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Physics

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When the Sun Gets Violent, It Shoots Antimatter at the Earth

When it casts a solar flare, the Sun also launches antimatter

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These Contact Lenses Can Zoom In and Out, Give You Telescopic Vision

These contact lenses can switch your vision back and forth from regular sight to a 2.8x zoom

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Contributors

The ATLAS detector, one of two experiments to spot the elusive Higgs boson in particle smashups at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, weighs as much as a hundred 747 jets and houses more than 1,800 miles of cable.

How the Higgs Boson Was Found

Before the elusive particle could be discovered—a smashing success—it had to be imagined

Fueling the trip to the exoplanet Gliese 667Cd, discovered earlier this week, would be one of humankind’s greatest challenges to date. Above is an artist’s rendering of a view from the planet.

Powering the 21st Century

Can We Power a Space Mission To An Exoplanet?

Ion engines, solar sails, antimatter rockets, nuclear fusion—several current and future technologies could someday help us fuel an interstellar journey

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One of Our Nearest Neighbor Stars Has At Least Six Planets, And Three May Be Habitable

Three potentially habitable planets orbit a star just 22 light years away

How a Physics Diagram Was Named After a Penguin

1977 Ellis made a bet with a student, Melissa Franklin, and lost. The result can be seen in physics classrooms all over the world: the penguin diagram

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All of Facebook Could Fit on 100 of These Futuristic DVDs

This new DVD could probably hold every file you’ve ever made

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The Unique Vibrations of Your Skull Affect How You Hear Music

Your skull bones interact with sound waves to change the way you hear music

As part of the Star Songs project, X-ray emissions from the EX Hydrae system (above, near center)—in which one star pulls matter from its partner—are converted into music.

How to Convert X-Rays From A Distant Star into Blues, Jazz and Classical Music

A vision-impaired scientist, her coworker, and a composer team up to transform light bursts from stars into rhythms and melodies

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World’s Newest Atomic Clock Loses 1 Second Every 50 Billion Years

Tired of your clocks losing time? A new clock, which is the most accurate ever, uses ytterbium atoms and lasers to precisely define a second

What will happen to nuclear energy in the 21st century?

The Unclear Fate of Nuclear Power

Two years after the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi, can the nuclear renaissance regain its momentum?

The first scanning tunneling microscope ever made.

Heinrich Rohrer, Father of Nanotechnology, Dies at 79

Heinrich Rohrer, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics, passed away last week at the age of 79

Barns Are Painted Red Because of the Physics of Dying Stars

Have you ever noticed that almost every barn you have ever seen is red? Here’s why.

Could Lightning Come From Space?

Cosmic rays may cause a “runaway breakdown” of electrons when they collide with highly charged particles in thunderclouds

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Scientists Just Recorded the Brightest Explosion We’ve Ever Seen

We just saw the longest, brightest, most powerful version of the universe’s most massive explosions

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IBM Engineers Pushed Individual Atoms Around to Make This Amazing Stop-Motion Movie

IBM was the first to draw with atoms, and now they’re making them dance

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Physicists to Shoot Extremely Fast-Moving Electrons at Dinosaur Skin Fossil

The actual color of dinosaur skin is still very much up for debate

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The ‘FlipperBot’ Is Almost as Cute as the Baby Sea Turtles It Mimics

This bio-inspired robot could help conserve and restore beaches as well as teach us about how our ancient aquatic ancestors evolved to walk on land

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Should the Higgs Boson Be Renamed to Credit More Scientists?

Peter Higgs didn’t discover the elusive speck on his own, and now some are wondering whether it should be renamed to honor some of the other scientists too

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