt. "I defy your binary categories and petty restrictions."

How Big Data Creates False Confidence.

What Makes the Stradivarius Special? It Was Designed to Sound Like a Female Soprano Voice, says researcher.

Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine Takes on Deep Learning.

An offbeat Belgrade museum reveals the many mysteries of Nikola Tesla.

New Full-Contact Sport Wraps Martial Arts In Electronic Armor. 

The Tragic Event That Led Samuel Morse to Develop the Telegraph.

The Man Who Knew Infinity brings the self-taught Indian wunderkind Srinivasa Ramanjuan vividly to life.  Related: The unlikely friendship that uncovered an untrained Indian mathematician’s genius.

Spark of Science: Chiara Mingarelli -- How stars and UFOs set one astrophysicist on her path.

If Your Science Professors Aren’t Confusing, They’re Doing It Wrong. Related: This Princeton professor's list of his failures is the most reassuring thing you'll read this weekend.

How the Breakthrough Prize changed Alexei Kitaev: "It helps me do more work because [his family has] more respect for it.”

The hottest job in physics? Accelerator scientists are in demand at labs and beyond.

The 13 Most Interesting Time Travel Stories in Comics.

Bellwether: Connie Willis's classic, hilarious novel about the science of trendiness (one of my faves).

Strapped Into a Falling Helicopter. Man Emergency Lands Helicopter to Teach Neil Tyson a Physics Lesson.

Four Thought Experiments: How you get to E=mc2:

Physics Week in Review: April 23, 2016

How tropical birds use quantum physics, trouble at the Hanford nuclear power plant in Washington state, and why elk bugles sound like Ringwraith shrieks were among this week's physics highlights. Also appearing this week: My review for the New York Times Book Review of two recent physics books: Christophe Galfard's The Universe in Your Hand and Carlo Rovelli's Seven Brief Lessons on Physics.

Me at Gizmodo:

The Way Cancer Cells Spread Is Even Scarier Than We Thought. "Cancer cells have a terrifying-yet-ingenious way of passing through even the smallest blood vessels to spread throughout the human body, according to a new study by researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital. Figuring out how to prevent them from doing so may help slow down the spread of this killer disease."

New Evidence Suggests That Human Limbs Evolved From Shark Gills. "New Evidence Suggests That Human Limbs Evolved From Shark Gills. "Over a century ago, scientists discarded a proposed theory that human limbs evolved from gills, given the lack of evidence in the fossil record. That theory is being revisited in light of new genetic results just published in the journal Development." [Image: Andrew Gillis/University of Cambridge]

Maybe Addiction Is More Like a Learning Disorder Than a Disease. "When Saturday Night Live aired a skit this weekend riffing on America’s new heroin epidemic—a satirical fake ad for “Heroin A.M.” to help addicts remain productive while using—many people weren’t laughing. That’s because heroin and other powerful opiates are killing more people than ever, across all demographics. So much for the War on Drugs. Maybe that approach is failing because we’re thinking about addiction all wrong. In her new book, Unbroken Brain: A Revolutionary New Way of Understanding Addiction, journalist Maia Szalavitz argues that a better way to understand addiction is to view it more as a developmental disorder, like autism or dyslexia. Only then can addiction be effectively prevented and treated."

Everyone Should Be Able To Explain Quantum Computing Like Justin Trudeau. "When Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau schooled a journalist on the basics of quantum computing yesterday, I was initially as charmed and delighted as everyone else. But then a niggling sense of dismay set in. Why should this be such a singular newsworthy event? How come so few of us can do what Trudeau did, when science plays such a central role in almost every aspect of our daily lives?" Related: Trudeau versus the experts: Quantum computing in 35 seconds.

Why Elk Bugles Sound Like Ringwraith Shrieks. "Majestic North American elk are known for producing high-pitched, screeching calls that carry for miles, particularly during breeding season. Known as “bugling,” it sounds for all the world like the piercing shrieks of the Ringwraiths from Lord of the Rings. This has puzzled scientists, because the pitch of an animal’s call in the wild usually depends on its size."

