Physics

The Physics of Toilets

You may be dealing with a plumbing issue. You may get sent back in time and realize you don’t have the strength to go on without indoor plumbing. You may get asked this by a small child who, up until that moment, was the one person who believed you had the answer to everything. Trust…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jun 30

Technicolor ferrofluids are a magnetic acid trip

Oil, watercolors and nanoscale iron particles make for some of the most psychedelic imagery this side of an LSD trip — and we’ve got the hi-res macro photographs to prove it. “I really like using scientific phenomena in my work, because every one of us is surrounded by them in our daily lives,” Switzerland-based art…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 29

Watch an astronaut use LEGOs to make a square planet orbit a cylinder

See Don Pettit play with LEGOs! See him make sparks! See him make a block of styrofoam orbit a Van de Graaff generator like a little square planet! See it — and remember for the billionth time why nerds in space are awesome. There are a couple of things I like about this video. The…

io9 Esther Inglis-Arkell Jun 29

The Big Rip Theory says the universe could end in tears

Some say the universe will end with a new Big Bang. Others say the cosmos will eventually succumb to entropy. But what if neither of those things happens? A recent theory says the universe will just tear itself apart. The Big Rip Theory might be the scariest scenario for the end of everything we’ve come…

io9 Keith Veronese Jun 29

“Nuclear slapshots” could propel a spacecraft to Mars in just weeks

Scientists at UAHuntsville have proposed a scheme that could see a spacecraft propelled through space by using a pulsed nuclear fusion system. To do so, a series of “nuclear slapshots” would apply magnetic pulses in order to slam nuclei into each other inside a hockey puck like structure made of a special lightweight salt. Should…

io9 George Dvorsky Jun 27

Gas cloud will collide with our galaxy’s black hole in 2013

Scientists have determined that a giant gas cloud is on a collision course with the black hole in the center of our galaxy — and the two will be close enough by mid-2013 to provide a unique opportunity to observe how a super massive black hole sucks in material, in real time. This will give…

io9 Nancy Atkinson - Universe Today Jun 26

Ever wonder what would happen if you jumped into a lake of lava?

Violently gushing lava bubbles, that’s what. Word around the internet is that unless you’re sporting a hyperalloy endoskeleton, chances are you’re not dense enough to actually sink into a pool of roiling magma. http://gawker.com/5866004/movies-show-death-by-lava-all-wrong This has to do with the fact that lava is more than three times as dense as water, and well over…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 26

Atom Crash Produces Hottest Man-Made Temperature Ever

An atom-smasher called the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) has just snagged a Guinness World Record for reaching the hottest man-made temperature ever—250,000 times hotter than the center of the sun. The face-melting temperature was achieved when gold nuclei—the part of the atom made of protons and neutrons that has a positive charge—were set zipping…

Physics & Chemistry Leslie Horn Jun 26

High-speed video reveals the bizarre physics of Slinkys

And now, for your Monday morning moment of zen, Slinkys in slow motion. Whether it’s dropped from eye level, or from the roof of a building, the bottom of a fully extended slinky will appear to hover in midair when released. What lets the Slinky’s bottom hover like that? It all boils down to the…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 25

Why removing the uncertainty principle accidentally creates perpetual motion

Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle tells us it’s impossible to know simultaneously the location and the velocity of a subatomic particle. It’s one of the main ideas that famously prompted Albert Einstein to declare God doesn’t play dice with the universe. After Einstein’s repeated failures to disprove quantum mechanics, physicists have more or less come to…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Jun 24

David Deutsch’s The Fabric of Reality connects the spookier elements of quantum mechanics

In his book The Fabric of Reality, physicist David Deutsch presents four key concepts which define the universe: quantum theory, computation, evolution by natural selection and Popperian epistemology. Deutsch calls these four concepts the strands of the fabric of reality. The Four Strands It would be impossible to do justice to the totality of Deutsch’s…

io9 Jason Shankel Jun 24

How do plants know which way is up?

