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Physics

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

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer aboard the ISS.

Did We Just Find Dark Matter?

The physics world is buzzing over new evidence for dark matter. We break it down for you

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Why Geckos Don’t Slip Off Wet Jungle Leaves or Hotel Ceilings

A surface’s ability to attract and repel water heavily influences the degree to which a gecko can cling overhead, new research shows

Absolute zero, the temperature at which all atomic and molecular motion stops, is much colder than anything ever experienced by people here on earth.

Scientists Are Trying to Create a Temperature Below Absolute Zero

If you can’t break the laws of physics, work around them

The gooey confections can be used to measure the speed of light and demonstrate relationships between the volume of a gas and its pressure and temperature.

Marshmallows: The Perfect Media for Demonstrating Principles of Physics

The gooey confections turn out to be a must-have for at-home science experiments

In a type Ia supernova, and the new Iax mini-supernova, a white dwarf star (the one with the disk) eats a nearby star. When it grows big enough, it explodes.

Astronomers Discover Baby Supernovae

This new type of mini-supernova doesn’t destroy the star

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Physicists Use Ytterbium Ions to Make March Madness Picks

Even knowledgable fans aren’t great at making predictions, so quantum physics may be the surest way to cash in on the madness

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Women Who Score Well on Both Math And Verbal Tests Still Don’t Choose Science Careers

This may be because women have some many career options these days, researchers write, or maybe it’s just sexism

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Scientists Build a Phaser, a New Kind of Sound-Laser

A laser that shoots sound, a Star Trek fantasy that’s nearly within reach

Space suits might not be this sexy, but sex is space is bound to happen.

Are We Ready to Have Babies in Space?

As technology progresses, and people talk seriously about trips to Mars or other planets, the questions of love and sex in space become more pressing

A simulation of a particle collision as seen by the Large Hadron Collider’s CMS experiment.

Eight Months Later, Physicists Double Down on Claim of Higgs Particle Discovery

No longer Higgs-like, now just Higgs

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What Mosh Pits Can Teach Us About Disaster Planning

Moshers might have more to offer society than you once thought. It turns out that mosh pits behave a lot like a container of gas, with each individual behaving like an atom

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