Other Cool Links:

Workers Have Found a 'Significant' Nuclear Waste Leak At a Washington Storage Site. Follow-up: We Should Be Very Worried About That Leaky Nuclear Waste Facility in Washington. "Earlier this week, we heard alarming reports of a “significant” nuclear waste leak at Hanford, the largest radioactive waste dumpsite in the country. Should we be worried? Absolutely. But mainly because this is a symptom of a much bigger problem that’s been festering for decades."

The search for hidden dimensions comes up empty again. Swinging pendulum obeys inverse square law, fails to fall into hidden dimension.

How Small Animals Pack A Powerful Punch: It's all about kinetic energy.

“Giant Leaps” Mean Changes to Superconductor Theory and New Magnetic Opportunities.

How Tropical Birds Use Quantum Physics: Blue feathers on many birds aren’t blue because of pigment, but thanks to the same physics that gives solids band gaps. Related: Why Do Solids Have Band Gaps? A conceptual way to see why there are some energies that electrons simply can not have inside a periodic structure.

The Curious Link Between the Fly-By Anomaly and the “Impossible” EmDrive Thruster. The same theory that explains the puzzling fly-by anomalies could also explain how the controversial EmDrive produces thrust.

Scientists Observe Plasma Waves That Could Help Prevent space debris collisions.

Silhouettes of the Bombs: What the shapes of atomic bombs do and don't tell us. Related: This Haunting Survivor Artwork Depicts the Horror of Nuclear Weapons.

A Song of Ice and Data: Who will live and who will die on Game of Thrones, according to statistics.

Could a Lightsaber Cut Through Captain America's Shield?  Related: Civil War’s Winter Soldier Couldn’t Survive This Giant Jump.

Fermi telescope poised to pin down gravitational wave sources.

The CMS collaboration has released 300 terabytes of open research data.

The Kepler Space Telescope Is Alive Again After Scaring the Hell Out of Everyone.

Three ways physics could help save humanity.

The New York Times plots of NBA 3-pointers a brilliant example of how a single graph can tell several stories.

Why Time Is One of Humanity's Greatest and Most Important Inventions.

This Philosopher Helped Ensure There Was No Nobel for Relativity.

Physicist Scott Aaronson Answers Every Ridiculously Big Question Scientific American Throws at Him. Quantum-computer whiz riffs on simulated universes, the Singularity, unified theories, P/NP, the mind-body problem, free will, why there’s something rather than nothing, and more.

Retrobituaries: Harold Morowitz, a Biophysicist Who Studied the Thermodynamics of Pizza.

Dolphins Are Helping Us Hunt for Aliens.

Can you get a bird to deliver a pizza to your plane? "Don't be surprised if some slices go missing along the way." 

What happens when a woman gets her period in space? Pretty much the same thing that happens on Earth.

How to Harvest Terawatts of Solar Power on the Moon. Related: On space mining's prospects, challenges, and how it could lead to conflicts on Earth. 

American Geophysical Union Will Accept Exxon Money, Despite Scientists' Protest.

Math is Crazy Hard to Define. "In math logic reigns alone."

The Fractal Is A Beautiful Gift To Mathematicians And Stoners Alike.

Fold Your Way to Mathematical Glory.

The Australian Nanoscience Institute Puts Every Experiment Inside a Faraday Cage.

Why Physics Is Not a Discipline: Physics is not just what happens in the Department of Physics.

Going Faster Than Light Could Send You "Back In Time."  Related Reality Check: Photonic Booms: How images can move faster than light and what they can tell us.

The Optics Of Superman’s X-Ray Vision: a look at why humanoid eyes just aren’t set up to work with x-rays.

TV and movie science fiction is getting more sciencey, and that's good for everyone.

Kazoo: A new print magazine for girls that inspires them to be smart, strong, fierce, and true to themselves.

The Wright Brothers' Plane Patent Was Lost For 36 Years Due to Clerical Error.

How Quantum Physics Starts With Your Toaster: on the “ultraviolet catastrophe” and why Planck needed the quantum hypothesis to solve black-body radiation.

Charlotte Brontë’s brushes with science.

Watch the Titanic Sink in Real Time in this two-hour-and-forty-minute animated simulation. I mean, what else are you gonna do this weekend?

