Happy New Year (belated), and welcome to 2019. We're back after several weeks' hiatus--although I still found time to write a special Twelve Days of Christmas series of science posts, plus a few others. And I've thrown in some of the physics stories you may have missed over the holidays for good measure.
The 12 Days of Christmas:
On the First Day of Christmas: New mass spectrometry hair analysis brings us one step closer to solving 1994 thallium poisoning case. The 1994 poisoning of Chinese student Zhu Ling left her permanently disabled.
On the Second Day of Christmas: Study concludes modern masters like Jackson Pollock were “intuitive physicists.” Another example: David A. Siquieros' "accidental painting" exploited paints of different densities.
On the Third Day of Christmas: Economists try to calculate the true value of Facebook to its users (as opposed to market value) in new study. Amounts varied, but some users required more than $1,000 to deactivate their account for one year.
On the Fourth Day of Christmas: Scientists performed CT scans on severed cat tongues from six different species. Conclusion: the unique structure of your cat’s tongue is ideally suited for grooming fur.
On the Fifth Day of Christmas: Caltech scientists use DNA tiles to play the world's smallest game of tic-tac-toe. They don't especially play it well, but being able to switch out tiles could one day lead to reconfigurable nanomachines.
On the Sixth Day of Xmas: Book tells the inside story of how Reddit came to be the Internet’s “id.” Tech journalist Christine Lagorio-Chafkin dishes the dirt on Reddit's founding in We Are the Nerds.
On the Seventh Day of Christmas: The secret to champagne’s universal appeal is the physics of bubbles. "It's a sad day when you drink flat champagne."
On the Eighth Day of Christmas: Let’s kick off 2019 by pondering the dismal future prospects for humanity. UK Astronomer Royal Lord Martin Rees chats with Ars about his latest book On the Future.
On the Ninth Day of Christmas: Study: Famed Domesday Book was completed later than historians thought. Satellite documents preserved by a Benedictine abbot named Nigel place its date between 1098 and 1114.
On the Tenth Day of Christmas: Machine learning can offer new tools, fresh insights for the humanities, from the French Revolution to the history of the novel. [Image: Association of Cybernetic Historians]
On the Eleventh Day of Christmas: Lose yourself in this highly addictive “murder map” of medieval London. It's like a 14th century game of Clue. It was the priest with the long knife in the garden.
On the Twelfth Day of Christmas: Quantum physicists in the 1920s helped found field of quantum biology, much earlier than you might have thought. Niels Bohr, Erwin Schroedinger, and others pondered link between life and physics.
Also Me at Ars Technica:
Trust the Process: No more doubts: Two independent studies confirm LIGO’s Nobel discovery. But Danish group that first raised doubts refuses to accept it was wrong.
All Hands on Deck: The Orville blends science fiction and science fact into a winning mix. I sat down on set with writer/producer and science advisor Andre Bormanis as the FOX series makes its season 2 debut.
Share and Share Alike: Few people shared fake news in 2016 election, but seniors shared the most. Less than nine percent of Facebook users surveyed shared links to fake news.
Dial Code: Santa Claus is our new favorite holiday cult classic. Restored version of 1989 French film was featured at this year's Fantastic Fest.
Hocus Pocus: Chilling Adventures of Sabrina charms with some welcome holiday horror. Netflix horror series' strong first season rewarded with sixteen new episodes.
The Long Night is Coming: Here’s what we know so far about long-awaited Game of Thrones prequel. Speculation abounds, but it's likely to focus on Age of Heroes and The Long Night.
Fist of Fury: Captain Marvel's Carole Danvers shows off her very own ‘Iron Fist’ in latest trailer. We catch a glimpse of a young Agent Coulson, but Jude Law's role remains murky.
Assassination Nation: Mads Mikkelsen goes full-on John Wick in new trailer for Netflix‘s Polar. He rocks a stylin' eyepatch and nifty laser gloves that control his ample artillery.
Our Own Worst Enemies: All we want for Christmas is the first trailer for Jordan Peele’s new horror film, Us, the much anticipated follow-up to 2017's amazing Get Out.
Sugar and Spice: There’s suspense but little magic in new teasers for Amazon’s series adaptation of Hanna. Esme Creed-Miles of Dark River fame takes on the titular role.
His Red Right Hand: Big Red’s Right Hand of Doom is back in fiery new Hellboy trailer. Director Neil Marshall's reboot tries to set itself apart from its predecessors.
