Physics & Chemistry

A Particle Accelerator in Space Could Trigger Artificial Auroras

Auroras appear according to the whims of nature, not humans, which might just be part of their eerie appeal. But c’mon, it’s the 21st century now. Why are we just waiting around? So here’s a crazy idea unearthed by Mark Zastrow writing in Eos: Let’s a build a particle accelerator to trigger auroras whenever we…

Physics & Chemistry Sarah Zhang

Tevatron Reveals Higgs Boson Properties—4 Years After Shutting Down

The Tevatron collider—the world’s second most powerful particle accelerator—was shut down in 2011. Now, from beyond the grave, it’s revealing properties of the Higgs boson. The American accelerator, situated at Fermilab in Batavia, Illinois, ran from 1983 until 2011. During that time, it showed teasing glimpses of the Higgs, but ultimately it was the Large…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

Scientists Just Broke a Quantum Record By Entangling 3,000 Atoms

Quantum entanglement is an odd phenomenon that can connect two or more particles over even vast distances. Scientists have now managed to entangle not two, not 100 (the previous record), but 3,000 atoms with a single photon, opening the door to atomic clocks more accurate than ever. In quantum entanglement, particles are correlated so that…

Physics & Chemistry Sarah Zhang

Scientists Can’t Agree How Long It Would Take To Fall Through The Earth

For years, a classic question posed to college physics students is how long it would take to fall to the center of the Earth. Given that we can smash tiny particles into each other at really high speeds using magnets, you’d think this would be an easy problem to solve. But apparently not. For a…

Physics & Chemistry Chris Mills

The World’s Biggest Physics Experiment Is About to Reboot

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the most audacious physics experiment in human history. Now scientists are about to restart the giant particle collider for a new set of experiments. Last time, they did the almost-impossible and found the Higgs Boson. This time, they might find something even more exciting. Back in 2008, just nine…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

When A Meteorite Hits Snow It Forms A “Snow Carrot” Instead Of A Crater

What happens when a meteorite hits snow? Instead of forming classic impact craters, the fragments form strange funnels of dense snow diving into the surface instead. Here’s the physics of how “snow carrots” form. When hunting for meteorite fragments, geologists found them at the bottom of dense funnels of coarse snow they named “snow carrots.”…

Physics & Chemistry Mika McKinnon

Hell Is This Explosion of Endless Emoji

If you have a love/hate relationship with emoji (or just hate), this 3D animation test by digital artist Albert OMoss might make you feel…happy? anxious? I don’t know, but there’s probably an emoji to describe it. Particle systems are an essential way that animators make computer generated worlds look real. Complex physical interactions are simulated…

Physics & Chemistry Michael Hession

Did We Really See Light Acting as a Particle and a Wave at Once?

Several weeks ago, the internet lit up with the colorful image shown above, accompanied by headlines claiming that physicists had accomplished the extraordinary: We’d finally managed to see light as both a particle and a wave at the same time. (Your friends at Giz reported it too.) But…it’s not exactly true. As Ben Stein of…

Physics & Chemistry Maddie Stone

These 17 Women Changed The Face Of Physics

From discovering pulsars to correcting the optics of the fuzzy Hubble Space Telescope, here are 17 stories of women who made undeniably vital contributions to astronomy and physics. The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics put together a gallery of pioneering women in physics, writing: They discovered pulsars, found the first evidence of dark matter, pioneered…

Physics & Chemistry Mika McKinnon

This Is What Happens When You Load Uranium In A Cloud Chamber

What do you do onceyou’ve built a cloud chamber using party supplies? If you’re Cloudylabs, you load it up with a chunk of uranium and watch the physics happen. From the video description: This video shows the Cloudylabs’s cloud chamber running for approx. 50 min with an Uranium mineral. After 40 min, there is not…

Physics & Chemistry Mika McKinnon

New Error Correction Takes Us a Step Closer to Quantum Computing

Quantum computing could make complex calculations trivial in the future, but right now it’s fraught with problems. Consider one of them solved, though, in the shape of a new quantum error correction technique. One of the many problems exhibited by the breed of future computers is that they exist in the delicate and fuzzy word…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

First Ever Image to Show Light as a Wave and Particle at the Same Time

What you’re looking at here is a major breakthrough. The image reveals a property of light that has never been witnessed before by human eyes, though we’ve long known about it. But at last, thanks in an ingenious imaging experiment, we can now see how light behaves as a wave and a particle at the…

Physics & Chemistry Annalee Newitz

The Photography at CERN Is Helping Solve the Mysteries of the Universe

Everyone’s favorite mega-machine, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, is meant to help humans some of the most basic questions about the nature of our world. How it goes about this is—in a word—complex. But part of it involves a bit of good old-fashioned (kind of) photography. This documentary put out by the Carnegie Museum…

