Physics

Every Satellite Got Into Space Thanks to Newton’s Law of Gravitation

What goes up must come down — though not always in the way you’d expect. This is Newton’s Universal Law of Gravitation, and you can thank it for GPS, Google Earth and even the pictures beamed back from the other side of the Solar System. Here’s why. The equation neatly describes the gravitational attraction that…

Here’s Why The New Horizons Spacecraft Won’t Be Stopping At Pluto

In less than five weeks, New Horizons will zip past the Pluto-Charon system in a brief but historic encounter. Given the huge interest in Pluto, it’s fair to ask: Why won’t mission planners let the probe hang out a while? Above: Our first glimpse of Pluto and Charon in color (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied…

This Unbelievable Coincidence Is Responsible For Life In The Universe

Life is dependent upon a lot of coincidences, but there’s only one that was so improbable that physicists laughed at the very idea of it. Here’s why something known as the “beryllium bottleneck” should have choked out all life before it even got started. When a star ignites, it does so due to the fusion…

What caused this unique gas disk? Artist’s impression of vast disk of gas surrounding a bright Wolf-Rayet star whose companion star is pulling gas away from it, causing some of the stellar gas to escape and form this never-before-seen disk.

Physicists Recreate Sartre’s No Exit, Using The Efimov Effect

Here’s an example of science becoming dangerously poetic. Under the right conditions, three atoms that all repel each other will be forced into an inseparable triad. It’s time to get existential. If you don’t remember Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit, let me recap it for you. Three sinners are sent to hell and their punishment…

Enjoy Your Morning Coffee While Watching Delighted Nerds Burst Bubbles

This is a fun video, not only because it combines many staples of mesmerizing internet videos – slow motion video, water, electric charge, fire – but because it shows us the scientists reacting to them. I love the group high-fives after they burst a bubble using static electricity. Now this is charming. There’s just something…

A Stealth Energy Startup Just Made a 10x Improvement to Its Fusion Tech

Tri Alpha Energy does not have a website. Its office in California is unmarked. But this stealth company apparently has hundreds of millions in cash. And now it has something to show for it, reportsScience: The company claims it’s gotten ten times better at containing high-energy particles necessary for fusion energy. But before we rev…

From Today the LHC Runs at Full Power to Push the Limits of Physics

As of today, the Large Hadron Collider will run at full, record-breaking power levels, as scientists kick off a new set of experiments that will help us understand the secrets of particle physics. After rebooting in Marchfollowing a two-year period of repairs an upgrades, teams of scientists have been testing the Collider’s abilities to run…

This Video Of Water Heating Up On A Stove Is Weirdly Hypnotic

This oddly beautiful video shows us how water warms over a heat source in little slow-motion eruptions. Watch the dye rise up from the hot plate and spread over the water like the world’s most benign mushroom cloud. The first part of this video is predictable. The hot water rises, carrying the dye with it.…

Large Plasma Tubes Confirmed to Exist Above The Earth’s Atmosphere

For over six decades, scientists have speculated about the existence of plasma structures that reside in the magnetosphere’s inner layers. Researchers in Australia have now created 3D images of these tubes for the very first time, proving they’re quite real. This is an important discovery for a number of reasons. First, these structures are the…

Plasmoids Could Change the Way We Create Thermonuclear Fusion

Imagine a puff of cigarette smoke suddenly turning into a sphere and rolling around. That’s what happens with plasma becomes a plasmoid — it forms a structure that contains itself and moves as a unit. We finally have pictures of plasmoids as well as our first simulation of them. Here’s why that’s a big deal.…

The Physics Behind Ice Spikes, Nature’s Perfect Murder Weapon

Ice spikes may very well be the perfect untraceable weapon, but how do these jagged sticks of frosty death form? Turns out there’s no magic involved (womp), just some simple physics. Image: Shulevskyy Volodymyr via Shutterstock Ice cubes freeze from their outer edges inward, expanding as they go. Sometimes, this process squeezes the water in…

The Seashell-Inspired Material Creating a New Wave of Safety Gear

The risk of injury in professional sport has been a central feature in recent debates about how well protected our stars are. Only recently, Argentine football player Emanuel Ortega died of a fatal head injury after hitting a concrete wall during a game. One solution is to increase the use of protective wear and to…

How to Win Your Physics Class Egg Drop Competition

The problem is simple enough. You’ve got a raw egg, and it’s going to be dropped from a high place. You have to build a contraption so that it doesn’t break when it hits. Easy? Maybe. But how do you make it as light as possible? Or as small as possible? These questions have had…

This Element Is So Radioactive It Actually Glows

Radium watch dials put the idea of glowing green radioactive elements in the public consciousness, but radium doesn’t actually glow. If you want to see the glow of radiation, take a look at the blue light coming off actinium. Technically, actinium, or more specifically actinium-227, doesn’t glow on its own. What it does is emit…

This Is the First Single-Molecule Diode That Could Actually Be Useful

The diode is a very simple-sounding little electronic device: it allows current to flow easily in one direction, but not the other. But while the quest to miniaturize them to the molecular scale has worked in the past, only now is it a truly practical proposition. A team from Columbia University has created a new…

You’ll Feel Way Smarter After Watching These YouTube Physics Lessons

If you like the Explain Like I’m Five subreddit, which demystifies life’s mysteries in layman speak (like this one about why kids eat boogers), then you should bookmark MinutePhysics. It’s a popular YouTube channel that breaks down one of the more confounding branches of science by drawing cartoons with a Crayola marker. MinutePhysics has been…

The Secrets Of The Theory of General Relativity In An Alphabetic Primer

Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity is beautiful, elegant, and a golden standard of, “This is what complex physics looks like.” To celebrate the centennial of its publication, the Perimeter Institute put together an alphabetic primer of lessons and trivia to bring you up to speed. Images credits: the Perimeter Institute.

The LHC Just Shattered Its Previous Record For Energy Output

Late yesterday, CERN scientists made history by using the most powerful particle accelerator in the world to hurl beams of protons together at the record-breaking energy of 13 TeV (tera-electronvolts) — a full 5 TeV higher than the previous standard. Top image: Protons collide at 13 TeV sending showers of particles through the ALICE detector.…

Alastair Reynolds Says What It’ll Take To Colonize Other Planets

The more we learn about exoplanets and the physics of interstellar travel, the more daunting the prospect of traveling to other stars appears. But in a new essay for Reuters, House of Suns author Alastair Reynolds lays out exactly what we’ll have to do to get to other solar systems. In a nutshell, we need…