Cocktail Party Physics

Physics Week in Review: July 30, 2016

Among this week's physics highlights: "tunable" spider silk can block quasiparticles of sound (phonons); the birth of quantum holography; and exploiting the "slingshot effect" to build better tabletop accelerators.

Me at Gizmodo:

How Much You Need to Exercise to Make Up For Sitting All Day. "There’s been a lot of finger-wagging of late about the health risks associated with sitting at a desk all day, or binge-watching our favorite TV shows. Now couch potatoes can rejoice because a new study has found that just an hour of moderate activity a day wipes out all the negative impacts of sedentary behavior—contrary to some prior studies claiming exercise didn’t help much at all." 

Amazing Spider Silk Continues to Surprise Scientists. "We already know that spider silk is something of a wonder material, but scientists are still discovering more awesome things that it can do. An international team of researchers has found that spider silk shares a useful property with semiconductors—except rather than exploiting this to manipulate electrons, it can be used to manipulate sound and heat. As described in a new paper in Nature Materials, spider silk can block certain quasiparticles of sound (called “phonons”), depending on their frequency, the same way semiconductors can block certain electrons."

Sound Art Shows You What Musical Notes Actually Look Like. "Sound is something of an ephemeral phenomenon, existing in the moment that vibrations travel through the air. Those vibrations also exhibit distinct patterns, depending on frequency, which can be visualized by scattering a fine dust over a vibrating plate. This was the inspiration for Resonantia, an album whose catalog features photographs that capture those distinctive patterns for all 12 musical notes." [Image: Jeff Louviere and Vanessa Brown]

DNA Resolves 80-Year-Old Mystery Behind Belgian King's Death. "Controversy has long surrounded the presumed accidental death of Belgium’s King Albert I in 1934, with conspiracy theorists crying murder. Now, 80 years later, forensic geneticists have successfully matched DNA from blood found at the scene of his death with that of two of the late king’s distant relatives, hopefully resolving the mystery once and for all."

Apollo Astronauts Are Five Times More Likely to Die of Heart Problems. "Jim Irwin, Apollo 15. Donn Eisele, Apollo 7. Ronald Evans, Apollo 17. Wally Schirra, Apollo 7. Neil Armstrong, Apollo 11. These are all Apollo astronauts who died of heart attacks or related complications. All told, 43 percent of deceased astronauts from the Apollo missions died from cardiovascular problems, according to a new study published today in Nature’s Scientific Reports. That’s between four and five times higher than astronauts who never flew on a mission or who never left low-Earth orbit. Michael Delp of Florida State University, lead author of the new study, believes the likely culprit of this higher rate is their unprecedented exposure to deep space radiation."

These Are the Four Stages of Your Brain on Math. "Have you ever wondered what your brain is really doing as you sweat your way through a math test? Now you can see for yourself, thanks to a new brain imaging study from Carnegie Mellon University that captured the brain activity of people in the act of solving math problems."

Learn All About the History of Rockets in Just Four Minutes. "Diehard fans of space exploration, rejoice! That pseudonymous foul-mouthed mastermind, exurb1a, who gave us the universe in just four minutes, is back with an irreverent video tackling the colorful history of rocket science. It’s set to the tune of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General” from Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance."

Your Next Cocktail Could Defy Gravity With the Levitating CUP. "Diehard cocktail aficionados swear by serving specific drinks in the correct glass. I wonder what they’ll make of the Levitating CUP, a cocktail glass designed to float above a portable base, in seeming defiance of gravity."

Get Your Math Geek On with This A Capella Hamilton Parody. "It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of the uber-nerdy A Capella Science series on YouTube. And now it’s back with another super-clever geeky video, parodying the hip-hop opening number of the smash Broadway musical Hamilton. Except in this case, the Hamilton in question is the Irish physicist and mathematician William Rowan Hamilton."

Other Cool Links:

The “slingshot effect” (not the gravitational kind) could lead to a new kind of table-top particle accelerator.

The Deconstructed Standard Model Equation: it's far more than elementary particles arranged in a table.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot might be making the planet red hot.

The birth of quantum holography: Making holograms of single light particles.

Why You Should Care about High-Dimensional Sphere Packing: it's not just for oranges anymore.

Lately, Science Has Been Having A Lot Of Fun With Hydrogels. "The possibilities for hydrogels, which are substances made from polymers that swell in water to form gel-like material, are seemingly endless due to their strength and insolubility."

Neutrinos Hint of Matter-Antimatter Rift. An early sign that neutrinos behave differently than antineutrinos suggests an answer to one of the biggest questions in physics. [Image: Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine]

Winding Light Takes New Paths. "[I]n work published last week in Physical Review A, a team of researchers from Sun Yat-sen University in China demonstrate a technique for designing beams with a variety of trajectories."

The Atomki Anomaly: A result from an experiment in Hungary catches the attention of theorists in the United States.

Untangling Quantum Causation: Figuring out if A causes B should help to write the rulebook for quantum physics.

Dimensional Reduction: The Key To Physics' Greatest Mystery?

How Much Energy Could We Really Harvest from an Earthquake? A lot, it turns out, but not for very long.

A New Explanation for One of the Strangest Occurrences in Nature: Ball Lightning.

How Vector Space Mathematics Reveals the Hidden Sexism in Language. "As neural networks tease apart the structure of language, they are finding a hidden gender bias that nobody knew was there."

The Rosetta probe has officially stopped listening for Philae, its little lost comet lander. Related: Say farewell to the Philae comet lander using #GoodbyePhilae 

The corpse of a dead star zaps its companion with a death ray.

A new, independent review of the Orion spacecraft is pretty damning. The capsule is over budget and may need seven more years before flying crews.

NASA: On the Edge of Forever explores links between Star Trek and the International Space Station.

The Physics Of Stopping A Meteor With One Punch.

Origins of life - yeah, what's up with that?

Transistors will stop shrinking in 2021, but Moore’s law will live on. Final semiconductor industry road map says the future is 3D packaging and cooling.

Diamonds Lead to Ultra-High Pressure Situations.

Could Dark Energy Be Caused By A Reaction To What's In The Universe?

How Fotini Markopoulou walked away from quantum gravity, and physics more generally. Related: Her Second Act: Fotini Markopoulou on Life Beyond Physics.

Edward Purcell’s musings about things that move in gooey stuff --a classic fluid dynamics paper from 1977--with doodles.

The Mathematical Elegance of the Grand Canyon.

America at the Atomic Crossroads: remembering the Bikini Atoll a-bomb detonation.

Beyond Chernobyl: 15 Design Concepts for a Post-Nuclear World. 

Prismatic Light Paintings Produced From Refracted Light by Stephen Knapp. Per Colossal: "These large-scale works utilize minimal tools, harnessing simply light and dichroic glass to throw a multitude of colors against the walls and room. The installations are not sketched out beforehand or programmed by computer, but rather created during the installation process as Knapp moves intuitively to choreograph his intricate light patterns." [Image: Stephen Knapp]

From Physics to Science Fiction: Sci-Fi author C.A. Higgins explains how she made the journey from science to writing.

A Middle-Eastern synchrotron called SESAME Hopes To Transcend Borders With Groundbreaking Science.

Aerial photos of NYC and LA reveal symmetry hiding in plain sight.

What's Behind A Science vs. Philosophy Fight?

To win the International Math Olympiad, the US team trained with its rivals.

A practical guide for little girls (or boys) who want to become astronauts.

Quantum Steampunk: Caltech's Nicole Younger Halpern had a lovely time explaining quantum thermodynamics at the Cal State LA physics colloquium.

UK vs. US: Who's got the right way to teach math(s)? Related:  Teaching Science with a Typewriter: outdated technology can turn kids on to learning STEM concepts via narrative.

Five Fun Science Experiments You Can Do at Home With Your Kids.

Museum Of Ice Cream Delivers A Scoop Of Science, But Only If You Ask For It.

Jack White Wants to Play a Record in Space Honoring Carl Sagan.  Related: DJs Are Dropping Beats From Deep Space.

Find a Front Row Seat For Gazing at the Cosmos With This Dark Sky Park Map.

Why Star Trek Transporters are Sci-Fi’s Most Mind-Blowing Technology. Related: Why a Shrink Ray Would Also Be a Death Ray.

The Search for Earth Proxima, A Short Documentary About the Search for Earth-Like Exoplanets:

The Search for Earth Proxima from Speculative Films on Vimeo.

Physics Week in Review: July 23, 2016

There was so much cool physics in the news this week, it's hard to pick just three stories to highlight. But Jen-Luc Piquant is going with these: LUX fails to detect dark matter particles; stretching quantum superposition from Minnesota to Chicago; and a record-setting hard-drive that can store information one atom at a time. Be sure to check out all the linky goodness below to find out what you may have missed.

Me at Gizmodo:

WIMP-y Dark Matter Remains Maddeningly Elusive. "The hunt for the elusive dark matter received yet another blow earlier today at an international conference in Sheffield, England. Scientists with the Large Underground Xenon (LUX) dark matter experiment announced that they found no hints of dark matter particles in their latest analysis, despite increasing the sensitivity of the experiment fourfold for its final run."

French Physicists Unravel the Secrets of the Knuckleball. "Knuckleballs are mostly associated with baseball in the United States, but this devilishly unpredictable ball motion also shows up in soccer, cricket, and volleyball. Yet it’s never seen in other sports like squash, basketball, and table tennis. A team of French scientists think they’ve finally figured out why and describe their conclusions in the New Journal of Physics." 