Physics Week in Review: April 16, 2013

Excitement mounts over a possible new particle, 72 hours of science yields insight into how good things spread, and the unveiling of a new mission to build an interstellar probe from billionaire Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking were among this week's physics highlights.

Me at Gizmodo:

The Best Little Brain Reader Your Money Can't Buy (Yet). "Let’s be honest: it would be really cool to have a wearable personal brain-computer interface (BCI) that would monitor your brain waves while you do all your favorite activities. Not to mention being able to operate smart phone apps using your thoughts alone. That day is closer than you think. Meet the BrainStation—your brain interface for everyday life. The creation of a company called Neuroverse, it’s basically a FitBit for your brain."

Related: My first Facebook Live for Gizmodo: chatting with Neuroverse CEO Ricardo Gil-da-Costa about the BrainStation wireless BCI. Side note: I first met Ricardo years ago during my stint as director of the Science & Entertainment Exchange. I've been following the developments of this research ever since, so it's personally deeply satisfying to finally be able to report on the progress.

When Things Go Viral and Everybody Wins (On Beneficial Epidemics and Why We Can Totes Make "Fetch" Happen). "An intrepid team of postdocs at the Santa Fe Institute pulled off a hell of a feat last week. They gleaned some useful insights into how fads, technology, and new words spread rapidly throughout the population—even faster than a deadly virus. And they did it all in just 72 hours."

Humans Can Still Do One Thing Better Than AI. "Google’s AlphaGo computer may have bested a human in four out of five matches last month, but human beings still excel when it comes to intuitive leaps in problem solving. That’s the conclusion of a new paper in Nature by Danish scientists. Blending the two approaches yields the best of both worlds—a marriage of man and machine. Even better: the researchers made this surprising discovery by getting people to play online games."

These Embroidered Antennas and Circuits Are Perfect for Wearable Electronics. "Some day soon your favorite shirt could serve as an antenna for your smartphone. Armed with a sewing machine, fine silver wires, and a new patented fabrication technique, scientists at the Ohio State University have created embroidered antennas and circuits that seem destined to be a hot trend in so-called “e-textiles.” [Image: Jo McCulty/The Ohio State University]

Why Discovering a New Particle Would Be Such a Huge Deal. "When physicists at the Large Hadron Collider announced the detection of a possible, unexpected new particle last December, we advised caution, since most such hints go away when more data comes in. We won’t know for sure until this summer whether it’s real, or just random noise in the data masquerading as a signal. While we’re waiting, physicist David Kaplan lays out all the science for you in a new video for Quanta." 

Neuropsychologist Has a Secret Life as a Bullwhip-Cracking Stuntwoman (plus, The Physics of Whip-Cracking). "Indiana Jones proved just how useful a good bullwhip can be, both as a tool and as a weapon, but people are still surprised when neuropsychologist Jessica Cail tells them that one of her favorite hobbies is practicing whip-cracking. She talks about this peculiar sideline in the latest installment of the NOVA video series, Secret Life of Scientists."

The Brazil Nut Effect Is More Complicated Than You Think. "We’ve all experienced that moment of dismay when we open a fresh can of mixed nuts, only to find loathed Brazil nuts at the top of the heap, with the tasty cashews and trusty peanuts all the way down at the bottom. It’s called the Brazil Nut Effect. There’s well-known physics behind why this happens, but it’s a lot more complicated than you might think."

Now There's Video of BB-8's Surprise Visit to NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab. "Remember when we shared those fantastic photographs of BB-8 visiting NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab? (That’s the adorable rolling droid from Star Wars: The Force Awakens, for anyone who’s been living under a rock the last few months.) Now the folks at Disney have released the video footage from BB-8's visit, whereby the plucky little droid meets Maggie, the twin sister of the Mars Curiosity rover, and 'chats' with a JPL scientist."

Other Cool Links:

Canadian prime minister schools journalist in how quantum computing works during announcement of a new $50 million grant to the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario. Seriously, could Justin Trudeau get any cooler? Related: Trudeau lauds Perimeter’s ‘cutting-edge research.’ 