Physics & Chemistry Michael Hession

How We Can Use Light to See Inside the Human Body

Human flesh is opaque. As any good dictionary will tell you, that means it has the quality of “not transmitting light; being impenetrable to sight.” Well, forget that: scientists now can use light to see inside objects that were traditionally off-limits to the human eye—including our bodies. Of course it’s already possible to use X-rays,…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

How Nanoscale Optics Create Nature’s Most Dazzling Colors

What do a butterfly’s shimmering wings, a fish’s opalescent scales, and a peacock’s brilliant feathers have in common? Yes, their colors are beautifully iridescent. But they are also produced by the physical interaction of light with sophisticated nanoscale architecture that we are only just beginning to understand. Image: Wikimedia Most creatures get their color from…

Physics & Chemistry Maddie Stone

The Story of the First Photo on the Web

CERN, the world’s most awe-inspiring physics research facility, is pimping some images of its newly renovated Large Hadron Collider today. It reminds me of the very first time CERN pimped some images on the web nearly a quarter century ago. Let’s just say they were not entirely scientific in nature. That’s the photo above—or at…

Physics & Chemistry Adam Clark Estes

What Will the Future of Molecular Manufacturing Really Be Like?

Molecular machines are nano-scale assemblers that construct themselves and their surroundings into ever more complex structures. Sometimes dubbed “nanotech” in the media, these devices are promising — but also widely misunderstood. Here’s what separates the science fact from science fiction. The concepts that underpin this form of nanotechnology have certainly had long enough to percolate…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

Quantum Entanglement Can Now Be Performed on a Chip

The lure of quantum entangled computing is strong, as it can provide a means of impenetrable encryption—but the hardware has always been too bulky to make it practical. Now, though, researchers have shrunk the technology down to less than the width of a human hair, small enough to squeeze onto a chip. The new device,…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

It’s Official: That Much-Hyped Big Bang Discovery Was Literally All Dust

There will be no Nobel prizes after all. Last March, scientists announced they had discovered our first direct evidence of the Big Bang, but that evidence has been slowly crumbling away. The results of a joint analysis released today make it official: It was all just cosmic dust. What the original team of physicists using…

Physics & Chemistry Sarah Zhang

An Odd Hypothesis About Bubbles Could Finally Lead to Nuclear Fusion

Nuclear fusion is the dream of energy scientists the world over, because it promises limitless, clean electricity. Most efforts to kickstart the process use high-intensity lasers, insane magnetic fields and super-hot hydrogen plasmas. But there may be a more humble alternative. It’s called sonofusion, and it involves bubbles. Nuclear fusion is the process through which…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

A Particle Accelerator in Space Could Trigger Artificial Auroras

Tevatron Reveals Higgs Boson Properties—4 Years After Shutting Down

Scientists Just Broke a Quantum Record By Entangling 3,000 Atoms

Scientists Can’t Agree How Long It Would Take To Fall Through The Earth

The World’s Biggest Physics Experiment Is About to Reboot

When A Meteorite Hits Snow It Forms A “Snow Carrot” Instead Of A Crater

Hell Is This Explosion of Endless Emoji

Did We Really See Light Acting as a Particle and a Wave at Once?

These 17 Women Changed The Face Of Physics

This Is What Happens When You Load Uranium In A Cloud Chamber

New Error Correction Takes Us a Step Closer to Quantum Computing

First Ever Image to Show Light as a Wave and Particle at the Same Time

The Photography at CERN Is Helping Solve the Mysteries of the Universe

How We Can Use Light to See Inside the Human Body

How Nanoscale Optics Create Nature’s Most Dazzling Colors

The Story of the First Photo on the Web

What Will the Future of Molecular Manufacturing Really Be Like?

Quantum Entanglement Can Now Be Performed on a Chip

It’s Official: That Much-Hyped Big Bang Discovery Was Literally All Dust

An Odd Hypothesis About Bubbles Could Finally Lead to Nuclear Fusion

Two Songs We Really Wish Were the Anime Outros for ‘Steel Ball Run’

AI Training Data Giant Mercor Is Reportedly Looking to Buy the Work You Did at Your Old Job

Utah Is Giving Dr. AI the Power to Renew Drug Prescriptions

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US Airlines Are Hiking Bag Fees Amid Iran War Oil Crisis

This Ridiculously Simple Trick Might Stop Gulls From Nabbing Your Lunch

‘Starfleet Academy’ Season 3 Could Have Done the ‘Voyager’ Sequel Episode of Robert Picardo’s Dreams

Judge Kills Lawsuit Against Infamous Study That Might Have Increased Teen Suicides

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