Physics Week in Review: March 3, 2018

There was tons of exciting physics stories this week. Among the highlights: long-sought evidence of first stars forming may have implications for dark matter research; physicists created a giant mega-atom stuffed with other atoms; and scientists verified the quantum Zeno effect.

"Zeno Effect" Verified: Atoms Won't Move When They're Being Watched. See also my 2015 Gizmodo article on this very cool subject: Quantum "Weeping Angel" Effect Freezes Atoms in Place.

Scientists Discover Long-Sought Evidence of First Stars Forming In A Potentially Game Changing message from the Dawn of Time. Astronomers may have spotted, albeit indirectly, the very first starlight in the universe-plus some new evidence about the properties of dark matter. As Sean Carroll says: "We've detected observational signatures of the very first stars in the universe - and *maybe* some indication that the gas around them has been interacting with dark matter."

The Simple Algorithm That Ants Use to Build Bridges. Even with no one in charge, army ants work collectively to build bridges out of their bodies. New research reveals the simple rules that lead to such complex group behavior.

The Folks at Five Thirty Eight X-Rayed Some MLB Baseballs. Here's What We Found. "Any number of factors might have contributed to the home run surge, including bigger, stronger players or a new emphasis on hitting fly balls. But none of those possibilities looms larger than the ball itself."

The Quantum Hourglass-How a Quantum Time-keeper Can Replicate Continuum Temporal Events.

Scientists Create A Mega-Giant Atom Stuffed With Other Atoms. Sounds like the turducken of atoms... Related: Scientists Create Mind-Bending Rydberg Polarons, Atoms Full of Atoms.

Hot Nights In The City? Blame Urban Planning. New research from MIT links the 'texture' of a city to the urban heat island effect.

A theoretical framework explaining the risk of rare events causing major disruptions in complex networks, such as a blackout in a power grid, has been proposed by a mathematician in a new paper.

What's With All The Dental Floss in IBM's Quantum Computers? "Some things, like wires, need to be mechanically restrained. But the challenge is that many things you might use as ties contract a LOT when you cool them down. If they contract too much they break, or damage the things being restrained. Dental floss has nice properties at low temperature and room temperature."

Scientists observe a new quantum particle with properties of ball lightning. This knotted skyrmion may provide insight into a stable ball of plasma that could enhance future fusion reactors.

Why Time Might Not Be an Illusion. "Einstein's relativity pushes physicists towards a picture of the universe as a block, in which the past, present, and future all exist on the same footing; but maybe that shift in thinking has gone too far."

Photographer Justyna Badach used gunpowder to develop her new series of prints. "To convey the violence of the clips, Badach spent a year inventing a new developing process that incorporates the black powder used in old-fashioned weapons." [Image: Justyna Badach]

Molecular noise is widespread in living cells, but do cells ever exploit these fluctuations to achieve complex tasks?

Six degrees of chemical separation. Network analysis provides insight into navigating chemical space.

The Math behind the Perfect Free Throw. The fate of a free throw is set the instant the ball leaves the player's fingertips.

Some Black Holes Erase Your Past and Give You Unlimited Futures. Related: You could survive falling into a black hole but it may get weird. Also: Why 2018 is looking like it will be the year of the black hole. Powerful telescopes are ready to reveal the vast black hole at the heart of our galaxy in all its glory.

Neodymium? More like neo-don't-mium. New magnet uses fewer key rare earths.

The discovery of increasingly complex molecules in space offers new clues about how life started on Earth--possibly with an interstellar assist.

In the quantum world of the unstable, even identical particles don't have identical masses.

"Astronauts are being asked to put aside thoughts of HAL 9000 and experiment with a floating digital helper."

"If you try to build a pyramid of dry glass beads, you'll have a hard time of it. The frictional forces simply aren't enough to hold the beads together against the force of gravity. If you add a little water, though, the story is different."

An atomic clock is used to measure not time but the height of mountains.

You Can Find the Gravitational Constant with String and a Mountain.

How Cosmologists Determined That the Universe Is Expanding Faster Than Anyone Thought.

Quantum trick lets one particle send messages two ways at once.