Rembrandt Probably Traced His Self-Portraits With Mirrors and Lenses. "Rembrandt was renowned for his masterful use of light and dark contrasts, and the precise proportions in his paintings and etchings. Now a British artist claims the 17th century painter likely used combinations of mirrors and lenses to project images onto a drawing surface to create them—especially his famous self-portraits. It’s the latest volley in a longstanding debate about the possible use of optical aids by Renaissance artists." [Image: Francis O'Neill]

Apple’s Health Experiment Is Riddled With Privacy Problems. "Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has partnered with Apple on a new clinical study on rheumatoid arthritis. The study relies on an iPhone app to collect data about arthritic symptoms from users as they go about their daily lives. That sounds great at first glance, but how well will it protect your privacy?"

African Honey-Hunters Communicate With These Wild Birds To Find Hives. "A little brown bird in sub-Saharan Africa known as the greater honeyguide is known to cooperate with humans to locate honey-rich bees’ nests. The bird calls out to honey hunters and then leads them to the nests. Now there is evidence that the communication goes both ways. In a new paper published today in Science, South African researchers report that the birds seem to recognize and respond to human calls in turn."

LEGO-Like Blocks Let Scientists Custom Build Their Own Tools. "There’s a whole new way to build custom scientific instruments affordably in bioengineering: a system of 3D-printed building blocks that can link together in various combinations. The system combines design elements of both biological cells and electronic components, and it can evolve over time to adapt to the changing needs of the research community."

Pokémon Go Is All the Rage, But Where's the Science? "Yes, there is a science of Pokémon—specifically, a 2012 satirical study that appeared in the humorous journal, Annals of Improbable Research entitled, 'A Phylogeny and Evolutionary History of the Pokémon.' The authors traced the evolutionary history of the 646 fictional species of 'pocket monsters,' even creating an impressive 16-generation phylogenetic or evolutionary tree." Related from Nerdist: The Science and Math Behind Pokémon GO.

These Amazing Trompe L'oeil Illusions Bring Drab City Buildings To Life. "Trompe l’oeil (literally “to deceive the eye”) is an ancient technique whereby a painter creates a visual illusion via a trick of perspective. French street artist Patrick Commecy is a modern master of this art form, working with his team of artists at A-Fresco to create huge, hyper-realistic murals on otherwise drab building facades." 

Why This Drop of Liquor Looks Like a Galaxy: PHYSICS! "Anyone who’s imbibed a glass of ouzo—the licorice-flavored spirit that is practically the national drink of Greece—may be familiar with how it turns cloudy when the liquor is mixed with water. But there are still some mysteries about how such mixed liquids behave. Now physicists at the University of Twente in the Netherlands have captured the various life phases of an evaporating drop of ouzo on camera. They describe their work in a new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."

Other Cool Links:

Mining Black Hole Collisions for New Physics. The physicist Asimina Arvanitaki is thinking up ways to search gravitational wave data for evidence of dark matter particles orbiting black holes.

Physicists Stretch Quantum Superposition from Chicago to Minnesota.

A Debate Over the Physics of Time: physicists hope to replace “block universe” with a physical theory of time.

Space Emerging From Quantum Mechanics: "rather than quantizing gravity, maybe we should try to gravitize quantum mechanics."

Searching the cosmos from under the ice of Antarctic: IceCube could find origins of cosmic rays, dark matter.

Inside one of the High-Tech Labs Where Scientists Are Redefining the Kilogram.  (See also my recent article for Gizmodo.)

Record-Setting Hard Drive Writes Information One Atom At a Time.

"Elections and magnetic phase transitions are very much alike": The physics of Election renormalization.

A bird's-eye view of nature's hidden order: Scientists are exploring a mysterious pattern, found in birds’ eyes, boxes of marbles and other surprising places, that is neither regular nor random.

Hummingbird Flight Is More Amazing Than We Realized: "biologists have discovered a new mechanism these feathered helicopters use to avoid collisions—and it could help us build better drones."

The Hidden Science of the Missing Gravitational Waves.

What the world's oldest calculator tells us about the ancient Greeks' view of the universe. 

The Boundless Beauty of Pi: A mathematical value with infinite digits provides limitless inspiration for data artists.

Why the Metric System Is So Important.

Are Statistics Still Useful in Politics? Related: Statistics of Deadly Quarrels: a fascinating 2002 article from American Scientist on the mathematics of armed conflict, a quantitative study of war.

Engineer Discovers Something Amazing in Da Vinci's 'Irrelevant Scribbles': "[A] new study out of the University of Cambridge... shows that a page of Leonardo’s scribbled notes from 1493—previously dismissed as “irrelevant” by art historians—is actually the first written demonstration of the laws of friction. [Image: University of Cambridge]

The Man Who Designed Ghost Armies and Opera Houses: The storied career of centenarian and acoustician, Leo Beranek.

Lose Yourself in Tomoyuki Tanaka’s hand-drawn ballpoint renderings of the innards of  Tokyo Train Stations.

Pokemon Go shakes up lab routine. At Fermilab and CERN, lab employees, students, and visitors alike hunt for virtual creatures.

Scientists Are One Step Closer to an Invisibility Cloak, But Don't Get Out Your Wands Just Yet.

Watch This New Rocket Material Crack Under Almost A Million Pounds Of Pressure.

