Physics Week in Review: June 24, 2017
This week's physics highlights: LIGO's successor is approved, the physics of a wobbling suitcase as you're running to catch your flight, and scientists create "liquid light."
My latest article for Quanta: Dark Matter Recipe Calls for One Part Superfluid. A different kind of dark matter could help to resolve an old celestial conundrum.
The fight to save thousands of lives with sea-floor sensors. Geophysicists are ramping up their efforts to monitor major undersea faults for movement, and search for signs of the next catastrophic quake. Related: Man Invents Tsunami Sensor, Internet Only Talks About Dog. "Love his canine backup data collector": photo of inventor Alex Paros with his dog, May, accompanying the sea-floor sensor article goes wild on Twitter, makes the British tabloids. Scientists are people who love their pets, too. [Image (below): Ian C. Bates for Nature]
Could the landmark discovery of gravitational waves be a mistake? Good, concise summary of a heated dispute. Related: A response to recent worries that the LIGO detection of gravitational waves was in error. Also: Even the Earth-Sun system radiates gravitational waves, but just how powerful are they?
LIGO's Successor Approved; Will Discover Incredible New Sources Of Gravitational Waves. The European Space Agency Will Launch Laser-Bots to Study Ripples in Space Time.
Researchers Check Space-Time to See if It's Made of Quantum Bits. The newly developed theory of emergent gravity, proposed as an alternative to dark matter, struggles in one of its first trials.
A Speed Trap for Dark Matter, Revisited: A NASA rocket experiment could use the Doppler effect to look for signs of dark matter in mysterious X-ray emissions from space.
Yearning for New Physics at CERN, in a Post-Higgs Way: the silence from the frontier has been ominous.
Too Hot to Fly? Climate Change May Take a Toll on Air Travel. Excess heat in Phoenix grounded more than 40 flights in recent days, and scientists say a warming climate could also mean more turbulent rides. Related: The Science Of Why It's Too Hot For Some Planes To Fly In The Southwest U.S.
Scientists in Paris come up with unexpected answer to the age-old problem of running to the departure gate with a two-wheeled suitcase. The secret: Walk really fast to stop a wobbly suitcase ruining your holiday.
A model predicts skull growth patterns based on mechanical effects, rather than biology.
Explaining the Physics Behind This Viral Video of a Ferrari Knocking People Over.
New Breakthrough Allows Scientists to Create "Liquid Light" with Ease.
New Calculation Could Spell Trouble For a Popular Theory of the Universe's Origin.
Where Gravity Is Weak and Naked Singularities Are Verboten: Recent calculations tie together two conjectures about gravity, potentially revealing new truths about its elusive quantum nature.
Physicists Propose a Mirror Universe Where Time Moves in the Opposite Direction.
Buckyballs mysteriously show up in cold space and warp starlight.
Quantum Common Sense: Despite its confounding reputation, quantum mechanics both guides and helps explain human intuition.
Mathematicians Decode the Surprising Complexity of Cow Herds.
Quantum keys beamed from satellites are bringing large-scale, unhackable communication networks within reach.
NASA Calls Bullshit on Goop's $120 'Bio-Frequency Healing' Sticker Packs. "Unless they are operated by tiny wizards, who have been captured for the sole purpose of promoting [Gwyneth] Paltrow's wellness empire, Body Vibes have literally no scientific basis. If you want to wear a sticker to feel good about yourself, that's fine-just don't act like it's fucking penicillin." And then Goop pulled the claim its 'healing' stickers are made with spacesuit material following NASA's response.
The Long Legacy of Laser Cooling: still enabling exciting new areas of physics research.
An exploding whipped cream dispenser killed a French star -here's how it could have happened.
How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. "A domino can knock over another domino about 1.5x larger than itself. A chain of dominoes of increasing size makes a kind of mechanical chain reaction that starts with a tiny push and knocks down an impressively large domino."
Chaos Makes the Multiverse Unnecessary: Science predicts only the predictable, ignoring most of chaotic universe.
The startup of a 25-ton test detector at CERN advances technology for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.
Using Math and Astronomy To Fight Urban Blight: In a partnership with Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore is borrowing a trick from stargazers to predict housing abandonment.
Art Fight! The Pinkest Pink Versus the Blackest Black. Nanotube-based Vantablack was aimed at engineers. Then a famous sculptor locked it up-and the artistic community found this unpalatable.
How to Build the Perfect Sandcastle--According to Science. A sedimentologist weighs in on beach selection, tools and the perfect sand-to-water ratio.
Howie Day records love song to physics. After the musician learned that grad students at CERN had created a parody of his 2004 single "Collide," he flew to Switzerland to sing it at the LHC.
The High Schoolers Hunting for the Universe's Secrets. "Four British schoolboys had just been called from class. They were ten days away from their A-level exams, the ones that determine the direction the rest of their lives would take, but they'd been interrupted from their studies to discuss the deepest secrets of the universe-their work hunting for the magnetic monopole at the Large Hadron Collider."
World's Most Powerful Particle Collider Taps AI to Expose Hack Attacks.
Mathematician Calculates Rotational Speed of Fidget Spinner in Fidgets Per Second. Related: Would a fidget spinner spin forever in space?
How to Measure the Height of a Building With a ... Barometer? You betcha.
"Stay Indoors": How Lightning Can Strike Even When You Follow The Rules.
The Time of Our Lives: "there are many reasons for not turning to physics for the last word on time."
Decoding the ancient astronomy of Stonehenge: How the 5,000-year-old monument aligns with the sun.
WD 1202 is a weird binary: One of the stars used to be inside the other one.
Kepler finds 219 new exoplanets and 10 are rocky and Earth-like.
Weird orbits hint 'Planet Ten' might lurk at solar system edge. Related: Don't get too hyped about 'Planet 10' just yet. Also: Goodbye, Planet Nine! New And Better Data Disfavors A Giant World Beyond Neptune.
Gizmodo's Ryan Mandelbaum Ventured to the Most Radioactive Spot in Town With a Super High-Tech Radiation Camera. "The MiniPix is a plug-and-play Geiger counter for your laptop. But rather than clicking like a Geiger counter, it takes pictures of the radiation that passes through its 256 by 256-pixel TimePix detector."
Why Nuclear Reactor Meltdowns Create Radiation That Lasts For Centuries.
How a Refrigerator Led to Einstein's Pleas for Atomic Bomb Research.
The Emergency Black-Box Checklist: When is it okay for students to execute a mathematical technique without really understanding why it works?
Mysteries and Nature of Art, a book that inspired Newton, contains plans for fish lamps and a rocket-propelled dragon.
The wonderful imagery documenting Alexander Graham Bell's experiments with tetrahedral kites (1903-9).
Long before iPhones, this 19th-century gadget made everyone a mobile addict. "Kaleidoscopes may not be able to text, tweet, or hail a horse and buggy, but they were unputdownable in their day-and an analog omen of the mobile mania to come."
MIT researchers turned a strip of fabric into a high-tech musical instrument.
The man who makes you see the invisible. One solution for reducing carbon footprints - and household bills - is increased energy efficiency. With infrared imaging, inventor Brian Harper is helping people to see exactly how.
Rock Sculptures Suspended Within Bell Jars by Their Own Weight by Dan Grayber.
Clifford Johnson, physicist at University of Southern California, on his role as science consultant for Einstein series Genius.
What Is Space? It's not what you think. "This is the part where your brain goes, 'Whaaaaat ... ?'"
A Mixture of Paint, Soap, and Oil Form an Eye-Opening Galaxy of Aqueous Visuals: