Physics Week in Review: December 1, 2018

Among this week's physics highlights: NASA's Insight lands safely on Mars; the math of how paper crumples; and analog computing with WiFI.

Me at Ars Technica:

This Too Shall Pass: Six people swallowed LEGOs and pored through their own poo for science. It takes about two days for LEGO minifig heads to pass through the body. Science!

We Got the Beat: New wearable tech lets users listen to live music through their skin. It's inspired by deaf fans of live concerts to help them "feel" the music.

One Man's Poison: We have food safety laws thanks to 19th century poison squad," young men who voluntarily dined on borax and formaldehyde to test the safety of these once-common food preservatives.

Realistic Rendering: New software will let artists control how light interacts with objects. Dartmouth computer scientists teamed up with experts from Pixar and Disney.

Psycho in Space: Nightflyers has the blood, body count we expect from George R.R. Martin. Showrunner Jeff Buhler talks about the challenges of adapting the novella for TV.

A Killer Comeback: A time loop meets the multiverse in first trailer for slasher sequel Happy Death Day 2U. A new masked maniac and physics experiment gone awry keep our heroine on edge. [Image: Blumhouse Productions]

The Anti-Harry Potter: First trailer for Artemis Fowl might make you believe in fairies. Director Kenneth Branagh brings Eoin Colfer's popular sci-fi/fantasy novel to life.

This Will Hurt: Luther is back and as broody as ever in new trailer for fifth season. "Sexiest man alive" Idris Elba reprises his role as the UK's bane of serial killers.

Another One Bites the Dust: The bloodbath continues as Netflix cancels Daredevil after three seasons. It's the third Defenders series to find itself on the chopping block this fall.

Other Cool Links:

Bose Einstein condensate may reveal supersolid's secrets: "a recently observed BEC droplet" state may be a way to create a supersolid-like material. That may lead to a way to explore the properties of a supersolid without the difficulties associated with conventional materials."

Unexpectedly Vanishing Quasars Are Mystifying Scientists. Some quasars, powered by supermassive black holes, have been shutting down ahead of schedule. A sort of "murder-suicide pact" could explain it.

Scientists Build Atomic Clocks Accurate Enough to Measure Changes in Spacetime Itself.

Computing with Wi-Fi Waves: Experiments demonstrate that a room in a house or office building could act as an analog computer processing the microwaves used for Wi-Fi.

This Is the Way the Paper Crumples. In a ball of paper, scientists discover a landscape of surprising mathematical order.

Ricequakes in milk-cereal combo make noise likea slowing metronome. Snap, crackle and dam: puffed rice gives insights into rockfill and ice shelf collapse.

Can a physics of panic explain the motions of the crowd? "video databases showed instead that when people see that they are about to collide, they change their paths."

To Crack the Toughest Optimization Problems, Just Add Lasers. An odd device known as an optical Ising machine could route airplanes and help the NFL schedule its games.

Princeton Physicists Design Light-Twisting Plasma Chamber.

Aquaman Trailer: The Physics of His Leap from the Water. the superhero bounds from the water and lands on a submarine. It's a fantastical leap grounded in serious physics.

NASA does it again by landing safely on Mars-something no one else has done. Red-shirt clad engineers broke into cheers as InSight touched down. Related: The View From the Control Room: How InSight Landed on Mars.

"The new Mumford & Sons single If I Say" features a fluid-dynamical music video. It's full of dendritic fingers and flowing colors - likely from combinations of inks, paints, and other fluids."

What's the Fastest 100 Meter Dash a Human Can Run? History's best time, set by Usain Bolt, is 9.58 seconds. Depending on how you parse the data, he's either rather close-or worlds away-from the theoretical limit.

Revisiting the Dyson Sphere: Freeman Dyson's original 1960 paper makes for fun reading.

What Would It Take to Shoot a Cannonball Into Orbit? We did the math on a famous thought experiment by Isaac Newton involving a very tall mountain, a wicked fast cannonball, and good old gravity. Related: An Oral History of Isaac Newton Discovering" Gravity, as Told by His Contemporaries.

Nailing down the nature of Oumuamua-it's probably a comet, but according to Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, there's a lot to unpack.

This Is How Astronomers Solved The 'Zone Of Avoidance' Mystery. Galaxies are found uniformly everywhere in the Universe, except in the Milky Way's plane. Here's why.

Star Light, Star Bright: Measuring All the Starlight (Ever!). "The Fermi-LAT Collaboration explored this question using an entirely new approach... Instead of measuring starlight directly, they looked at the influence of starlight on high-energy gamma rays detected by the Large Area Telescope."

How to Look Inside a Star With Artificial Intelligence and Sound Waves.

Did a Solar Storm Detonate Dozens of Vietnam War Mines?

The Tragic Story Of The Man Who Unlocked The Universe. Samarkand, Uzbekistan on the old Silk Road trading route from China to the Mediterranean was the setting for one of astronomy's greatest achievements. So why is it now virtually forgotten?

How an 18th-century priest gave us the tools to make better decisions. The world is a complicated place. Bayes' theorem can help us navigate it. Update your priors, people.

Physics Has an Obvious Gender Problem-So How Does Someone End Up Thinking the Field is Biased Against Men?

Graph Theory and Cocktail Parties: Science writer Yen Duong tells Scientific American why she loves the "friends and strangers" theorem.

This visionary vintage children's book about space exploration imagined a black woman astronaut decades before one was a reality.

A Beautiful Film About a Solitary Watchmaker Who Finds Order in a Chaotic World by Repairing Timepieces.