Physics & Chemistry

Everything You Need to Know About the Grid, CERN’s Global Supercomputer

Before the word wide web was a twinkle in Tim Berners Lee’s eye, CERN had developed the Grid—a world-spanning network of computing power to help drive the progress of physics. In fact, the Grid is still very much in existence, and does rather more than just help share the reams of data the Large Hadron…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

Scientists Figured Out a Way to Cheat Newton’s Third Law

Ever since the late 17th century, it’s been understood that to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. That’s Newton’s Third Law of Motion. But a group of German scientists recently came up with a trick that appears to break that law, one that lets light accelerate all by itself. And it could…

Physics & Chemistry Adam Clark Estes

The Physics of How a Water Jet Can Keep a Ball Floating in Mid-Air

If you’ve ever floated a ping-pong ball atop the warm blast from a hair dryer, you’ll appreciate this video that endeavors to explain the physics behind how the same phenomenon occurs with jets of water. Compared to a juggling busker on the street, keeping just a single ball suspended in the air isn’t that impressive…

Physics & Chemistry Andrew Liszewski

Could Humanity Possibly Survive the Sun’s Explosive Death?

Despite the Mayan Calendar’s and thePeople’s Temple’s best efforts, we’ve managed to avoid any sort of Apocalypse and/or End Times thus far. But don’t let your guard down just yet, because we know for a fact that, one day, that warm, life-giving center of the solar system will turn its back on us and blow…

Physics & Chemistry Ashley Feinberg

Five Things You Should Know About the Nobel Prize Winner’s Higgs Boson

Analysts said it would happen. Professor Stephen Hawking said it should happen. And now it has. Peter Higgs, the man who first predicted the existence of the Higgs boson, or ‘God particle’, has been given a Nobel Prize for his efforts along with Belgian physicist Francois Englert. It’s been a long time coming. For Peter…

Physics & Chemistry Andy Ridgway - Science Uncovered

Nuclear Fusion Has Broken Even For the First Time Ever

Nuclear fusion, the same process that powers the sun, could provide us with limitless cheap energy—but experiments to date have always used more power than they created. Now, though, researchers have apparently tipped that balance, making fusion a real possibility. Researchers at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California, have been conducting fusion experiments for…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

These Cubes With No Moving Parts Are Actually Self-Assembling Robots

There’s no shortage of proposed ideas for self-assembling robots, but they’re usually either incredibly complex or just a little boring. In contrast, these adorable little cubes have no obvious moving parts—but can still climb over and around one another, leap through the air, or roll across the ground. Called M-Blocks, these things—developed at MIT—contain a…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

How Do Gas Pumps Know When to Stop?

If you’ve ever put gas in a car, you’ll know that the pump magically knows when to stop spewing fuel into the tank. That’s super useful, and safe too. But how does it know when to stop? Is it witchcraft? Psychic powers? Clever guesswork? Or, you know, some simple but incredibly smart engineering? Watch this…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

Scientists Created a New Form of Matter and It’s Like a Lightsaber

The latest science news out of Harvard and MIT sounds like a joke, but it’s not. A team of physicists were fooling around with photons when they managed to get the particles to clump together to form a molecule, one that’s unlike any other matter. And it behaves, they say, just like a lightsaber. That’s…

Physics & Chemistry Adam Clark Estes

Graphene Computer Chips Run on Light Instead of Electricity

Thanks to improvements in fiber optics, most of the information that you consume on any given day is transported by light. Quite inefficiently, however, most computer chips need electricity to operate, and scientists haven’t quite figured out how to make the leap to more futuristic materials. At least not until graphene came along. A trio…

Physics & Chemistry Adam Clark Estes

The World’s Thinnest Sheet of Glass Is Just Two Atoms Thick

The world’s thinnest sheet of glass ever has been created—and it measure just two atoms in thickness. Better not chance dropping anything made out of that. Created by scientists at Cornell University, the glass is actually the result of an accident as opposed to concerted effort. While attempting to produce pure graphene, the researchers noticed…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

Why Does Your Voice Sound Different When It’s Recorded?

