Collaborate Disseminate
In a homage to ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,’ two physicists explain the biggest unknowns in science. I’ve summed them up as a tweetstorm. Continue reading The 42 Biggest Questions About Life, the Universe, and Everything
“We want to put water right into your processor.” If that statement makes you sweat, that is good. Sweating is what we’re talking about, but it’s more involved than adding some water like a potted plant. Sweating works naturally by allowing liquid to evaporate, and that phase change is endothermic which is why it feels cool. Evaporative coolers that work in this way, also known as swamp coolers, haven’t been put into computers before because they are full of sloshy water. Researchers in South Korea and the United States of America have been working on an evaporative cooling system mimicking …read more
It’s a finding three decades in the making. Continue reading Scientists Have Measured the ‘Color’ of Antimatter for the First Time
Hawking was one of humanity’s most important scientists and leaves behind an ongoing project to send a small spacecraft to Earth’s closest star system. Continue reading Stephen Hawking Has Died at 76
It turns out that curling involves some complex physics. [Destin] of Smarter Every Day has jumped in to find out why scientists on opposite sides of the Atlantic disagree about why curling stones curl.
If you’ve been watching the Olympics, you’ve probably seen some curling, the Scottish sport of competitively pushing stones on ice. As the name implies, curling stones don’t go straight. The thrower pushes them with a bit of rotation, and the stones curve in the direction they are rotating. This is exactly the opposite of what one would expect — try it yourself with an inverted drinking …read more
Although quantum computing is still in its infancy, enough progress is being made for it to look a little more promising than other “revolutionary” technologies, like fusion power or flying cars. IBM, Intel, and Google all either operate or are producing double-digit qubit computers right now, and there are plans for even larger quantum computers in the future. With this amount of inertia, our quantum computing revolution seems almost certain.
There’s still a lot of work to be done, though, before all of our encryption is rendered moot by these new devices. Since nothing is easy (or intuitive) at the …read more
Last year, scientists created a time crystal for the first time in a lab. It wouldn’t have been possible without the theories of Chetan Nayak. Continue reading This Physicist Turned Time Crystals From a Theoretical Oddity to an Odd Reality
Most people obtain a bachelor’s degree before getting their masters, and even that is a prerequisite for a doctorate. Most people, however, don’t discover a new chemical element.
Marguerite Perey graduated with a chemistry diploma from Paris’ Technical School of Women’s Education in 1929, and applied for work at the Curie Institute, at the time one of the leading chemistry and physics labs in the world. She was hired, and put to work cataloging and preparing samples of the element actinium. This element had been discovered thirty years before by a chemist who had also been working in the Curie …read more
Continue reading Marguerite Perey: When The Lab Assistant Gets The Credit
Maria Goeppert-Mayer was one of only two women to win the Nobel prize for physics thus far, the other being Marie Curie. And yet her name isn’t anywhere near as well known as Marie Curie’s. She also worked on the Manhattan Project and spent time during her long career with Enrico Fermi, Max Born, Edward Teller, and many other physics luminaries.
She was “other” in another way too. She followed her husband from university to university, and due to prevailing rules against hiring both husband and wife, often had to take a non-faculty position, sometimes even with no salary. Yet …read more
Continue reading Maria Goeppert-Mayer: The Other Nobel Prize Winner
The EmDrive propulsion system might be able to take us to the stars, but first it must be reconciled with the laws of physics. Continue reading Theoretical Physicists Are Getting Closer to Explaining How NASA’s ‘Impossible’ EmDrive Works