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Physics

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One Physicist Thinks the Universe Is Not Expanding—And He Might Not Be Crazy

Christof Wetterich can also explain the “red shift” that supports the idea of the Big Bang

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This Amazing Interactive Shows What The Sun Would Look Like Anywhere, Anytime

These simple gifs show the motion of the Sun through the sky, anywhere on Earth

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Nobel Prize Winners Are Put to the Task of Drawing Their Discoveries

Volker Steger photographs Nobel laureates posing with sketches of their breakthrough findings

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Watch This Blob of Ferrofluid Multiply Faster Than the Sorcerer’s Apprentice’s Broomstick

Ferrofluids are pretty much the coolest thing ever

The Trinity University pitch drop setup

After 69 Years, Second Oldest Pitch Drop Experiment Observes Drop

After 69 years, the pitch has finally dropped

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Scientists Get Best View Yet of the Structure of Glass

The amorphous solid holds many mysteries, but a new study using a high-powered microscope shows that atoms in glass are organized into distorted shapes

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Weird Blips Randomly Change the Length of Earth’s Days for Months on End

Three times in the past decade the length of the day has jumped

The Sun’s tail, or ‘heliotail,’ as seen by IBEX.

For the First Time, NASA Took a Photo of the Sun’s Tail

Stretched by the interstellar medium, the Sun’s tail stretches far behind us

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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?

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