Teaching physics from the din of flying discs
Disc golf is booming, with record numbers of players turning up each year to partake in the disc-throwing sport. It is also whizzing and whistling. In fact, the sound a disc makes while soaring through the air toward its target is full of information.....»»
Bird flu is bad for poultry and dairy cows: It"s not a dire threat for most of us—yet
Headlines are flying after the Department of Agriculture confirmed that the H5N1 bird flu virus has infected dairy cows around the country. Tests have detected the virus among cattle in nine states, mainly in Texas and New Mexico, and most recently i.....»»
Fusion record set for tungsten tokamak WEST
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) measured a new record for a fusion device internally clad in tungsten, the element that could be the best fit for the commercial-scale machines required t.....»»
What Kind of Battery Would You Need to Power a Lightsaber?
On Star Wars Day, we use some basic physics to measure the power of the Force. It’s strong!.....»»
New study is first to use statistical physics to corroborate 1940s social balance theory
Most people have heard the famous phrase "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." Now, Northwestern University researchers have used statistical physics to confirm the theory that underlies this famous axiom. The study, "Proper network randomization is.....»»
UHF in UHD: Weird Al’s cult classic movie will get its first 4K release
For those of you just joining us, today we're teaching poodles how to fly. Weird Al's Rambo parody was a drop in the bucket amidst all the other jokes in the film, but it's amo.....»»
Researchers find unexpected roadblock to conductivity in Mott insulators
In the realm of condensed matter physics, few phenomena captivate physicists' curiosity as much as Mott insulators. According to traditional theory, this odd class of materials should be capable of conducting electricity, yet they behave mostly as in.....»»
CERN gives green light to build new experiment to search for unknown particles
After many years of preparations, CERN has approved a new experiment: the Search for Hidden Particles (SHiP). Physicist Alexey Boyarsky was involved from the start. "We know there is physics that's missing and we aim to find it.".....»»
Generating graph states of atomic ensembles via photon-mediated entanglement
Graph states, a class of entangled quantum states that can be represented by graphs, have been the topic of numerous recent physics studies, due to their intriguing properties. These unique properties could make them particularly promising for quantu.....»»
ALICE gets the green light for new subdetectors
Two detector upgrades of ALICE, the dedicated heavy-ion physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), have recently been approved for installation during the next long shutdown of the LHC, which will take place from 2026 to 2028. The first o.....»»
You Asked: Is Amazon hiding the Blu-rays? And where’s the Sony XM6?
On this week’s You Asked: Is Amazon trying to kill Blu-ray discs? Are the Sony XM6 headphones coming?.....»»
Unveiling a new quantum frontier: Frequency-domain entanglement
Scientists have introduced a form of quantum entanglement known as frequency-domain photon number-path entanglement. This advance in quantum physics involves an innovative tool called a frequency beam splitter, which has the unique ability to alter t.....»»
Large Hadron Collider experiment zeroes in on magnetic monopoles
The late physicist Joseph Polchinski once said the existence of magnetic monopoles is "one of the safest bets that one can make about physics not yet seen." In its quest for these particles, which have a magnetic charge and are predicted by several t.....»»
Demonstration of heralded three-photon entanglement on a photonic chip
Photonic quantum computers are computational tools that leverage quantum physics and utilize particles of light (i.e., photons) as units of information processing. These computers could eventually outperform conventional quantum computers in terms of.....»»
Watch this famous musician fly in a car with wings
The legendary French synth musician Jean-Michel Jarre has just become the first passenger to take to the skies in KleinVision’s incredible flying car......»»
Balancing AI and physics: Toward a learnable climate model
Artificial intelligence (AI) is bringing notable changes to atmospheric science, particularly with the introduction of large AI weather models like Pangu-Weather and GraphCast. However, alongside these advancements, questions have arisen about the al.....»»
Will the US ban the use of single-use plastics like England, India, Hong Kong and other countries?
Madhavi Venkatesan, associate teaching professor of economics at Northeastern University, is convinced that human convenience is an expense the environment cannot afford......»»
Scientists tune the entanglement structure in an array of qubits
Entanglement is a form of correlation between quantum objects, such as particles at the atomic scale. The laws of classical physics cannot explain this uniquely quantum phenomenon, yet it is one of the properties that explain the macroscopic behavior.....»»
A key gene helps explain how the ability to glide has emerged over-and-over during marsupial evolution
People say "When pigs fly" to describe the impossible. But even if most mammals are landlubbers, the ability to glide or fly has evolved again and again during mammalian evolution, in species ranging from bats to flying squirrels. How did that come a.....»»
Astrophysicists work toward unification of turbulence framework—weak-to-strong transition discovered in turbulence
Turbulence is ubiquitous in nature. It exists everywhere, from our daily lives to the distant universe, while being labeled as "the last great unsolved problem of classical physics" by Richard Feynman. Prof. Dr. Huirong Yan and her group from the Ins.....»»
Novel method could explore gluon saturation at the future electron-ion collider
The U.S. nuclear physics community is preparing to build the electron–ion collider (EIC), a flagship facility for probing the properties of matter and the strong nuclear force that holds matter together. The EIC will allow scientists to study how n.....»»