What Are the Odds You'll Meet Your Evil Twin? “Before you could always be questioned in a court of law, saying ‘well what if someone else just looks like him?’ Now we can say it’s extremely unlikely.”

World’s Most Powerful Radio Telescope Discovers 1300 New Galaxies in Trial Run.

SpaceX sends cargo to the International Space Station, nails the landing.

How Do We Beam Pictures Back From Jupiter? It Takes A Village.

The Mysterious Condition Impairing Astronauts' Eyesight.

New Rosetta images show its shadow on the comet.

It's Time for Scientists to Stop Explaining So Much. "Research shows that more facts don't necessarily lead to changed minds, but my colleagues have a hard time accepting it."

What Happens When a Harassment Whistleblower Goes on the Science Job Market.

When CGI Meets Ferrofluid, Things Get Weird: "a design studio in Barcelona created a short video using this strange material along with CGI to create something that resembles a Pixar film you’d watch in hell." 

The science of serving draft beer at 35,000 feet: Heineken's ingenious “air keg.”

The Peacock-Tail Theory of AP Calculus.

The Man Who Knew Infinity: what the film will teach you (and what it won't).

Marie Curie Attended Secret, Underground “Flying University” When Poland Blocked Women from Advancing Their Education.

Stanley Kubrick’s Daughter Vivian Debunks the Age-Old Moon Landing Conspiracy. 

Here's How You Could Have A Tron Light-Cycle Battle In Real Life.

"The plural of anecdote is not data": Watch this Scientist Give a Step-by-Step Takedown of Anecdotal Evidence.

Starfleet Academy: The Intrepid Museum's new interactive exhibit will school you in Star Trek.

Futurama and the Science of Comedy: "a look at the show that brought humor and emotion into the sterile world of science and arithmetic."

Everyone Knows the Best Hot Tub Time Machines are Built From DeLorean.: "for the latest episode of Super-Fan Builds, two of the most unusual time machines were merged to create an even better way to relax and let the hours fly by."

xkcd Answers How Many Fireflies It Would Take to Match the Brightness of the Sun.

Shanks FX Recreates the Teleporter Effect From Star Trek: The Original Series Using Household Items.

Watch Trashonauts, a Cute Animated Short About Space Junk. Per Nerdist, the film "features a grumpy old space garbage man collecting the many items we’ve left floating out in orbit."

Physics Week in Review: July 16, 2016

This week started off with peak frivolity as everyone went bonkers over Pokemon Go, and ended in tragedy when dozens of people were killed by a terrorist attach in Nice, France, after a lorry drove into the crowds celebrating Bastille Day. Don't even get me started on the military coup in Turkey. Jen-Luc Piquant is grieving in solidarity with the rest of the world today. But she did manage to compile some physics news links, nonetheless.

Me at Gizmodo:

Pitching the perfect curveball takes just the right mix of skill and physics. "Among a baseball pitcher’s arsenal of tricks is the infamous curveball, whereby the baseball takes a sudden dive downward just before it reaches the plate, faking out the batter. A new “History Minute” video from the National Institute of Standards and Technology takes a look at the physics behind this longstanding bane of batters."

Here's Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night Recreated with 'DNA Origami.' "Vincent van Gogh’s “Starry Night” seems to have a special appeal for scientists, who have recreated it using bacteria, among other media, in the past. Now scientists at Caltech have made their own tiny version of the painting—a dime’s width across—out of folded DNA molecules. Some day the same technique could be used to build teensy biosensors, or for targeted drug delivery." [Image: Paul Rothemund/Caltech] 

Drawing Eyes on Cow Butts May Ward Off Hungry Lions. "A conservation biologist has come up with a novel method for protecting cattle from being hunted by African lions: paint eyes on their butts. The lions will think their intended prey has seen them and will move on, since they’ve lost the element of surprise." 

The Math Behind the Perfect Climbing Rope. "Rock and mountain climbers rely on strong, yet elastic ropes to keep them safe should they happen to fall. Now mathematicians at the University of Utah have come up with an equation to design an ideal climbing rope—one that would be safer and more durable. They described this perfect rope, and a promising class of materials that might be used to make it, in a recent paper in the Journal of Sports Engineering and Technology."

Other Cool Links:

The Noise at the Bottom of the Universe: origin of quantum noise is modern incarnation of a millennia-old debate.

Three Puzzles Inspired by Ramanujan give us a number of ways to explore the infinite.

What is entropy, REALLY? Aatish Bhatia made an interactive blog post to answer this question with sheep.

Could Dark Energy Be Caused By Frozen Neutrinos?

Pokémon Go Is Secretly Teaching Americans the Metric System. Related: NASA Confirms Astronauts Can't Hunt Pokémon Aboard the International Space Station.

The physics behind hitting a home run.

How Much Energy Could the Tour de France Generate? The numbers might surprise you.