Try turning a growing plant on end, and a funny thing happens. It will right itself, twisting and contorting so its leaves project skyward and its roots extend down toward the center of the Earth. Logic would dictate that plants solve the problem of which way to grow by sensing gravity — but how did…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 22

Have we really found the God Particle? CERN physicists say don’t believe the hype

The internet is beside itself with rumors that the long-sought Higgs Boson has been found — but a representative from one of the teams searching for the so-called “God Particle” says to chill the frak out. So what’s going on here? Are researchers waiting for an international physics conference in July to make their big…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 20

Holy crap, this whale spouts rainbows

Happy hump day, everyone! Here for your enjoyment is a whale, seen off the coast of Nova Scotia, spraying a rainbow out its blowhole. This is clearly a magical whale, and this phenomenon has absolutely nothing to do with tiny water droplets refracting light into the visible color spectrum. Do not doubt the technicolor dream…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 20

Slinky Falling in Slow-Mo Looks Like It’s Floating in Mid-Air

Invented in 1945, the slinky is a nostalgic relic of many people’s childhoods. Capture it with a high-speed camera, and it becomes a thing of beauty. The above clip was intended to show the aesthetic side of science, shows how the little toy doesn’t collapse all at once when it’s dropped from a building. The…

Physics & Chemistry Leslie Horn Jun 19

Watch Ice Crystals Bloom Into Mesmerizing Chaos

You’re about to watch a beautiful music video, which sets a precise yet delicate piano line to one of the most wonderful pieces of scientific footage you’ll have seen in a long time. Directed and produced by Craig Ward, the video accompanies the haunting track by Ryan Teague, called Cascades—a piece in which “the movements…

Physics & Chemistry Jamie Condliffe Jun 18

Who needs particle accelerators when you can just use black holes?

As any particle physicist will tell you, if you want to find new particles, you’re going to need a lot of energy. This is why huge accelerators are used to propel particles to nearly the speed of light. But scientists are now suggesting that there may be another way — if we can detect some…

io9 George Dvorsky Jun 18

Are neutrons traveling between parallel worlds?

Recent experiments at ultra-cold temperatures have shown a phenomenon known as “neutron loss,” in which we somehow lose track of these subatomic particles for short periods. This probably has a mundane explanation…but just for fun, here’s an awesomely insane explanation. The idea put forward by Zurab Berezhiani and Fabrizio Nesti, a pair of theoretical physicists…

io9 Alasdair Wilkins Jun 17

If You Fire an Airplane Engine Strapped To An Aircraft Carrier, Would the Ship Go Faster?

This is Aviation Machinist’s Mate 3rd Class Christopher Cogar. He’s testing a F-414 jet engine’s afterburner aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington. And spectacular view, no doubt, which made me wonder: If he’s testing this on the stern of the carrier, would the ship go faster? It seems logical that it will, since any…

Physics & Chemistry Jesus Diaz Jun 15

Astronauts Are So Smart They Can Generate Electricity in Space Using Lego

Astronaut Don Pettit has a knack for making life on the space station seem like more fun than you can ever have on Earth. And recently he used the station’s Lego collection for some entertaining makeshift experiments with static electricity. Using nothing more than the colorful bricks and some high-tech looking tinfoil scavenged from the…

Space & Spaceflight Andrew Liszewski Jun 14

The Physics of Toilets

Technicolor ferrofluids are a magnetic acid trip

Watch an astronaut use LEGOs to make a square planet orbit a cylinder

The Big Rip Theory says the universe could end in tears

“Nuclear slapshots” could propel a spacecraft to Mars in just weeks

Gas cloud will collide with our galaxy’s black hole in 2013

Ever wonder what would happen if you jumped into a lake of lava?

Atom Crash Produces Hottest Man-Made Temperature Ever

High-speed video reveals the bizarre physics of Slinkys

Why removing the uncertainty principle accidentally creates perpetual motion

David Deutsch’s The Fabric of Reality connects the spookier elements of quantum mechanics

How do plants know which way is up?

Have we really found the God Particle? CERN physicists say don’t believe the hype

Holy crap, this whale spouts rainbows

Slinky Falling in Slow-Mo Looks Like It’s Floating in Mid-Air

Watch Ice Crystals Bloom Into Mesmerizing Chaos

Who needs particle accelerators when you can just use black holes?

Are neutrons traveling between parallel worlds?

If You Fire an Airplane Engine Strapped To An Aircraft Carrier, Would the Ship Go Faster?

Astronauts Are So Smart They Can Generate Electricity in Space Using Lego

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