Russian billionaire Yuri Milner and Stephen Hawking want to build an interstellar starcraft. Here's a look inside this new interstellar mission. Hawking said that An Interstellar Space Mission Will Bring Benefits to People's Lives on Earth.  Hawking's Interstellar Starship Would Revolutionize the Search for Alien Life.  But Is Hawking's interstellar 'starshot' possible? Not yet, but experts say it's an exciting start.  Launching Yuri Milner's Interstellar Nanocraft Won't Be Easy. Also, Why Is Stephen Hawking Suddenly So Cool With Aliens Now?

The Far-Out Summit Where Geniuses Learn to Build Starships.

Kepler Is Saved! How NASA Used Its Deep Space Network to Avert Catastrophe.

Debate Intensifies Over Dark Disk Theory.

Does Quantum Weirdness Arise When Parallel Classical Worlds Repel?

How We'll Finally Wind Up Testing Quantum Gravity.

All it takes is one (very carefully located) atom to make a magnet. Individual atoms of holmium retain magnetic memories for 24 minutes near 0 degrees Kelvin.

Ultrasound Data Transmission Through Meat Is Fast Enough To Watch HD Movies.

Prepare for an Explosion of Gravitational Wave Detections. Related: How Joe Weber’s gravity ripples turned out to be all noise.

Ever Wonder What An Emerg Depressurization Alarm On The ISS Sounds Like?

Astronomers Found Evidence for Exoplanets 100 Years Ago and Didn’t Know It.

Art draws out the beauty of physics as labs around the world open their doors to aesthetic creation. Per Symmetry: "When it comes to quantum mechanics, it’s easier to show than tell. That’s why artist residencies at particle physics labs play an important part in conveying their stories." [Image: Symmetry Magazine]

Watch SpaceX Land Their Rocket In Glorious 4K Resolution. Here's Why the sea landing is such a big deal: the first stage accounts for 70% of $60m cost of Falcon 9.  Related: SpaceX, That Vision Thing, and Mars: Safely landing a first-stage rocket on a ship opens up "cheap" orbital space, but also shows a path to Mars. Also: The Next 6 Milestones in the Commercial Space Race.  And remember, Without NASA there would be no SpaceX and its brilliant boat landing.

Nanotubes Self-Assemble Into Wires With a Blast From a Tesla Coil.

This chip is hardwired to make mistakes but could help computers understand the world.

You might still be a simple bacterium, if not for magnetism.

No, Planet 9 is absolutely not going to destroy Earth. Related: Stop blaming everything on Planet 9.

The Physics of That Crazy Ricochet Hole in One at the Masters.

The secret ingredient to a super speedy fastball isn't the pitcher's arm.

The Math Wizard Behind the Golden State Warriors' Record 73 Wins.

Truly Interesting Animation Breaks Down the Story Behind Zero and Why It's So Important. Is zero really a number? How did it come about? Hannah Fry tells the story of how zero went from nothing to something.

Golden State and the Mathematical Magic of Seventy-Three.

Scientists Finally Made Carbyne—a Material Stronger Than Graphene—That Lasts.

Graphene-coated solar panels could create electricity from raindrops.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to Quantum Field Theory.

The Biggest Problem With The Expanding Universe Might Be Trouble For Dark Energy.

An international team of physicists has directly observed some unique characteristics of a superconductor for the first time.

What will scientists name the newest elements? Here’s what we know.

Watch an artificial-intelligence algorithm clean up pixelated video to make it look the way it thinks it should.

Can Science Shorten (or Eliminate) NASCAR Rain Delays?

How Quickly Did the Crew of Apollo 13 Know They Had Lost the Moon?

Obama to Shine Light on Unsung Hero of Astronomy: Henrietta Swan Leavitt.

Hear What It Sounds Like When Philosopher Daniel Dennett’s Brain Activity Gets Turned into Music.

Story Of Your Life Could Be One of the Year's Most Magical Films. A linguist and a theoretical physicist are the stars of the latest movie from the director of Sicario and the upcoming Blade Runner 2.

Stunning photos by an Iranian physicist capture the Iran outsiders never get to see. Per Quartz: "Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji is a 25-year-old Iranian physics student. But he spends his free time obsessing over how to make photos that will reveal Iran’s architectural heritage and natural beauty to the rest of the world." [Image: Tomb of Cyrus the Great, Pasargadae. Credit: Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji.]

