The coils winding facility building in France, where a global effort to build the ITER fusion energy reactor is underway. Rob Crandall/Shutterstock.com As fusion becomes more technically viable, it’s time to assess whether it’s worth the money because breakthroughs in the lab don’t guarantee success in the marketplace. By Dr. Scott L. Montgomery / 04.09.2018 Lecturer, Jackson School[…]
Photo by kallerna, Wikimedia Commons By Dr. Michael Fowler Maxine S. and Jesse W. Beams Professor of Physics , Physics Education,Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics University of Virginia Early Ideas about Light Propagation Portrait of Galileo Galilei (1636), by Justus Sustermans / National Maritime Museum via Wikimedia Commons Attempts to measure the speed of light played an important part[…]
Creative Commons By Dr. Michael Fowler / 06.12.2015 Maxine S. and Jesse W. Beams Professor of Physics , Physics Education,Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics University of Virginia The Earliest Written Language Sumer and Babylonia, located in present-day Iraq, were probably the first peoples to have a written language, beginning in Sumer in about 3100 BC. The language[…]
Can the arts be a bridge to other worlds? Daniel Parks, CC BY-NC Is a novella published 130 years ago our best bet for explaining the worlds of 4D and beyond? By Dr. Djuna Croon / 09.28.2015 Postdoctoral Associate in Physics and Astronomy Dartmouth College Sometimes, the hardest job for a theoretical physicist is telling the story. The work in this[…]
Margrethe and Neils Bohr, 1910. (Wikimedia Commons | Public Domain) By Dr. Megan Shields Formato / 03.15.2018 Lecturer in Writing and Rhetoric Stanford University While the personal correspondence and public lectures of the Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist, Niels Bohr, often struck readers and listeners as spontaneous or unrehearsed, a painstaking writing process preceded all of his[…]
By Dr. Martin Rees / 03.14.2018 Emeritus Professor of Cosmology and Astrophysics University of Cambridge Soon after I enrolled as a graduate student at Cambridge University in 1964, I encountered a fellow student, two years ahead of me in his studies, who was unsteady on his feet and spoke with great difficulty. This was Stephen[…]
Stanford University / Creative Commons By Dr. Bob Doyle Associate, Astronomy Department Harvard University Information The simple definition of information is the act of informing – the communication of knowledge from a sender to a receiver that informs (literally shapes) the receiver.By information we mean a quantity that can be understood mathematically and physically. It corresponds[…]
Fig 1 By Dr. Frank Wilczek / 12.11.2015 Herman Feshbach Professor of Physics Massachusetts Institute of Technology Historians of science usually date the origin of the Scientific Revolution as 1543, when Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus first put the Earth in motion. While that is a convenient and defensible choice, it is not the only good candidate. An earlier[…]
The Biosphere 2 complex is an earth system science research facility near Tucson, AZ. / Photo by Johndedios, Wikimedia Commons Historian Lisa Rand Ruth charts the decades of experiments here on Earth to prepare for a voyage to Mars. By Dr. Lisa Ruth Rand A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow Institute for Research in the Humanities University of[…]
War diaries, scrapbooks, letters and photographs belonging to Sir John Cockcroft, Nobel Prize winner and one of the most influential scientists of the modern era, will today be placed in the care of the Churchill Archives Centre. 09.22.2017 Sir John Cockcroft was one of the most important and influential scientists of the modern era. He[…]
GHOST IN THE SHELL – What looked like an ordinary supernova, shown in this artist’s illustration, might be the result of a single star exploding at least three times, blowing off expanding shells of gas each time. The weirdest supernova ever has lasted more than three years, and may be the third outburst from the[…]
By R. David Dixon, Jr. / 10.27.2017 Master of Arts Student in Sociology Stanford University Are We Born the Way We Are, or Do We Get to Decide? I remember well the last days of high school. There was a general sense of apocalypse, combined with the hopeful ideal that we will all soon be moving[…]
Map of all matter – most of which is invisible dark matter – between Earth and the edge of the observable universe. ESA/NASA/JPL-Caltech, CC BY By Dr. Dan Hooper / 10.25.2017 Associate Scientist in Theoretical Astrophysics, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Chicago The past few decades have ushered in an[…]
Illustration of hot, dense, expanding cloud of debris stripped from the neutron stars just before they collided. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/CI Lab, CC BY By Dr. Duncan Brown (left) and Dr. Edo Berger (left) / 10.24.2017 Brown: Professor of Physics, Syracuse University Berger: Professor of Astronomy, Harvard University For thousands of years, humans have searched[…]
Oh hey, I heard ripples in space and time, generated as two black holes merged. Call me back. SXS, CC BY-ND By Dr. Chad Hanna / 02.11.2016 Assistant Professor of Physics Pennsylvania State University The best thing about a day in my life on the lookout for gravitational waves is that I never know when it will[…]
