Physics

Here’s Why You See Those Flickering Clouds Around the Tavurvur Volcano

Those watching the footage of the Tavurvur volcano probably noticed appearing and disappearing clouds along the edge of the shock wave. They’re called Wilson clouds, and they used to flicker in the sky above nuclear bombs, too. Adiabatic cooling is the drop in temperature that happens when a gas is suddenly given lots of extra…

What Would It Be Like To Fall Into A Black Hole?

Let’s say you happened to fall into the nearest black hole. What would you experience and see? And what would the rest of the Universe see as this was happening? Let’s say you decided to ignore some of my previous advice. You’ve just purchased yourself a space dragon from the Market on the Centauri Ringworld,…

What Would Happen If the Sun Ceased to Exist for Just One Second?

If you mean simply “is not visible” then very little, we’d have a second of darkness, not unlike an eclipse, and then we’d be back to normal. If on the other hand, you mean “ceases to exist momentarily” then you’re talking about something else entirely. The orbits of all of the planets and a great…

Have you ever been caught in a “phantom traffic jam,” where cars have slowed down and even stopped for no reason at all? These are a real phenomenon, and they can be hotspots for accidents. In Nautilus, Benjamin Seibold reports on some possible reasons for these mysterious events.

How ​Music Proves We Live In Three Dimensions

String theory has dimensions popping up all over the place. We are currently at over 10 dimensions. But how would living in that many dimensions affect us? The first thing to do would be to throw out all your albums, because they won’t sound right anymore. Three dimensions are convenient for sound waves. They begin…

What Makes Grow Lights Different From The Lamps In Your House?

How do lamps make, shall we say, pretty flowers grow? And what’s the difference between these lamps and the ones that light your house? The sun beats down on the earth, directly or indirectly supporting the vast majority of life on the planet. Why don’t light bulbs, without the aid of the sun, do the…

Read Richard Feynman’s Best-Known Lectures For Free

In 1964, Richard Feynman gave a series of seven, hour-long lectures at Cornell University that have gone down in history as a wonderfully accessible introduction to physics. Now, you can read them online for free. In fact, the series of lectures spawned what became the best-selling series of physics books ever, which shifted over 1.5…

You Can Now Access All Of Richard Feynman’s Physics Lectures For Free

The lectures of Nobel Prize winning physicist Richard Feynman were legendary. Footage of these lectures does exist, but they are most famously preserved in The Feynman Lectures. The three-volume set may be the most popular collection of physics books ever written, and now you can access it online, in its entirety, for free. https://gizmodo.com/watch-a-series-of-seven-brilliant-lectures-by-richard-f-5894600 The…

What Time is It in the Universe?

Check your watch. What time is it? But wait, you’ve actually been moving and accelerating, and according to Einstein, everything’s relative. So what time is it really? It all depends… Flavor Flav knows what time it is. At least he does for Flavor Flav. Even with all his moving and accelerating, with the planet, the…

TNT-Coated Carbon Nanotubes Could Generate Future Electricity

Light the touchpaper and stand well back, because we’re about to… make sustainable electricity? That’s the idea according to a researcher from MIT, whose vision for future power generation involves a healthy dose of TNT. It’s about four years since Michael Strano first created a yarn from carbon nanotubes and coated it in TNT. When…

Schrödinger’s Cat, Caught on Camera

While quantum mechanics is tough to get your head round, you probably know about Schrödinger’s poor old cat: left in a box, both alive and dead at the same time. Well, now there’s a picture of the ill-fated feline. https://gizmodo.com/how-the-hell-does-quantum-mechanics-work-anyway-1625454355 Well, kind of. What you’re actually looking at is an image created by quantum weirdness.…

The Quickest Way To Pick Cherries Is With a Giant Vibrator

Want to know the easy way to harvest cherries? It’s simple – just shake the tree. Alright, so technically there’s a little more to it than that. The hydraulic shaker in this video has actually been calibrated to jostle these cherry trees at a specific vibrational frequency. Jiggle in just the right way, and you’ll…

Why Do We Draw Stars With Pointed Arms?

If stars themselves are giant balls of gas and appear as dots in the night sky, why is it so common to draw them with pointed arms? Minute Physics explains how the light from stars interacts with our eyes to create that “star-shaped” image. What’s particularly interesting isn’t just how waves of light diffract when…

Physicists Have A Simple Answer For How Egyptians Built The Pyramids

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the last of the ancient world’s “seven wonders.” The 4,500-year-old structure was constructed from 2.4 million limestone blocks, most weighing around 2.5 tons. Today we’re still debating how the Egyptians managed to move these blocks from local quarries. Now scientists have a new hypothesis. [Image: Library of Congress] They…

How To Perfectly Locate Your Router, Using Physics

How do you determine the optimal placement for a wifi router? For most people, this could be an exercise in design, or in outlet location and cable length, or maybe where it’s most convenient to frequently reset. For a physicist, it involves solving the Helmholtz equation. Jason Cole is a PhD physics student in London.…

Physicists Want To Know If We’re All Actually Living in a Hologram

Although it sounds entirely like something dreamed up in a smoke-filled dorm room, whether the entire universe is hologram is a very serious question—a question that gets at the heart of a fundamental problem in physics. A new experiment starting up at Fermilab just might hold the answer. Fermilab, a government-funded research campus on the…

Why Radio Should Never Have Worked (Even Though It Does)

When Marconi first popularized the radio, no one expected it to go far – literally. Radio waves ought to be stopped in their tracks by the curve of the Earth. Marconi proved they weren’t, but no one knew why. Radio technology offered people a whole new way to experience the world. They could, communally, hear…

Secrets of the Manhattan Project Leaked 1500 Times During World War II

The World War II program to develop an atomic bomb was the largest secret project ever undertaken by the U.S. government. But newly-declassified documents reveal how it hard it was to keep things secret as the weapon neared completion. Information leaks were everywhere, even in church sermons. Trinity Test plutonium bomb image courtesy of Truman…

Physicists Use Lasers to Chill the World’s Coldest Molecules

If you thought last winter was cold, you should stay as far away from magneto-optical trapping as possible. Yale physicists recently used this technique to cool a molecule of strontium monoflouride down to 2.5 thousandths of a degree above absolute zero. That makes them the world’s coldest molecules. It’s also really cold! Absolute zero is…

This Video Shows You Why Your Coffee Stain Forms a Ring

One of the more famous effects in physics is the Coffee Ring Effect. Leave a drop – or puddle – of coffee on any surface and you’ll come back to a dark ring of stain. This video shows you actual footage of your coffee particles making your coffee stain. If you want to know why…