Mysterious Alignment Of Black Holes Puzzles Astronomers.

Packing Heat: The World Of Sphere Packing Mathematics Is On Fire.

The Man Who Discovered the Sun’s Puzzling Heat Is Being Forgotten.

The Story of the Davy Lamp and Tsar's Cup.

How a Hypothesis Can Be Neither True Nor False.

Have we become too reliant on GPS? This satellite expert thinks so.

The Beautiful Complexity of the Cosmic Web: A 3D interactive visualization lets users explore the vast, hidden structure of the universe.

The Bad Astronomer weighed in with this week with A Tale of Three Jupiters. Part 1: The rogue one: A hot young solitary exoplanet has been found in the Sun's neighborhood. Part 2: Jupiter's Doppelgänger?  Part 3: Tatooine has two suns, but a new exoplanet does it one better: It's in a trinary system. Part 4: The Ghost of Jupiter may have been shaped by the ghost of a Jupiter.

Can we sense invisible magnetic fields?

Fukushima Is Now Home To Radioactive Wild Boars.

High-end fashion and mathematics collide in Fashematics.

Can You Solve the Bridge Riddle? Use the power of logic to escape zombies.

Math as Poetry: The solution of the cubic equation, in terza rima.

This Website Is Using Math to Create Every Possible Patent.

Moore's Law and the Future of Solid-State Electronics: Don't give up on faster-better-cheaper computing quite yet.

It’s Time These Ancient Women Scientists Get Their Due.

The Liver of Piacenza: The entire known universe of the ancient Etruscans is held inside this bronze model of a sheep’s liver.

Baking better bread…with ultrasound.

Learn more about "Atomic Artist" Alyce Rothlein Simon.

Introducing the SPOT effect: “Spontaneous Preference for their Own Theories.”

Now your American Girl can also be “Astronomer Girl” thanks to this awesome science fair set.

Vsauce Explains How to Count Past Infinity and Why 40 Is the Biggest Number.

 

Physics Week in Review: April 9, 2016

Bubble-trapping vortex rings, how Aboriginal star maps shaped Australia's highways, and two incredible rocket barge landings by Blue Origin and Space X were among this week's physics highlights.

Me at Gizmodo:

Scientists Think They've Figured Out Why Van Gogh's Sunflowers Are Fading. "The vibrant colors of many of Vincent van Gogh’s most famous paintings—including his Sunflower series—have been fading over the last 100 years. Now a team of Italian scientists has come up with an explanation as to why the lead chromate dyes favored by the artist when mixing his pigments degrade so much under light. They described their work in a new paper in Chemical Science."

The World's Smallest Primate Can Do More Pullups Than You. "The adorable gray mouse lemur weighs just 1.5 to 3 ounces, but its tiny frame belies its impressive strength. French researchers put the creature’s grip to the test and found, on average, that mouse lemurs can pull more than ten times their own body weight." [Image: Pauline Thomas]

Meet the Forgotten 'Rocket Girls' Who Helped NASA Reach the Stars. "NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a long and colorful history in rocketry and space exploration, from early missiles and rockets, to landing on the moon and remotely navigating rovers on Mars. Behind all the prominent men who spearheaded the programs was a group of unsung women. The forgotten women of JPL now have their own book, Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, From Missiles to the Moon to Mars, thanks to microbiologist turned author Nathalia Holt."

Aspiring Artists Can Make Like a Dutch Master with the LUCY Drawing Tool. "Artist David Hockney once stirred up controversy by asserting that many of the great Dutch masters—folks like Vermeer and Ingres—had relied on optical drawing aids to create their masterpieces. Now everyone can channel their inner Dutch master with the LUCY drawing tool. It’s designed by Les Cookson, an artist and inventor who has been building, researching and designing optical toys and tools for over 10 years. Conceptually, LUCY is based on the camera lucida, an optical artist’s aid invented by an English physician named William Wollaston in 1807."

These Pressed Record Albums Are Good Enough to Eat. "Cheese, aubergine, ham, and tortillas are tasty in their own right, but in the hands of artist Matthew Herper, they also make beautiful music. He uses laser-etching to make edible—and still playable—record albums to explore the acoustical properties of food."

Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein Define Gravity in Physics-Themed Homage to Wicked. "What do you get when you combine a Broadway musical about The Wizard of Oz with two giants of physics? You get 'Defining Gravity,' the latest music mashup video from A Capella Science." The wigs alone make it all worth while.

Other Cool Links:

Monday was Square Root Day! It's kind of like Pi Day, but way, way less fun. Related: How to Celebrate Square Root Day (if you're into that kind of thing).

Blue Origins Just Launched Its Rocket for the Third Time and stuck the landing. And then Space X did the same. Oh, it's on again! SpaceX Just Landed a Rocket on a Drone Ship.

Happy Anniversary to the World's First Cell-Phone Call.

Thanks to math, we can calculate the benefits of human sacrifice.

The Physics Behind Another Bogus Perpetual Motion Machine.

Why Nature Prefers Hexagons: The geometric rules behind fly eyes, honeycombs, and soap bubbles.

How ancient Aboriginal star maps have shaped Australia's highway network.

Using the uncertainty principle against itself to gain precision.

Testing Einstein's Relativity With a Cosmic Neutrino.

Why Sleeping Beauty Is Lost in Time.

$1 billion x-ray laser upgrade begins at SLAC.

Scientists Uncover Bubble-Trapping Vortex Rings With environmental applications.

Trypophobia: the fear of holes driven by the internet – and mathematics.

What Science Is Learning From Chocolate-Coated Candy.

How Physicists Image Individual Atoms.

How Would a Real Space Elevator Work and Is It Even Possible to Build? 

An international partnership to upgrade the LHC has yielded the strongest accelerator magnet ever created.

Can we reverse engineer the algorithms and computations of the brain?

Here's what it takes to form large spherical carbon nano structures to bridge the gap between buckyballs and graphene.

Galileo Didn't Invent Astronomy, But He DID Invent Mechanical Physics.

The Ultimate List of Weapons Astronauts Have Carried Into Orbit.

This Astrobiologist Is Collecting Unrecognizable Beings from the Stratosphere.

Would Magneto Get Whiplash if Quicksilver Pushed Him Out of Danger? No, He’d Just Die.

Bomb-grade uranium is really useful---not just for nuclear weapons--but for perfectly peaceful scientific research.

CERN Researchers Are Making a DIY Cosmic Ray Detector in Their Spare Time. 

How many digits of pi do we really need? Eh, not that many, says NASA.

MIT Engineers Have 3D-Printed A Walking Robot With A Liquid Center.

Rafael Araujo’s Architectural Renderings of Life Now as a Coloring Book. Per Colossal: "Architect and illustrator Rafael Araujo (previously) drafts beautiful three-dimensional spaces in a studio without technology, connecting himself back to nature while he meticulously demonstrates the Golden Ratio’s role in the natural world."

The Accidental Fraction Brainbuster.

You Can't Shake-splode a Soda At the Bottom of the Ocean.

Astrophysicist Chiara Mingarelli on imposter's syndrome, and standing up for herself in grad school.

Giant, Slo-Mo Kitty Demonstrates Why Cats Always Land on Their Feet.

Meet the Scientist Who Worked as a Snowflake Consultant on Disney's Frozen.

The Original Telephone: The Bizarre Musical Language of Jean-François Sudre.

This Website Can Teach You to Count Cards Like an MIT Math Genius.

What Happens When You Shoot a Golf Ball at a Balloon Filled with Non-Newtonian Fluid? Sheer awesomeness, that's what.

Celebrating 50 years of Star Trek with an “Ultimate Voyage” concert.

A Stunning Steampunk Animation That Uses Historic Photos of Major U.S. Cities in the Early 20th Century:

Physics Week in Review: April 2, 2016

A solution to the sphere-packing problem in many dimensions, the mathematics of the complicated relationships in Game of Thrones, and Japan's lost communication with its Hitomi black hole telescope were among this week's physics highlights.

