Physics Buzz

“The snow is melting into music” -John Muir’s Unpublished Journal (1938) The ethereal melody of melting snow is certainly peaceful , but if the famed naturalist were alive to hear it right now, that music might sound faster than he remembered. Listening to that sound today, it doesn’t exactly give me the same chill vibes.

Poignant and bleak, the critically acclaimed HBO series Chernobyl revisits a difficult chapter in history to tell an important story about the role of science in society. While portions of the plot and characters have been embellished for TV, its an exceptional portrayal of what can happen when a community ignores the signs of an impending disaster (i.e. climate change) and includes surprisingly accurate and accessible explanations of nuclear physics.  On twitter , the show has also reignited an important discussion on nuclear power and its associated hazards. It is necessary to acknowledge that while some risks will always be there, nuclear power is actually safer than ever, and importantly, it could help curb our insatiable appetite for fossil fuels. To learn more about this funky world of radioactive physics, we’re going to answer some questions about how our nuclear landscape has changed since 1986 (I’d say spoiler alert, but that’s not really applicable to historical events

Its been over three years since my first triathlon, but I still cringe thinking about that initial dive into the water. See, I can’t really swim. If you were to watch a race between me and a housecat, I’d strongly suggest putting your money on the cat. In spite of my poor technique, I came out on the other side, as excited as one can be when they’re facing miles of biking and running ahead of them. When the race was finally over, my internal science-nerd monologue resumed, and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be awesome if all that kinetic energy I just used could be converted into electricity?” Unbeknownst to me, researchers at the Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems were working on just that, and they’ve invented flexible underwater nanogenerators (Bionic Stretchable Nanogenerator, BSNG) that can harness electricity, as you swim.

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words, but very few are worth 5 million gigabytes. In April 2019 the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, an international team of over 200 scientists, unveiled the first-ever picture of a black hole (or more specifically–the event horizon around it). Capturing an image of M87* was a supermassive accomplishment in astrophysics, but research in Physical Review Letters shows how it could  change our perceptions of dark matter .

July 20th, 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission, a small step for man, but a giant leap for humankind. In the past 50 years we’ve learned so much more about our planetary satellite neighbor, and to celebrate this anniversary, we’re sharing some OUT OF THIS WORLD facts about the moon:   1. Our moon is the 5th largest moon in the Solar System 2. The moon is not part of Mars.  3. The moon used to be part of the Earth, until a Mars-sized planetesimal hit our planet, sending a cloud of hot rock into space that eventually cooled, consolidated, and turned into our moon .  Image Credit: Joe Tucciarone (via NASA) 4. Earth’s tilted axis is likely a result of this collision.  5. Katherine Johnson , one of only a few black “human computers” employed by NASA for 33 years, calculated the Apollo 11’s trajectory to the moon and many other missions involving human space travel. Image Credit: NASA 6. The moon used to look much, much bigger, because it was c

A modern French take on a classic tragedy: You see a beautiful crêpe in a restaurant, soft, thin, perhaps full of Nutella. You think to yourself “Oh! It shouldn’t be too hard to make this at home, what’s the worst that could happen?” You go to the store, pick out your ingredients, and set out to make those crêpes. The result? It's okay, but it's just not perfect.

How does your right arm know to be as long as your left? What tells your body how tall you are? Why does a giraffe’s neck grow tall, as its body stays the same size? As much as we have learned in biology, we still don’t know how organisms are aware of their size–at least not on a cellular level. New research from a team of physicists suggests that subtle chemical frequencies tell organisms how large they are.

Bermuda draws in over 650,000 tourists each year with its luxurious pink sand beaches, clear blue waters, and thriving local art scene. Sitting just below the surface, however, lies a volatile history: The island is actually an ancient volcano. While we’re not concerned of any future eruptions, the compositions of these volcanic rocks could provide key information about how volcanoes form, and what its like deep inside the earth. New research from a team of geoscientists suggests the magma that fueled this volcano formed in a rather odd place.

The world as we perceive might not actually exist. It could just be a hologram. This statement sounds more like a thought you've had at 3 am than a scientific theory, but the existence of a holographic universe is more possible than you think. Some theoretical work shows that the universe could exist in a dimension lower than the one our minds perceive. The debate over what’s called “the holographic principle” has largely remained theoretical, but new research in Physical Review Letters shows how scientists can resolve this cosmological conundrum.

Hold the sriracha, put down the bbq sauce, and toss the mustard, because mayonnaise is finally getting its time to shine. Rather than spreading the condiment colloid on a sandwich though, researchers are using the product to study how materials interact in nuclear fusion reactors. A team of scientists from Lehigh University just published their latest research in Physical Review Fluids , which illustrates how this common household item can be used to explore a surprising question.

May 16th is the International Day of Light , a worldwide initiative sponsored by UNESCO to celebrate the role light plays in scientific innovation, culture, and art. This day is a special day in history because it marks the first successful operation of the laser in 1960 by Theodore Maiman . In the past century, we have learned ways to manipulate light far beyond anything previously. Hopefully, these facts help you get lit, for the International Day of Light.

On April 23rd, NASA InSight scientists announced they had detected a small seismic event on Mars, aptly referred to as a marsquake. This event, the first of its kind ever detected, promises to bring revolutionary insights about planetary interiors and seismic activity on other worlds.