Physics Week in Review: November 26, 2016
Hope everyone had a pleasant Thanksgiving holiday. There was still plenty of good physics about. For instance, I had fun writing about the fluid dynamics of the 1919 Boston Molasses Flood for New Scientist, featuring new work by Nicole Sharp, proprietor of the Fuck Yeah Fluid Dynamics Tumblr, presented at last week's APS Division of Fluid Dynamics meeting in Portland, Oregon.
A Physicist's Thanksgiving: Sean Carroll gives thanks for the speed of light.
It's not about the food presentation when having Thanksgiving dinner in space.
How to Brine a Turkey by H.P. Lovecraft. "One day before roasting the turkey, bring one quart water, the Essential Saltes of a long dead Ancestor, bay leaves, and spices to a simmer, stirring until your Ancestor has dissolved." Related: H.P. Lovecraft and the phantom planet.
Terrific long read: The Pyramid at the End of the World. In rural North Dakota, a stand-off over a decaying piece of America's atomic history.
'Dynamic Skin' translates the human metabolism into wearable tech. Related: Forget wearables. In the future, your clothes will connect to the internet.
How loud is the Hulk's famous thunderclap? It's not even loud, it's something else...
A physicist breaks down the physics of throwing a starship off a cliff to make it fly.
Here's The Physics That Got Left Out Of Arrival.
"Humans are not equipped to understand our own temporariness." OK Go plays with the flow of time in their new music video.
A Crazy Miscalculation Doomed the Schiaparelli Lander.
Physicists Twist Light, Send 'Hello World' Message Between Islands.
Research On Chinese Haze Helps Crack Mystery Of London's Deadly 1952 Fog.
New capillarity effects in ideal gases solve an old mathematical mystery.
Vi Hart's statistical perspective on the American electoral divide.
The best science podcasts to make you smarter.
What Every Layperson Should Know About String Theory.
Improbable Research Podcast 89: Can a cat be both a solid and a liquid?
The Time an Engineer Accidentally Started the Space Race and Changed the Course of History.
A Lesson From Particle Physics On Why Things Around Us Don't Start Randomly Liquefying.
Heavy Lights at America's Oldest Lighthouse in Boston Harbor.
How to Map a River With Gunpowder: Cartographers experiment with an explosive way to make map art.
Rusty meteorites show us that Mars is going through a 50 million-year-long dry spell.
Mercury's "great valley" might provides clues as to why the tiny planet is getting smaller.
From sprinklers to battlestations: Ars staffers' crazy home lab experiments.
Geometric Light Installations by Nicolas Rivals Bathe the Spanish Countryside in Red. Per Colossal: "Each temporary piece was captured in a series of long-exposure shots that reveal an unusual juxtaposition between fabricated objects and the natural world." [Image: Nicholas Rivals]
NASA's EM-drive still a WTF-thruster. Related: Why Scientists Think That 'Impossible' Spaceship Drive Might Just Work. Also: NASA Team Claims 'Impossible' Space Engine Works-Get the Facts.
Why NASA Was Lighting Stuff in Space on Fire This Week.
You Can Adopt a Piece of Space Junk and It Will Tweet at You.
The SESAME Project: First Middle Eastern X-Ray Factory Readies for Action.
Remarkable footage from the 1927 Solvay conference, including Einstein, Schridinger, Bohr and other eminent physicists.
Einstein on the "buffoonery" of celebrity culture and the real rewards of work.
Thomas Powers reviews My Dear Li, the letters of Elisabeth and Werner Heisenberg.
Three Candidates For The Hamilton Of Physics.
NASA Didn't Find Life on Mars-But It Did Find Something Very Cool.
How Adam Frank Learned To Love Statistics - And Why You Should, Too.
This Mondrian math puzzle yields puzzling scores.
The Further Mishaps of Young Gottfried Leibniz, courtesy of Math With Bad Drawings.
Understanding the shapes of leaves: why D'Arcy Thompson's conformal mapping is still relevant 100 years later.
From black holes to quasars, a nifty Wired primer on space terminology.
Ever wonder how that wet dog smell got its scent? Science has an answer.
Harpist Zeena Parkins's project LACE translates the visuals of lace fragments and knitting charts into notation for instruments.
Secret Science Nerds: Robert Zemeckis is a Trailblazer in Cinematic Special Effects.
Holiday Gift Guide 2016: Science Gifts for the Stressed Nerd.
Nathan Myhrvold's Scientific Cuisine Is Still Cooking.
An Acoustic Rendition of Metallica's Nothing Else Matters from the Inside of a Guitar.
How an Invisibility Cloak Would Work and the Challenges in Creating One.