Physics Buzz

The same sun that shines on bright, cheery days is also responsible for the biggest explosions in the solar system. These explosions, called solar flares , can detonate with the energy of more than one billion megaton bombs and spew dangerous radiation and high-energy particles into space.

How do you know if something is random? If you were a substitute teacher that only taught on Wednesdays, you might interpret a dip in attendance as a random fluctuation. If you taught that same class every single day, however, the dip might signal the tail end of a local flu epidemic that caused even more students to miss class on Monday and Tuesday. Most “random” events are not as random as they appear.

You have 100 billion neurons in your brain, each one connected to a multitude of others. Every time you think, feel, or move, neurons in this massive network react, rapidly sending, processing, and receiving signals. Through this behind-the-scenes activity we learn about and navigate the world. Well, through our brains and Google.

A new kind of material discussed at last week’s American Physical Society March Meeting in New Orleans, Louisiana could someday make its way into your body. From artificial hips to pacemakers, medical implants give countless people relief, health, confidence, and more time to do the things they love with the people they love. Developing implants that are durable, reliable and well-matched to the body is an active and important area of biomedical research.

What goes better with mornings than coffee? And what goes better with coffee than pie? Today, of all days, is the perfect day to enjoy a slice of pie with your morning coffee—it’s Pi Day!

Like a busy interchange, the surface of every living cell hums with activity. Proteins and lipids are constantly in motion, detecting, processing, and responding to signals from the outside world. They interact and move along a surface called the plasma membrane, a complex fluid barrier that separates the inside of a cell from everything else.

As nights lengthen with the coming of arctic winter, one can sometimes walk across water—on natural, frozen bridges. Wind and waves can drive sea ice together to form giant superstructures of ice stretching miles longer than any bridges that people have built over water. Now scientists have developed models describing how these ice bridges form and break up, findings that could shed light on a variety of seemingly unrelated phenomena, including jamming in grain silos that can lead to explosions.

Hum a note to yourself, even just in your head. Any note will do.

The mini tornadoes that form in superfluids won’t send any cows flying through the air , but the scientists from Newcastle University behind a new study were surprised to see that these mini twisters can create quite a tangled storm. Their results suggest that superfluids have a deeper connection to everyday fluids than previously thought, and will soon be published in the American Physical Society’s journal Physical Review Letters .

Roses are a common sign of love, or of an attentive gardener, not a common sign of cutting-edge scientific research. However, new work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows roses in a whole new light—as beautiful energy storage devices. This work brings us one step closer to being able to harvest energy from plants.

It was a hundred years after the founding of this country, and only eleven years after the end of the civil war, that a man of African descent first earned a PhD from an American university. His name was Edward Bouchet, and he made history when he graduated from Yale with his PhD in physics in 1876. Despite being effectively locked out of academia and research at any institution that wasn’t specifically for people of color, Bouchet became a trailblazer and a role model, serving as an educator for most of his later life, a living example of what America was struggling to become in the post-reconstruction era: a place where merit and dedication are rewarded regardless of who you are.

What do a flock of starlings, solar flares, traffic jams, the event horizon of a black hole, and the human brain have in common?

How steep does an incline need to be before a box will slide on it? It's a classic question in physics classrooms, and the answer depends on two factors—the box's weight and a factor called μ (mu): the coefficient of friction . The value of μ depends on things like the box's material, the texture of the incline's surface, and whether the box is already moving or sitting still, but in some situations there's another surprising factor that can affect how easy it is for an object to start sliding along a surface—how long the object has been sitting still.

Instead of binge-watching one more episode of Game of Thrones or The Big Bang Theory , consider taking a few minutes to look at your cosmic neighborhood. You could be the one to discover a neighbor that has never been seen before—such as the alluring,  hypothetical Planet Nine .

The Histioteuthis heteropsis , also known as the cockeyed squid, spends its days drifting through the ocean, eyes on alert for signs of predators or prey. Squid are intriguing creatures in general, but it’s the eyes of Histioteuthis heteropsis that draw you in. Or, rather, the contrast between the eyes—a large, bulging, yellowish one on one side and the significantly smaller, more traditional looking eye on the other side.

A good pair of lenses can transform your life, assuming you are one of the 4.2 billion people in the world with less-than-perfect eyesight. A good lens can also transform our understanding of life and this world we inhabit. From the discovery of microorganisms to the moons of Jupiter, lenses shine a light on things too small or too faint to see with the naked eye. They also help us capture and preserve the milestones and everyday moments that make up a life. That’s a lot to ask of ground glass.

We all know that the human body has weaknesses. Whether the cause is genetic, environmental, personal choices, pure dumb luck, or some combination of factors, it’s not uncommon for diseases to take hold and destroy a body cell-by-cell. In the fight against these diseases, one of the most promising approaches involves using tiny nanoparticles to carry toxic drugs to precisely the right place: the infected cells.

Black holes are one of the best-known and most intriguing concepts in astrophysics. They're places where a literally unstoppable force— usually the domain of philosophers —manifests. They've given rise to countless thought experiments and what-ifs, provided a theoretical tool to probe the nature of our universe, and inspired generations of scientists and science enthusiasts alike to stretch their imaginations to the extreme...and beyond.

We're fast approaching what are usually the coldest, driest months of the year (at least here in the northern hemisphere), and with that comes the annoying tendency of doorknobs to shock and startle us whenever they're touched. It happens to some extent almost everywhere, but it wasn't until I spent a week at a conference in Montana—and found myself flinching every time I had to press the elevator button—that I really gave some thought to this usually-minor annoyance.

At this week’s American Physical Society Meeting in Washington, DC, researchers from an observatory in Mexico unveiled unique images featuring a kind of shadow of the moon and sun. The images don’t contain a lot of new information about the sun and moon, but are a way of studying charged particles known as cosmic rays that move at really high speeds—their properties, interactions with magnetic fields, and even a bit about where they come from.