Who Ya Gonna Call? MIT physicists Lindley Winslow and Janet Conrad gave the Ghostbusters crew a taste of life in the lab. And now co-star Kate McKinnon Is Obsessed With Physics.   Related: Ghostbusters: Yes, the Equations are Correct. Also: Bustin' Ghosts with Science: The Physics of the Proton Pack:

What happens if you throw Thor's hammer at the Juggernaut? Something *bad*.

Dissecting Sheldon Cooper: How The Big Bang Theory plays with the stereotype of the mad genius.

The twisted physics behind the incredible sport of 'tricking'– the love child of martial arts, parkour, break dancing and gymnastics. 

What to Wear in the Ninth Dimension: Why your clothing is actually visiting you from higher-dimensional space.

The Gas Law Pentagram: Wired's Rhett Allain has a request of physics faculty: "Please don't use the "density triangle" or anything like that (or the P-I-V triangle)."

The code that took America to the moon was just published to GitHub, and it’s like a 1960s time capsule.

What do you do with a problem like space junk? ESA may have a solution.

Radiation From Ancient Supernovae May Have Given Evolution an Astrophysical Push.

A Pinch of Nuclear Forensics Can Change the Way We View Past Blasts.

Why the First Close-Up Image of Mars Was Hastily Painted in Pastels. "Impatient to behold Mars up-close for the first time, scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) decided to literally take the pictures into their own hands. As soon as their probe sent along its image codes, they recreated the image with a pastel set by assigning colors to various number ranges." [Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Dan Goods]

Ask Ethan: Did The LHC Discover A New Type Of Particle?

Honda engineers scaled back rare earth metals in hybrid engines significantly.

Desert Moss Makes Water Trap So Powerful It Can Hoist Water Against Gravity.

Putting a New Spin on Sound Waves.

A primer on particle accelerators: What’s the difference between a synchrotron and a cyclotron, anyway?

Big things come in little packages: How Willis Lamb's tiny measurement revolutionized 20th century physics.

Laplace’s calorimeter: he reached the limits of his ability when it came to managing people post French Revolution. 

Calculus apprehensions may steer women away from science careers.

The Last of the Earthquake Predictors: using ambient noise.

The Simple Beauty of the Unexpected: Astrophysicist Marcelo Gleiser on Fishing as Metaphor for Pursuit of Knowledge.

Neil deGrasse Tyson was once stopped by police while carrying physics books to his office.

The folks at Vox asked hundreds of scientists what they’d change about science. Here are their favorite responses.

How statistics are twisted to obscure public understanding.  Related: Why Not to Trust Statistics. 

NASA and LEGO team up to give kids a space challenge. 

Someone Bought Einstein's Smelly Leather Jacket for Nearly $150,000.

Fun With the Physics Girl: Bizarre Spinning Toys:

Physics Week in Review: July 9, 2016

Among this week's physics highlights: NASA's Juno mission is now successfully in orbit around Jupiter! Also, the last thing Japan's doomed Hitomi satellite saw before it died, and astronomers' first look at a rare triple-star system.

Me at Gizmodo:

This 'Hourglass' Liquid Battery Runs on Gravity. "Scientists at MIT have designed an ingenious new concept for a battery that operates on the same fundamental principal as an hourglass—it relies on gravity to generate energy. They described the device in a recent paper for Energy and Environmental Science."

New Study Busts the Myth That Knights Couldn't Move Well in Armor. "Medieval armor has a bad reputation when it comes to how much movement is possible for a fully-armored and outfitted knight. Chances are you’ve bought into the notion that it resulted in clunky, slow, and awkward battles. Daniel Jaquet of the University of Geneva and several colleagues aim to bust that myth with a new study examining the range of motion and energy cost while fighting in medieval armor."

How Champion Eater Joey "Jaws" Chestnut Scarfed Down 70 Hot Dogs in 10 Minutes. "Competitive eater Joey “Jaws” Chestnut set a new record this Fourth of July when he scarfed down a whopping 70 hot dogs and buns in just 10 minutes at the annual Famous Nathan’s hot dog eating contest in Coney Island. How do he and other champion competitive eaters do it? With a couple of savvy tricks of the trade, and a bit of science."

NASA's Juno Mission Is About to Perform Its Most Dangerous Maneuvers. "NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been spinning through space on its way to Jupiter for five years and 445 million miles, and now it’s less than 10 hours away from entering the gas giant’s orbit—the equivalent of a single rotation of Jupiter. If all goes well, scientists will finally be able to learn what lies beneath Jupiter’s turbulent atmosphere, examine its impressive magnetosphere, and possibly determine the composition of its core. But first, it’s going to have to execute a tricky 35-minute engine burn under the harshest conditions any NASA spacecraft has yet faced." (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS)

A NASA Scientist Answers Your Questions About Juno Mission to Jupiter. "NASA’s Juno spacecraft will be entering Jupiter’s orbit later tonight after a very long journey, kicking off the next phase of its mission. And we’ve got NASA JPL scientist Glenn Orton with us today to answer your burning questions about Jupiter, the Juno mission, what the team hopes to learn about our solar system, and more."