If you’ve ever listened to a recording of yourself and thought you sound completely different, you’re not alone. But more than that, you were also correct. Here’s why it sounds different. You see, when you speak, you hear your voice as other people do, but you also hear a contribution which comes from vibrations passing…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

5 Crazy New Man-Made Materials That Will Shape the Future

Forget Mother Nature: when it comes to all matters matter, the sheer ingenuity of the human mind can give rise to some of the most insane—and useful—new materials you’ve ever encountered. Here are five crazy new man-made materials whose uses could be practically limitless. Aluminum Bubble Wrap Imagine your favorite packing-based stress reliever—made of metal.…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

Parallel Worlds: How Human History Turns on the Tilt of the Multiverse

Andy Murray’s unexpectedly strong start against Roger Federer in the Wimbledon 2012 final put the Daily Telegraph columnist Matthew Norman in a science-fiction mood. Contrasting Murray with the doubles champion Jonny Marray — who still rents a flat and drives a Ford Fiesta, despite holding a Grand Slam title — the Daily Mail opined: ‘The…

Physics & Chemistry Andrew Crumey - Aeon Magazine

Surprising No One, But This Time Everyone, Water Is A Great Lubricant

Water is kind of important, right? Basis for life on Earth, defines biomes and weather, etc. And even on a really small scale water continues to strut its stuff. And we’re talking really small. Researchers have found that water is the optimal lubricant for nanomachines one molecule big, aka a few dozen atoms, aka tiny.…

Physics & Chemistry Lily Hay Newman

Quantum Cryptography Could Make Your Phone Uncrackable Someday

As the world of cybersecurity becomes increasingly volatile, more advanced solutions to problems like encryption couldn’t come soon enough. This is why everybody’s excited about a team of British physicists’ testing a method that would put quantum cryptology in everybody’s pocket. Quantum cryptology is a slightly complicated but ultimately gamechanging thing. Put simply, it’s practically…

Physics & Chemistry Adam Clark Estes

This Is the World’s Most Precise Clock

Need the time? How about to the closest hundred trillionth of a second? No problem! Because this, officially now the world’s most precise clock, can tell the time more precisely than any other device ever has. Fuelled by the rather exotic element ytterbium, the clock is stable to one part in a quintillion. Like the…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

A Super-Accurate Gravity Map Shows You Where You Can Weigh Less

Gravity’s often assumed to be constant across the entire planet, but because the Earth varies in shape and density, that’s not really the case. Now, this super-accurate gravity map reveals that the fluctuations are even more extreme than scientists previously thought. A team of scientists from Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia, rolled together data…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

What Happens When You Stick Your Head Into a Particle Accelerator

Today I found out what happens when you stick your head into a particle accelerator. Exhibit A: Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski, a Russian scientist who has the distinction of being the only person to ever stick his head in a running particle accelerator. Shockingly, he also managed to survive the ordeal and, all things considered, came…

Physics & Chemistry Daven Hiskey - TodayIFoundOut.com

Scientists Have Recreated St Elmo’s Fire in the Lab

A team of US researchers has finally worked out how reproduce ball lightning—sometimes referred to as St. Elmo’s fire—in the lab. Scientists from US Air Force Academy in Colorado have developed a new technique which allows them to generate clouds of plasma which float in the air for nearly half a second. Such clouds of…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe

Everything You Need to Know About the Grid, CERN’s Global Supercomputer

Scientists Figured Out a Way to Cheat Newton’s Third Law

The Physics of How a Water Jet Can Keep a Ball Floating in Mid-Air

Could Humanity Possibly Survive the Sun’s Explosive Death?

Five Things You Should Know About the Nobel Prize Winner’s Higgs Boson

Nuclear Fusion Has Broken Even For the First Time Ever

These Cubes With No Moving Parts Are Actually Self-Assembling Robots

How Do Gas Pumps Know When to Stop?

Scientists Created a New Form of Matter and It’s Like a Lightsaber

Graphene Computer Chips Run on Light Instead of Electricity

The World’s Thinnest Sheet of Glass Is Just Two Atoms Thick

Why Does Your Voice Sound Different When It’s Recorded?

5 Crazy New Man-Made Materials That Will Shape the Future

Parallel Worlds: How Human History Turns on the Tilt of the Multiverse

Surprising No One, But This Time Everyone, Water Is A Great Lubricant

Quantum Cryptography Could Make Your Phone Uncrackable Someday

This Is the World’s Most Precise Clock

A Super-Accurate Gravity Map Shows You Where You Can Weigh Less

What Happens When You Stick Your Head Into a Particle Accelerator

Scientists Have Recreated St Elmo’s Fire in the Lab

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