National Geographic Just Sent Gizmodo's Ryan Mandelbaum (and a bunch of other science media outlets) a Crystal Healing Water Bottle. Ryan had stuff to say about that. "I guess I've been concerned about Nat Geo ever since Fox bought them back in 2015-and this bottle makes me question whether they're turning into a high-budget Goop."

Which interpretation of quantum physics you favor may be an aesthetic choice, but that doesn't mean they're not important.

University of Washington Researchers Can Wirelessly Charge a Phone Using Lasers.

Zircons form durable crystals with spaces for big atoms, which trap rare elements such as uranium and thorium, and are widely used to produce geologic dates.

Jupiter's moons create huge tubes of electric current that light up when they hit the planet, like in one of those plasma balls you see in a science museum.

Stippled Black and White Illustrations of Star-Packed Galaxies by Petra Kostova. "To produce her concentrated star systems and cloudy nebulas she uses technical pens (either rOtring Rapidograph or Isograph) to draw on black and white paper." [Image: Petra Kostova]

Spin: The Quantum Property That Should Have Been Impossible: How a quantum number that made no physical sense turned out to be real" and irreplaceable.

Atacama's lessons about life on Mars: Scientists investigate the microbes that survive in the South American desert on very little water.

Exo-bummer: "Dust rings" around Proxima Centauri were an illusion caused by a huge flare. No longer evidence for a complex planetary system around the nearest star.

A far-flung exoplanet may have thrown its sibling under the bus.

Meet TESS, NASA's Next Step in the Quest for Alien Earths. the observatory could ultimately discover 20,000 planets-some of which could be much like our own.

Meet the Woman Who Guides NASA's Juno Probe Through Jupiter's Killer Radiation.

Can Black Panther's Vibranium Ever Be Real? "while most denied the possibility of a Vibranium analogue existing on another planet (let alone our own), all proposed workable man-made substitutes." Related: What Kind of Damage Would Black Panther's Vibranium Meteor Do?

The Joy of Physics: Kitchen Mysteries: "a bowl of cereal can't just magically gain mass, can it?"

George Boole and the Calculus of Thought: he devised the algebra of finite differences, "a numerical method for solving differential equations."

David Schwartz's new biography of physicist Enrico Fermi is "balanced and nuanced, sympathetic but unflinching."

In the 1950s, the largest known prime number had 44 digits-it now has more than 23 million.

Quadrilaterals Contain Parallelograms: Varignon's Theorem. "Varignon's Theorem asserts that the new quadrilateral EFGH is always a parallelogram."

The Dreams of an Inventor in 1420: "Bennett Gilbert peruses a sketchbook of 15th-century engineer Johannes de Fontana, a catalogue of designs for a wide-range of fantastic and often impossible inventions."

Congress Takes On Sexual Harassment in the Sciences. New rules could make it easier to remove faculty members who harass or assault grad students and postdocs.

Th Award Rejection That Shook Astronomy. Margaret Burbidge's 1971 decision to decline the Annie Jump Cannon Award forced the astronomy community to reconsider the prize and examine discrimination against women in the field.

Can Nuclear Power Plants Generate Artistic Inspiration? "Erich Berger and Mari Keto have made radioactive jewels, part of their Inheritance Project, that are unwearable by humans - and remain locked in a concrete vault equipped with radiation measurement devices."

Fusing Fermilab physics with art: Fermilab's 2017 artist-in-residence, Jim Jenkins, melds pieces of physics experiments into his creations.

The Earliest Known Printed Illustrations of the Greek Constellations "appeared in Poeticon Astronomicon, a Latin text first published in 1482 that relays myths associated with the cosmos."

A Fascinating Look Inside the Boeing Plant Working With NASA to Build a Really Powerful Rocket to Mars.

Shooting a Magnetic Cannonball Through Electromagnetic Induced Force Fields in Copper.

A video that explains the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. "3Blue1Brown says the Heisenberg uncertainty principle applies to non-quantum things to, and in this 20-minute video, he explains why."

Why the Singular Nature of String Theory Cannot Overcome the Limitations of Its Own Design.

"Nebula" by Polish filmmaker Marcin Nowrotek is a gorgeously fluid animation in which floating shapes provide abstract visual portrayals of the sounds coming from a saxophone, piano and bass, with each given a unique visual signature.