NASA Sent Jupiter's Jealous Wife to Check Up on Him and His Satellites. "NASA’s Juno spacecraft made all the headlines this past Fourth of July as it successfully went into orbit around Jupiter after a five-year journey—and deservedly so. But not many people realized the significance of the name. In Roman mythology, Juno was the god Jupiter’s wife—and Jupiter had one hell of a roaming eye. Before it reached its current orbit, Juno passed by the four largest moons of Jupiter: Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. These are all women who were lovers of Zeus (the Greek counterpart of Jupiter) in Greek mythology. This fact did not escape singer/songwriter and self-professed nerd Adam Sakellarides, who wrote a song and accompanying music video for the occasion."

Other Cool Links:

Juno Had a Glorious View During Its Final Approach to Jupiter. Here's What to expect during the Juno mission now that the spacecraft is settled in its orbit, plus a lovely visual timeline of Jupiter exploration. However, Casey Dreier, director of space policy for The Planetary Society. says that Juno was a success—but there is precious little coming after it. But hey, at least NASA ruled social media once again with the Juno mission’s sassy live-tweeting of its Jupiter orbit.  Not to be outdone, the Sarcastic Rover tweeted:

Hey, @NASAJuno! Thanks for hogging all the dish time and forcing me to watch Netflix in standard def. YOU MONSTER!

— SarcasticRover (@SarcasticRover) July 5, 2016

The Woman Who Helped Us Hear Juno started working at JPL as a human "computer" in 1958.

The Large Hadron Collider is quietly having a phenomenal year. Smashing particles leads to lots of potential for new physics and dead theories.

Surprising Resonance Result Yields Record-Breaking Heat Insulation.

Physics Reveals What’s In Herculaneum’s Incinerated Ancient Scrolls. Synchrotron radiation for the win!

The Doomed Hitomi Telescope Had a Spectacular View of the Universe As It Died. And This Is the Last Thing Japan's Lost Black Hole Satellite Saw Before It Died.

My Three Suns: Our First Look at a Triple-Star System.

How Feynman diagrams almost saved space.

Atomic clocks for gravitational wave detection - imagine LIGO, but with the arms spanning earth's orbit.

Interferometers that produce clearer signal by getting rid of light. Photons arrive at random moments. Predict the moment, measure, and win.

What Most People Get Wrong About Einstein's Famous Equation.

Why Doesn't Our Universe Have Magnetic Monopoles?

Synthetic spider silk could be the biggest technological advance in clothing since nylon.

The Loudest Sound In The World Would Kill You On The Spot.

A field trip to ITER, a work-in-progress that will test fusion’s feasibility.  Related: Fusion: How to Put the Sun in a Magnetic Bottle. 

A NASCAR Team Is Building The First Internal Combustion Engine To Go Into Outer Space.

These are just gorgeous. The Magical Realism of Eric Roux-Fontaine’s Dreamlike Paintings. “At no time am I trying to depict a place in a literal way, because I think we paint with our culture as much as with our nature,” said the French artist. “And the memory, or the feeling we keep of a place or a scene, is sometimes more interesting than the ‘raw’ reality. People depicted in paintings are more like actors. They appear in a scene then, it is up to everyone to put together the movie!” [Image: Eric Roux-Fontaine] 

Étienne Léopold Trouvelot's Stunning 19th-Century Astronomical Drawings of Celestial Objects and Phenomena. The splendor of the cosmos in a trailblazing marriage of art and science more than a century before modern astrophotography.

This Trash-Collecting Spacecraft Will Pit Giant Nets Against a Space Harpoon.

A Gravitational Waves Explanation Even a Five Year Old Can Grasp. 

Numberphile Explains a Unique Property of Consecutive Coin Flips 

Pilots recount daring South Pole rescue mission: 'A tiny little dot in that mass of black.'

Voltaire’s Luck: The French philosopher outsmarts the lottery.

The Noise None of Us Can Live Without.

Tropic Fallout: a look back at the Bikini nuclear tests, 70 years later.

Can Gravitational Waves Let Us Peek Inside A Black Hole? No, but the reason why is fascinating.

China Finished Building Its Alien-Hunting Telescope. The new radio observatory is 200 meters larger than Arecibo.

No One Nerds Out Over Space Science Quite Like NASA Astronaut Kate Rubins.

Listen to the Large Hadron Collider’s Weird, Whale-Like Sounds. 

Toyota Has Patent For Rear-Engined Flying Car With Shapeshifting Body, Yet The Bastards Are Still Building Camrys.

We Hold These Mathematical Truths to Be Self-Evident. Ben Oberlin celebrates the Fourth of July as only he can--with more bad drawings.

Haunting Music Created With Two New Instruments. "The first is a rather complex take on a traditional music box that uses punched paper-tape to control individual notes, and the second is something [designer Martin Molin] calls a Modulin. The Modulin sounds a lot like an electronic theremin but seems to have an interface like a stringed instrument."

Brian Eno Plays the Universe: A physicist explains what the composer has in common with the dawn of the cosmos.