Me at Gizmodo:

Black Hole Blues Gives a Ringside Seat to Discovery of Gravitational Waves. "When the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves, it was the culmination of 50 long years of hard work and perseverance in the face of skepticism. In her new book, Black Hole Blues, and Other Songs from Outer Space, astrophysicist Janna Levin gives us a ringside seat to how it all went down. Gizmodo sat down with Levin to learn more."

Dating Service Lets You Pick Your Partner by Smelling a Sweaty T-Shirt. "You’re young and single and looking for love in New York City, and the usual online dating services haven’t panned out. A new matchmaking service has a crazy idea: It wants to let you choose a lover by letting you smell a bunch of t-shirt samples. I know, it sounds like an April Fool’s prank. But apparently it’s real—albeit more akin to a fun project at the moment than a viable commercial business. Smell Dating is the creation of artist/teacher Tega Brain and editor/researcher Sam Lavigne. The idea is based on the science of pheronomes, chemicals secreted when the body sweats, which scientists believe play a role in mate selection in many species."

Amazing Photographs Capture the Microscopic Iridescence of Peacock Feathers. "Male peacocks are justly admired for their brilliantly colored plumage. Canadian photographer Waldo Nell has captured the underlying microscopic structure behind those stunning hues in extraordinary detail in his latest photographic series." [Image credit: Waldo Nell] 

Forget Sea Monkeys, the Dino Sphere Is the Novelty Bio-Kit of the Future. "Remember Sea Monkeys? Remember how disappointed you were when you found out they weren’t really humanoid organisms, but boring old brine shrimp? Now there’s a nifty alternative: the Dino Sphere, a decorative glass sphere that houses thousands of plankton. Swirl the sphere a little at night, and those plankton will emit a bright blue glow. In essence, it’s “an interactive living world,” with no need for batteries or electricity, according to BioPop, the San Diego-based company that created it. Yes, these are the same folks who brought you the bioluminescent Dino Pet in 2013. Both the Dino Sphere and Dino Pet get their glow from a phenomenon called bioluminescence." 

Vintage Mechanical Calculator Shows Why It's a Bad Idea To Divide by Zero. "Everyone learns in grade school that you can’t divide by zero, but few of us ever learn (or fully understand) why. The stock answer is that it gives you an answer of infinity. The truth is a bit more nuanced than that, and an old mechanical calculator offers the perfect illustration." Bonus: "If you divide by 0 you die": The Kid Who Learned about Math on the Street, by Roz Chast.

Other Cool Links:

Got some leftover peeps? You can use them to find the speed of light. Related: An Experiment To See What Happens To Marshmallow Peeps Placed In a Vacuum Chamber. Just for fun: 10 Medieval rabbits that hate Easter and want to kill you. 

Mathematicians mapped out every Game of Thrones relationship to find the main character. Related: 11 Shakespeare Tragedies Mapped Out with Network Visualizations.

Mountains Made of "Magnetic Honey" Lead to New Insights.

Wrinkles in Spacetime: Searching for defects in fabric of cosmos could help physicists home in on quantum gravity.

Japan Loses Contact With New $273 million Black Hole Space Telescope.   Related: Space Detectives Are Figuring Out What Borked Japan’s Hitomi Satellite. Also: Japan’s Lost Black Hole Satellite Just Reappeared and Nobody Knows What Happened to It. But one astronomer caught it tumbling in freefall on video.

Physicists at the Gate: Collaboration and Tribalism in Science. Thoughtful article in new Undark magazine. Related: Treating the Origins of Life like Physics. Also: The only equation that you should know for the chemistry of life.

Scientists at Fermilab Are About to Start Shooting Neutrinos Through the Earth.

India to Join Hunt for Gravitational Waves. Related: What LIGO Detection Means For Other Gravitational Wave Searches.

Is AlphaGo Really Such a Big Deal? Related: Could AlphaGo bluff its way through poker? Google DeepMind knows when to hold ‘em, when to fold ‘em.

A Ukrainian mathematician has solved the centuries-old sphere-packing problem in dimensions eight and 24.

IBM’s brain-inspired chip finds a home at Livermore National Laboratory. A cluster of processors will mimic 16 million neurons.

In One Universe, the Cat Dies: How the uncertain fate of a fictional tabby gave us the multiverse.

Beyond invisibility: engineering light with metamaterials.

