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Physics

Cool Finds

Adidas May Have Finally Made a Sleek, Streamlined Soccer Ball That Players Can Live With

Professional soccer players hate when Adidas redesigns their World Cup balls. How will this new one fly?

Dr. Woosuk Bang, a Ph.D. candidate at the time of this photograph, prepares his doctoral thesis experiment on the Texas Petawatt laser. Earlier experiments with terawatt class lasers proved that clusters of gaseous molecules could be converted into ion energy. Dr. Bang's experiment, among the first to be conducted with the Texas Petawatt, created an ion plasma of sufficient temperature and density to catalyze neutron fusion reactions.

Art Meets Science

Adventures In Laser Science

A photo series by Austin-based photographer Robert Shults casts physicists and their everyday life in the lab in a sci-fi B-movie light

Bombus flavifrons worker visiting a columbine in Grant Teton National Park

Bumblebees Can Fly Into Thin Air

Once thought to be unimpressive fliers, bumblebees may be able to summit Mount Everest, new research suggests

Super Bowl

The Science of the First Cold Weather Super Bowl

Science shows that the cold weather will make it harder for players to grip the ball, avoid slipping and hear each other over the roar of the crowd

The supermassive black hole Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way.

New Research

Stephen Hawking Thinks Black Holes Don’t Exist

And he’s been trying to tell the rest of us for a decade

Northern bald ibises in a classic flying "V" formation.

Scientists Solve Mystery of Birds’ Flying V

Migrating birds flap in and out of rhythm depending on where they are in formation

I heard you like stars.

Cool Finds

Astronomers Find What May Be a Star Within a Star

The best candidate yet for an elusive Thorne-Żytkow Object

Using Nothing But Sound, These Scientists Are Making Things Float

Using nothing but high frequency ultrasound, these researchers can make anything float

Earthquake lights seen Tagish Lake, in the Yukon Territory, in 1972. Large orbs are visible in the foreground, while smaller ones (highlighted by arrows) are seen higher up.

Why Do Lights Sometimes Appear in the Sky During An Earthquake?

Scientists have a new hypothesis to explain the mysterious phenomenon—one that could allow the lights to serve as warning for an impeding quake

Tolkien’s Dwarves Would Have Needed 38 Mini-Nuclear Plants to Melt All That Gold So Quickly

Unless those dwarf furnaces were burning some sort of Middle-earth super fuel, in real life Smaug probably would have just eaten the dwarves

Can You Fry Things in Space?

Can the good old American tradition of caking foods in grease continue in the vast recesses of space?

None

The Coolest Science of 2013, in GIFs

This year, we saw dissolving electronics, flying meteors, gravity-defying chains and rotting pineapples

Using interpretive dance, Cedric Tan, a biologist at the University of Oxford, explains his PhD thesis, "Sperm competition between brothers and female choice.

Art Meets Science

This is What Happens When You Ask Scientists to Explain Their PhDs in Dance

Watch this year’s winners of the “Dance Your Ph.D” contest animate sperm competition, cell division and sleep deprivation

(A to L) 3D estimates of front views and lateral views rendered as point clouds overlaid with reflectivity data.

This Camera Capture Images in the Dark, Using Just a Few Particles of Light

The most obvious application for this camera is for spying and surveillance, but it may also be used for remote sensing or to study microscopic structures

Strategy for pumping while seated.

What’s the Best Way to Swing a Playground Swing?

There is physics everywhere, including on the playground

None

The Freshman at MIT Who is Revolutionizing Nanotechnology

Teenager Saumil Bandyopadhyay has harnessed cutting-edge physics to upend industries ranging from automobiles to astronomy

The seahorse may appear ungainly, but it’s actually a sophisticatedly engineered copepod-killing machine.

The Seahorse’s Odd Shape Makes It a Weapon of Stealth

The shape of the seahorse’s snout and its painfully slow movements create help create minimal water disturbance, increasing its odds of bagging prey

Water vortices surrounding a moving stingray’s body

Future Submarines May Glide Through the Water Like Stingrays

Cracking the underlying principles behind stingray movements is the first step to building future submarines

“The Simpsons” Has Been Secretly Teaching Its Fans Complicated Math

Several writers for The Simpsons completed degrees in math and physics before they turned to screen writing for the beloved cartoon

How Does a Tea Kettle Whistle?

This might seem like an obvious question, but it turns out that no one has looked into it until now

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