Physics Week in Review: April 29, 2017

This week's physics highlights include hints of the quark-gluon plasma at the LHC; "spectral fingerprinting" that can see through concrete; and the physics of cracking an egg.

A Tiny Droplet of the Early Universe: Particles seen by ALICE experiment hint at the formation of quark-gluon plasma during proton-proton collisions. Related: Oddities start to emerge from deeper analyses of LHC data. Strange quarks showing up often, muons not as frequently as expected.

The Search for the Universe's Missing Antimatter Remains Annoyingly Nebulous.

Quantum Biometrics: The unique way your eyes detect photons could be used to guarantee your identity, say physicists.

Portable Detection of Ghostly Particles Could Unmask Illicit Nuclear Weapons. Weapons-grade fuel in a nuclear reactor emits a steady rate of telltale antineutrinos that could be detected by a newly designed portable device.

Move Over, Superman: NIST "Spectral Fingerprinting" Sees Through Concrete to Detect Early Corrosion.

Aurora Photographers Find New Night Sky Lights and Call them Steve: "'Steve' is a 'remarkably common' gas ribbon in the upper atmosphere."

A Cosmic-Ray Hunter Takes to the Sky. Angela Olinto's new balloon experiment takes her one step closer to the unknown source of the most energetic particles in the universe.

With Discovery, 3 Scientists Chip Away At An Unsolvable Math Problem.

Iceberg 'doodles' trace climate history: new atlas of the poles details sometimes strange shapes on ocean floor.

Six Flags as a science lab and cow gut spelunkers: Fantastic tales from the field.

Dark, windblown dunes on the Martian surface owe their color to the iron and magnesium-rich sand found in the region. [Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona]

Why predicting the future is more than just horseplay: "Systems that involve people can be particularly surprising."

What's the best way to crack an egg? Physics! See also my own 2012 take at Slate.

Physics of throwing analysed by scientists. "Researchers... say the slow-is-more-accurate rule generally applies."

Scientists are puzzling out how butterflies assemble their brightly colored scales.

10 common misconceptions in physics: science perpetually refines our understanding based on new evidence.

Icy Enceladus's tiger stripes are a window on its watery depths

Edvard Munch inspired by 'screaming clouds': A new theory may explain the background to "The Scream."

All mammals poop in 12 seconds and there's an equation for the 'duration of diarrheal defecation.'

How To Prove Einstein's Relativity For Less Than $100: Distances really do contract, clocks really do run slow.

Astrophysicist Janna Levin Reads "Planetarium," Adrienne Rich's Tribute to Women in Astronomy.

Let's Do the Shocking Physics of Why Power Lines Sag: more fun with physics from Wired's Rhett Allain.

Curiosity In Coffee Ring Patterns Leads To Greater Efficiency Of Energy Materials.

A material inspired by a sea worm changes according to the environment.

Earth-Mass "Iceball" Planet Found 13,000 Light-Years Away, the smallest yet found via "microlensing" planet-hunting technique.

Getting Ready To Live Off The Land"On Mars. Related: Engineers investigate a simple, no-bake recipe to make bricks from Martian soil. Future Martians May Be Living in Houses Made of Mushrooms, Bone, and Dust.

"I Felt Every Emotion Standing in the Shadows of NASA's Apollo 1 Fire."

Math under My Feet: Scientific American blogger Evelyn Lamb took a walk and tripped-almost literally-over a beautiful octagonal tiling.

Osmosis drives a jellyfish's sting, but that may allow scientists to develop better protection against them.

Exotic patterns show up in skin of certain kinds of lizards, realizing a mathematical abstraction called a cellular automaton.

How they made that spectacular commercial about the fluid mechanics of paint:

Is Quantum Theory About Reality or What We Know?

New York physician Samuel Ward Francis predicted medical imaging with X-rays 30 years before Roentgen's discovery.

The strychnine exhumation: William Taylor was dead and buried" but murder will out.

The Bloop: an Underwater Mystery That Took Nearly 20 Years to Solve.

The March of the Penguin Diagrams: how physicist John Ellis honored a bet by naming a particle diagram after a bird.

The Martyr of Modern Spaceflight: Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov was the first human to die during a spaceflight.

Savory Science of Instant Noodles: "truly a technological marvel - they can last for up to 12 months on the shelf."

This Study is Subject to Certain Limitations: Overly Honest Academic Caveats. "One possible objection to our work may be that it appears to have insubstantial theoretical underpinning. That would be a correct, if mild, assessment, given that it has no underpinning of any kind at all."

Kevin Kowalski uses wet clay and pigment-laced acid to create gorgeously unpredictable designs on pottery.

Gerrymandering is a problem-but it has a solution. And the solution is called math. Bonus: "It's fifth-grade math."

Science hasn't been this controversial since 1676. "Modern science as we understand it"-"the empirical study of natural phenomena, the accumulation of experimental facts that lead to hypothetical explanations, in short, the scientific method"-"was the product of a late seventeenth-century controversy about the value of experimental knowledge. Few of us realize that in its very moment of emergence, modern science had to invent the concept of scientific objectivity in order to prevent itself from being strangled in its cradle."

Science in Turbulent Times: science is for the long term good of the nation, not just the scientists.

"Think scientists have it wrong on the climate, the Big Bang, evolution, vaccines, etc? Here's how to prove it."

How Statistical Thinking Should Shape the Courtroom.

The Freshman's Dream: A crash course in linear functions.

Man Fined $500 for Crime of Writing 'I Am An Engineer' in an Email to the Government: "I'm not practicing engineering, I'm just using basic mathematics and physics, Newtonian laws of motion, to make calculations and talk about what I found."

How Do Pelicans Survive Their Death-Defying Dives? It's due to a number of anatomical adaptions.

Game of Thrones Weapons Master Tommy Dunne on What it's like to design catapults for the Mother of Dragons.

Bill Nye Shines a Science Light on Gilmore Girls, Stranger Things, and Fuller House.

This shape-shifting US postal stamp will debut ahead of a rare solar eclipse. Touch the new postal stamp and presto, the image of the blacked-out sun becomes the moon.

Glass Prince Rupert's Drops Being Shot With .22 Magnum and .38 Special Bullets in Slow Motion.

Sex, spies and Einstein on TV: National Geographic Channel's Genius puts lots of spice into science docudrama. Related: A chat with Ron Howard after watching his Einstein series premiere. Also: "it is...startling to see the famous physicist (played by Geoffrey Rush) displaying messy, earthy human desires."

The Limit Does Not Exist [Podcast]: Robert J. Lang And The Math Of Origami.

U.S. Team Wins First Place at European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad.

Live Out Your Astronaut Dreams With Lego's Meter-Tall NASA Apollo Saturn V Rocket.

Creating the Never-Ending Bloom: "John Edmark's sculptures are both mesmerizing and mathematical. Using meticulously crafted platforms, patterns, and layers, Edmark's art explores the seemingly magical properties that are present in spiral geometries. In his most recent body of work, Edmark creates a series of animating "blooms" that endlessly unfold and animate as they spin beneath a strobe light."