Leidenfrost Effect Puts Perpetual Bounce into Hydrogel Beads.

Why does the Sun hurt my eyes? The sun is a mass of incandescent gas and, look, just don't ... don't stare at it, okay?

Three Ways to Make a Rocket From a Bottle. (Bonus: GIFs!)

Is the black hole at our galaxy’s centre a quantum computer?

Astronomers Have Found New Evidence For Planet Nine.

Transparent Wood Could Replace Glass, Become Coolest Building Material Ever.

New use for X-rays: A radar gun for unruly atoms.

The Soap Film as Analogue Computer: Soap films provide a simple method of solving some math problems. 

Beautiful Photos of Billowing Forms Created by Dripping Colorful Paint Into a Tank of Water. Per Laughing Squid: "Artist Kim Keever has added to her gallery more beautiful photos that capture the beautiful nebulous, billowing forms she creates from dripping richly colored pigment into a giant aquarium tank." [Image: Kim Keever. Available for purchase at Waterhouse & Dodd, New York City.]

Eulerian and Lagrangian reference frames: two different perspectives on fluids.

An updated neural model for working memory.

9 Best Female Scientists You Should Know.

Andrew Hacker's new book is based on his controversial 2012 New York Times Op-Ed. Here was my response on Scientific American at the time. And here is Evelyn Lamb skewering Hacker at Slate: This book takes a swipe at the state of math education—and gets a lot of math wrong. Lamb had more to say at Scientific American: Andrew Hacker and the Case of the Missing Trigonometry Question.

Belle II and the matter of antimatter. Go inside the new detector looking for why we’re here.

Data-Mining Algorithm Reveals The Stormy Evolution of Mathematics Over 700 Years.

The Math Behind Beethoven’s Music.

The great mystery of mathematics is its lack of mystery.

How Do Black Hole Jets Carve Out Bubbles In Space?

A Doctor Is Spending a Year in Antarctica to Research the Isolation of Space.

Major Tim (Peake) to ground control: Moon a logical stepping stone to Mars.

Astronomers crowdfund effort to recreate "alien" signal. Related: This Is How We Could Hide Our Planet From Bloodthirsty Aliens. Also: The hunt for extraterrestrials turns to the 'dim bulbs of the universe.' 

Tesla’s Electric Cars Aren’t as Green as You Might Think.

A Wannabe Supervillain Built His Own Thermite Cannon.

Physics Fiction: Quantum Shorts 2015 Winner.

Mauveine: colourful account of the birth of synthetic organic chemistry.

This scientist found a way to make battery parts with bread mold.

The Lighthouse at Eddystone (1698-1703): "another instance of an inventor/engineer being killed by his/her creation."

A conversation with The Accidental Mathematician a.k.a. Izabella Laba.

Having a fridge laser could spare you from food poisoning.

How To Tell If Your Microwave Is Leaking Radiation.

Mixing Paint Together Is Gorgeously Stimulating.

A Brief History of the Devil's Tritone.

Richard Feynman Creates a Simple Method for Telling Science From Pseudoscience (1966).

Space-filling curves, puzzling maps between dimensions, have surprising real-world applications.

He Drew the Sun for 40 Years, But Now His Telescope Is Dying.

Good advice for Caltech's Spiros Mikalakis from William Shatner: "Make sure you talk slow so people can keep up."

The Designer Who Peered Into Microscopes and Saw High Art.

Science Education Is Woefully Uncreative. That Has to Change.

This Newly Discovered Triple Sun Planet Would See Some Truly Bizarre Skies.

Haunting Photographs of Residents Returning to Daily Activities in the Fukushima Exclusion Zone.

Brussels Bombers May Have Plotted Kidnapping To Get Nuclear Material For Dirty Bomb. Related: Nuclear Materials Remain Vulnerable to Theft, Despite U.S.-Led Effort. Also: The Element Thorium Explained and How It Could Make Nuclear Power Safer. Bonus: Watch an Underground Nuclear Explosion Melt the Ground into a Giant Crater.

Holoportation is a Great Way to Give Awkward High Fives. 

What is laser cooling? Veritasium and the Physics Girl tackled the science of this ultra cold technique.