The Last Suit She'll Ever Wear: Thor Ragnarok stars reunite, kick alien butt in Men in Black International trailer. Liam Neeson co-stars with a special set of skills. Did aliens kidnap his daughter?
Frank Castle is back to his vigilante ways in trailer for The Punisher Season 2: "Let me be what I'm meant to be."
And I contributed to these two group efforts:
Best of 2018: TV Technica 2018: Our favorite shows and binges. These were the shows that captured our attention and hearts this past year.
Bandersnatch: The spoiler-filled, choose-your-own-opinion review. This review's structure was inspired by Netflix's solid rewind-and-try-again film.
Other Cool Links:
Mysterious radio signals from deep space detected. A telescope picks up bursts of radio waves from a distant galaxy, shedding light on an astrophysical puzzle. Related: Signals from space: Five theories on what they are.
How Space and Time Could Be a Quantum Error-Correcting Code. The same codes needed to thwart errors in quantum computers may also give the fabric of space-time its intrinsic robustness.
Ultracold atoms can make strange and beautiful quantum fireworks. Feed enough energy into a gas of ultracold atoms and it will create waves that produce a burst of quantum fireworks.
Colorful Peacocks Impress Females with Good Vibes. Peafowls' head crests are specifically tuned to the vibrations produced by feather-rattling male peacocks, thus acting as a sort of antenna. See also my 2016 Gizmodo article: The Physics of Peacock Tail Feathers Is Even More Dazzling Than We Realized.
Astronomers Discover a Supermassive Black Hole Rotating At Half the Speed of Light. Related: International Space Station Telescope Makes Amazing Observation of Black Hole Eating Stuff.
Liquid falling from a horizontal film displays an intriguing pattern of inwardly rotating spirals.
A Magic Wand? Nope, Just Good Ol’ Fashioned Physics. What looks like magic is actually the electrostatic force in action, suspending objects in air by manipulating their electrons.
There's an Excessive Amount of Radioactivity in this Middle Eastern Water Supply—but is it Actually Dangerous?
Loopy Particle Math: Scientists are creating mathematical tools to identify novel particles and phenomena at the world's largest particle accelerator.
This Erupting Volcano's Lava Appears Blue, And Science Knows Why. Sometimes, chemistry can be more important for color than even physics.
A New Model for How Wrinkled Organs Get Their Shapes. "The brain is a wrinkly object for a reason, as are flames, fingerprints, raisins, elephants, and the ridges in your teeth."
Quantum Communication Can Travel Faster—It's Not Just a Myth. A new experiment showed for the first time that quantum messages can indeed be speedier than what's seen in regular computing.
The 'traveling salesman problem' is a classic problem in computer science and is used as a benchmark test for optimization algorithms. Now, an amoeba-based computer has been shown to create "nearly optimal solutions"
How to Calculate the Physics in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate: Using the videogame's training mode, you can figure out the rules governing how the various characters jump and move.
How ‘magic angle’ graphene is stirring up physics. Misaligned stacks of the wonder material exhibit superconductivity and other curious properties.
Ask a Physicist: Rudolph the Redshifted Reindeer. "Even if the sleigh is moving incredibly fast, the light coming off of Rudolph's nose can't move any faster than the speed of light."
Dark Energy Survey completes six-year mission. Scientists have only just begun to study the remarkably detailed map they created of a portion of the sky.
How Tech Shaped The Scream, The Kiss, and American Gothic: These three iconic historical paintings pulse with intense anxieties about electricity, hematology, and astronomy.
Broken Symmetries exhibition: the art of seeing science afresh. Artists from CERN’s Collide International Residency show how they tackle the problem of describing science like it is.
Physics explains why time passes faster as you age. Mind time and clock time are two totally different things. They flow at varying rates.
Tons of Stars Are Actually Solid 'Crystal Spheres' Hanging In Space.
The mystery material that can survive 75 nuclear blasts. A professional hairdresser and amateur chemist invented an unbelievably heat-resistant coating called Starlite.
"Multiple news sites recently reported about a wedding planned between two mathematicians in which the happy couple decided to reveal their guests’ dinner seating arrangements as the answers to math problems."
Via FYFD: "Filmmaker Thomas Blanchard has once again released a beautiful, fluid-filled short to captivate us. Built from paint, oil, and liquid soap, The Empire of C feels like it gives viewers a birds-eye perspective over a fantastical land."
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