What sounds did the people of Chaco Canyon hear during daily life? David E. Witt By Kristy E. Primeau and David E. Witt / 08.02.2017 Primeau: PhD Candidate in Archaeology, University at Albany Witt: PhD Candidate in Archaeology, University at Buffalo The State University of New York Picture an archaeological site, what comes to mind?[…]
Rainbow over the Helford estuary, Cornwall, England. / Photo by Susan Butterworth By Dr. Jonathan Butterworth / 01.03.2017 Professor of Physics University College London This summer I went on a family holiday to Cornwall, on the Helford River. The peninsula south of the river is, rather wonderfully, called The Lizard. Standing on its cliffs, you are[…]
Abandoned homes in Pripyat, 2km from Chernobyl. / Photo by Dana Sacchetti, IAEA Imagebank By Dr. David Farrier / 10.31.2016 Senior Lecturer in English University of Edinburgh Late one summer night in 1949, the British archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes went out into her small back garden in north London, and lay down. She sensed the bedrock[…]
Rainbow over the Helford estuary, Cornwall, England. / Photo by Susan Butterworth By Dr. Jon Butterworth / 01.03.2017 Professor of Physics University College London This summer I went on a family holiday to Cornwall, on the Helford River. The peninsula south of the river is, rather wonderfully, called The Lizard. Standing on its cliffs, you are[…]
Astronomers have made the first measurements of small-scale fluctuations in the cosmic web 2 billion years after the Big Bang. These measurements were conducted using a novel technique which relies on the light of quasars crossing the cosmic web along adjacent lines of sight. 04.29.2017 The most barren regions of the Universe are the far-flung[…]
Tiny CubeSats are ready to be our eyes in the skies. Earth Background: NASA; HARP Spacecraft: SDL; Montage: Martins, UMBC By Dr. J. Vanderlei Martins / 01.26.2017 Professor of Physics University of Maryland, Baltimore County Tiny satellites, some smaller than a shoe box, are currently orbiting around 200 miles above Earth, collecting data about our[…]
Since its discovery in 2004, scientists have believed that graphene may have the innate ability to superconduct. Now Cambridge researchers have found a way to activate that previously dormant potential. 01.19.2017 Researchers have found a way to trigger the innate, but previously hidden, ability of graphene to act as a superconductor – meaning that it[…]
Static electricity can cause more than just a bad hair day. / Photo by Ken Bosma, Creative Commons By Dr. Sebastian Deffner / 01.05.2017 Assistant Professor of Physics University of Maryland, Baltimore County Static electricity is a ubiquitous part of everyday life. It’s all around us, sometimes funny and obvious, as when it makes your[…]
By Dr. Rodrigo Ledesma Aguilar / 12.22.2016 Senior Lecturer in Physics and Electrical Engineering Northumbria University, Newcastle One of the most basic things we are taught in school science classes is that water can exist in three different states, either as solid ice, liquid water, or vapour gas. But an international team of scientists have[…]
Black holes merging By Dr. Stefan Helmreich / 11.2016 Etting E. Morison Professor of Anthropology Massachusetts Institute of Technology I heard gravitational waves before they were detected.1 I was sitting in a pub in May 2015 with MIT physicists Scott Hughes and David Kaiser, my headphones looped into a laptop. Hughes was readying to play[…]
Researchers have developed a new method for making effective calculations in “high-dimensional space” – and proved its worth by using it to solve a 93-dimensional problem. 10.13.2016 Researchers have developed a new technique for making calculations in “high-dimensional space” – mathematical problems so wide-ranging in their scope, that they seem at first to be beyond[…]
This image shows crystals used for storing entangled photons, which behave as though they are part of the same whole. Scientists use crystals like these in quantum teleportation experiments. / Credits: Félix Bussières/University of Geneva Quantum physics is a field that appears to give scientists superpowers. Those who understand the world of extremely small or[…]
The Nobel Committee making the announcement. TT news agency/EPA By Dr. Stephen Clark / 10.04.2016 Lecturer in Physics University of Bath The Nobel Prize in Physics for 2016 has been awarded to three British scientists working in the US for their theoretical work explaining strange states of matter, including superconductors, superfluids and thin magnetic films.[…]
Researchers have observed quantum effects in electrons by squeezing them into one-dimensional ‘quantum wires’ and observing the interactions between them. The results could be used to aid in the development of quantum technologies, including quantum computing. 09.15.2016 Scientists have controlled electrons by packing them so tightly that they start to display quantum effects, using an[…]
Is Consciousness a fundamental pre-existing awareness? What is the universe made of? According to visionary author and revolutionary futurist, Peter Russell … Nothing. It’s not made of any “thing.” There is this aware field of being, that is already there. He believes that the current worldview stating that the world exists of space, time and matter,[…]