Fukushima, Vieques, Rocky Flats: Radioactive photos tell nuclear stories.

This week in WTF: Hospital astrology treats your mental health based on your star sign. Related: Maybe those people should watch these 32 Animated Videos by Wireless Philosophy, Designed To Teach the Essentials of Critical Thinking.

The Mysterious Null Island, The Busiest Place on Earth That Does Not Exist. "The “island” is located at 0°, 0° latitude and longitude, and although the only thing there is a weather buoy, computers consider it a very busy place given the way some programs incorrectly handle location data." 

Rabbits Infinitely Multiply in 7 Billion, A Wonderfully Surreal Animated Short by Cyriak:

Physics Week in Review: July 2, 2016

It's Fourth of July weekend, and sure, you're all out enjoying the long holiday, but there was also lots of cool physics stuff that happened this week. Among the highlights: everyone's eagerly awaiting the Juno spacecraft's orbital insertion maneuver this coming Monday; British scientists discovered a huge stash of helium; and CERN's LHCb collaboration has found a family of tetraquarks.

Me at Gizmodo:

Discovery of Huge Stash of Helium is a 'Game-Changer' for Industry. "Experts have been warning of a looming shortage of helium for years, as the known reserves are being depleted. Now British researchers have discovered a large reserve of helium gas in Tanzania, using a new exploration method that offers hope for the future. It turns out that volcanic activity plays a critical role in creating new helium reserves, according to Diveena Danabalan, a graduate student at Durham University who presented the team’s findings at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference in Japan."

Did Prehistoric People Watch the Stars Through This 6,000 Year Old 'Telescope'? "Prehistoric humans may have observed the sky via primitive lens-less “telescopes,” according to a team of British astronomers who have studied the long passageways of ancient megalithic tombs. The details were presented today by Kieran Simcox, a student at Nottingham Trent University, at a meeting of the Royal Astronomical Society." [Image: Fabio Silva] 

You Might Never Need Another Root Canal With This New Kind of Filling. "There’s lots of fun things you could be doing this weekend, barring unexpected misfortune—like needing an emergency root canal. It’s arguably the most dreaded dental procedure, but if a promising new type of filling pans out, no one need ever suffer through this often-painful process again."

Scientists Are Redfining the Kilogram. Measuring Planck's constant is a thankless task but physicists did it anyway. "Stop the presses! Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have made a new measurement of Planck’s constant to a highly accurate degree. It’s the latest step toward improving the official definition of the kilogram, the unit of mass that underpins our entire international system of weights and measures. Um... yay? Let’s just acknowledge that, as exciting science news goes, this is a hard sell beyond the most hardcore physics nerds. But it really does matter quite a lot."

Related: There is an entire song about replacing the kilogram by The Doubleclicks and it's pretty awesome.

Mary Roach's latest book, Grunt, Shows How Science Can Make a Soldier's Life a Little Less Hellish. "A new book by bestselling author Mary Roach is always cause for celebration. In Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, she brings her keen eye for detail and sharp wit to bear on the dead-serious science of keeping soldiers intact and sane in the extreme conditions of war." 

Entropy Explains How Life Can Come From Randomness. "Scientists are scouring the universe for evidence of extraterrestrial life, but have you ever wondered how life began on Earth? Let physicist David Kaplan explain in the latest installment of Quanta’s 'In Theory' video series. Hint: it’s all because of increasing entropy."

NASA and Apple Collaborate on Short Film Inspired by Juno Mission. "NASA has teamed up with Apple on a short film, Visions of Harmony, celebrating the imminent arrival of its Juno probe at Jupiter this Monday, July 4. It’s available for free on iTunes and Apple Music, and features music by former Nine Inch Nails frontman and current Apple Music executive Trent Reznor, as well as Weezer, GZA the Genius, and Zoe." 

Related: I chatted LIVE at JPL with Juno mission scientist John Connerney about Monday's big orbital insertion maneuver.

Other Cool Links:

Lots of folks were talking about Juno this week in anticipation of Monday's big maneuver. A sampling: NASA's favorite way to celebrate July 4: Blockbuster space shows! After all, The Sights and Sounds of Jupiter Are Pretty Amazing Right Now as Juno Closes In. For instance: The Sound of a Spacecraft Entering Jupiter's Magnetic Field Is Nightmare Fuel. Why does it matter? Well, NASA's Mission to Jupiter Will Tell Us Earth's Origin Story. Related: How Juno Broke The Distance Record For Solar-Powered Spacecraft. Also:  Why Juno's Journey Will End with a Death Plunge. Bonus: Jupiter's Northern Lights Look Absolutely Incredible in this swirling timelapse video from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Do Giant Planets Contain "Dark" Hydrogen? Laboratory research suggests that an unexpected layer of semimetallic, optically dark hydrogen lurks inside worlds like Jupiter and Saturn.

There were also plenty of evergreen science stories related to the U.S. holiday. The Washington Post offered Your scientific guide to the ultimate July 4 party. Forbes weighed in on The Physics Of Fireworks: "You start with three simple ingredients: sulfur, charcoal, and a source of potassium nitrate." And for dog owners, here's some tips from Gizmodo on How to Keep Your Dog Happy When Fireworks Go Off -- Using Science.

The Best Booze You've Never Heard Of Comes From This Secret Science Lab.

Event horizon ringing damped by unstable space-time. Probing the event horizon of a black hole is not so easy.

CERN's LHCb collaboration discovers a family of tetra quarks: Researchers found four new particles made of the same four building blocks.  Related: Could No New Particles At The Large Hadron Collider Be Exactly What Physics Needs?

Can Topology Prevent Another Financial Crash? New regulations are applying network science to restructure global finance.

Scientists Freak Out Over Newly Discovered Hydrothermal Vents. "Polychaetes, holy cow!"

Totes adorbz! Five-Year-Old Oliver Makes a Tornado in a Jar For His First Science Video on "Oliver's Science Lab." 

The physics of popping a wheelie in a 2,500 horsepower car. And then flipping it. With Jay Leno inside.

Lopsided shape of atomic nuclei could help explain why the universe is full of matter.

Making energy out of waste heat with simple ingredients. Differences as small as 20°C can be turned into useful power.

The future of archaeology is "spacejunk." Museum tours may one day rocket beyond Earth to explore abandoned satellites and derelict spacecraft.

No, the Earth’s jet streams are not spinning out of control. Sometimes outlandish claims about the changing climate are just that—outlandish.

Solution: ‘Is Infinity Real?’ Hilbert’s Hotel, an incredibly thin triangle and an elliptical pool table help us test the concept of infinity in the physical world.

A Few of My Favorite Spaces: The Empty Set, a guided tour of nothing.

This futuristic plastic changes color like a shimmering opal as you stretch it.

You Can Pour this Weird Liquid Uphill. "[P]olyethylene oxide or PEO... is a polymer-based liquid — it’s the same lubricant that coats the leading edge of your shaving razors — but it doesn’t move with discrete molecules like H2O does. It flows in long chains that tug on each other."

How Many Rocket Scientists Does It Take To Design A Comfortable Stiletto Heel? At least one.

Deep-sea neutrino scope takes shape as the KM3NET telescope unveils detailed plans.

ArXiv plans multimillion-dollar overhaul; Users urge caution in revamp of service at the heart of physics.

Tour de France to use thermal imaging to fight mechanical doping, i.e., cyclists cheating with hidden motors and neodymium magnets.

Scientists Made a Perfume Based on the Scent of Rosetta's Comet, Which Apparently Smells Awful.

Preparing for their magnetic moment: Scientists are using a plastic robot and hair-thin pieces of metal to ready a magnet that will hunt for new physics.

Why Science Labs Use Cone-Shaped Flasks. Per Mental Floss: "Let’s wish a happy birthday to the father of the mad scientist’s favorite prop. Richard August Carl Emil Erlenmeyer (who went by Emil) was born in Taunusstein, Germany on June 28, 1825."

An Amelia Earhart mystery at NIST. "Radio is the link between Earhart and NIST, which has been doing communications research for a century."

The Orrery at Jodrell Bank Discovery Center One is one of the largest mechanical models of the solar system in the world. [Image: Jodrell Bank Discovery Center One]

Meet Peter Scholze, the Oracle of Arithmetic.

How Nobel Laureates' Work Leads to New Technology: Smartphones, GPS and energy-efficient lighting.

The price of LEDs is falling so fast it’s profitable to farm in a New Jersey nightclub.

Failure in Science Is Frequent and Inevitable--and We Should Talk More about It. There’s nothing glamorous about a dead end. But that doesn't mean we should bury them.

How Einstein's brilliant 100 year old theory is helping us map the universe.

Career & Life Vision: a Conversation with David Spergel. 

In Weird News This Week: Woman arrested over threatening to kill Stephen Hawking at a science festival in Tenerife.

On Patrick Blackett, the ideal experimental physicist, and what it takes to excel at interdisciplinary research.

Why Plants, part 1: Feynman and flowers.

The Gradebook Hymnal: "I'm Not Just a Dot/ On a big scatter plot..." 

Mapping the Heavens: How Cosmology Shaped Our Understanding of the Universe.

Electrocuting people was America's favorite pastime in the 1920s.

Manifold Garden: Architecture Nerds Will Love Video Game Inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Only You Can Lift This DIY Hammer Of Thor. Build an electromagnetic superhero hammer that responds to your touch.

Here's how to make Game of Thrones' wildfire for real.

Make Your Own Version Of The Viral Black Bath Bomb. 

Can You Solve the Boat Puzzle? Even if you can't, Physics Girl will explain everything.

Where did the first galaxies come from? Here's Minute Physics on what we know.

This Animated Tribute to the NASA Voyager Space Program Is Simply Stunning.

Can We Create Artificial Gravity?

Physics & Caffeine: Stop Motion Film Uses a Cup of Coffee to Explain Key Concepts in Physics.