Physics Buzz

Nothing, not even light, can come out of a black hole. At least, that’s the conventional wisdom, and it’s certainly true that—once the event horizon is crossed—there’s no going back. But for rotating black holes, there’s a region outside the event horizon where strange and extraordinary things can happen, and these extraordinary possibilities are the focus of a new paper in the American Physical Society journal Physical Review Letters .

Materials science is one field where structure makes all the difference in the world. Take carbon, for example—it has two crystalline forms, one of which is soft enough that it can be crumbled with your fingers, while the other is the hardest substance found in nature. The component atoms are identical, but the arrangement of those atoms determines whether they make common graphite or a sparkling diamond.

O Time, thou must untangle this, not I; It is too hard a knot for me t' untie.  -Viola in Twelfth Night  by William Shakespeare The knot Viola speaks of in Twelfth Night is a complex love triangle. Knots are often used to symbolize complicated situations, in addition to anxiety and lasting commitments. Like Viola, when most of us think about knots our focus is on how tightly they are tied. For the scientists who study them however, knots are much more—they represent a unique approach to understanding the universe.

William, from Honolulu, wrote in this week to ask: If there was a space station/city the size of San Francisco in geostationary orbit, what would it look like from ground level with the naked eye? Would it cast a noticeable shadow?

When Einstein developed his general theory of relativity, commercial radio didn’t even exist yet. He could not possibly have imagined all of the fancy, high-tech equipment that scientists would use over the next 100 years to test—and verify—his predictions. In fact, he wasn’t even sure that all of his predictions could be tested experimentally because they resulted in such tiny, hard-to-measure effects.

Given its stats, the recently discovered planet KELT-9b probably deserves its own baseball card. The planet and its host star, KELT-9, compose a unique system among the exoplanets discovered so far. KELT-9 is a relatively young, very hot star and its scorching heat warms the near side of the planet to a blistering 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit. KELT-9b isn't just the hottest gas giant so far discovered, it’s hotter than many stars.

For the third time, a telltale signal of two colliding black holes has been caught by the dual detectors of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). Not only does the new detection reinforce LIGO’s capabilities and previous detections , it also provides clues about how these black hole systems form and just how common they are. In addition, each new detection is a chance to test the predictions of general relativity—predictions that can’t be tested in a lab.

Voice-securing your ATM card. Talking to your newspaper over coffee. Projecting your voice to a room full of people using only a thin, lightweight loudspeaker that fits in your pocket. With new research published last week in the journal Nature Communications , a team of scientists from Michigan State University and Georgia Institute of Technology has opened the door to these possibilities.

To the best of anyone’s knowledge, no one has had sex in space. Only one married couple have been on the same mission, the Americans Mark Lee and Jan Davis , and according to NASA, nothing happened. There being no privacy in the space shuttle or the International Space Station, that is likely true. But with NASA exploring ideas such as two-year voyages to Mars and eventual colonies on Mars and the moon, the question of reproductive safety is important, especially if humans wish to one day travel to the edges of the solar system and even beyond. Can space voyagers conceive healthy human babies?

Whether it’s the neighbor’s barking dogs, pounding rain, the din of traffic, or the music of your own choosing, most of us are constantly surrounded by noise. Noise is energy, so that means most of us are constantly surrounded by a relatively safe, renewable, and clean form of energy. What if we could harvest this energy?

Quantum mechanics, it seems, is where physics breaks from making intuitive sense. In the realm of the infinitesimal, particles can be in two places at once, or display the "spooky" properties of entanglement. But it might not have to be that way—a few months ago, the good folks over at Veritasium put out a fantastic video drawing attention to an amazing phenomenon that was only recently discovered: a macroscopic, intuitively friendly system that behaves almost exactly like a quantum-mechanical one. Now, scientists are building on this work, discovering new properties of this system and linking them to their quantum-mechanical counterparts.

Black holes and quantum mechanics are two of the most intriguing physics topics. Their strange and exotic features certainty capture the imagination. Now, new research in the American Physical Society’s journal Physical Review Letters brings aspects of the two together in an experiment that shows, for the first time, that gravity stretches and squeezes quantum objects through tidal forces. A macroscopic quantum state explores curved spacetime. Image Credit: Peter Asenbaum.

From the elegant crane to playful flowers, the intricate shapes created with origami are delightful and often astounding. They are also a source of inspiration for scientists. In areas ranging from microelectronics to biomedicine, there is a need for small, complicated three-dimensional objects. Last week in the journal Science Advances , a team of scientists from Georgia Institute of Technology and Peking University shared their work on an origami-inspired technique for creating such structures.

The detection of gravitational waves topped nearly every chart highlighting the most important science stories of 2016. LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, made headlines by detecting direct evidence of ripples in spacetime caused by two merging black holes. Historic and exciting, this discovery will probably be the first of many gravitational wave signals we see over the coming years—and not all of them will come from gravitational wave observatories.

With NASA’s plan to send humans to Mars in the 2030s and SpaceX’s plan to send them as early as 2020, things are getting exciting. In just three years, the Mars 2020 astrobiology rover will blast off toward the red planet. While there, the rover will search for signs of life and gather information that will help protect the lives and missions of astronauts during future visits. The European Space Agency, in partnership with Roscosmos State Corporation, will launch the ExoMars rover in 2020 to undertake a similar mission. If SpaceX achieves its goal, humans could be visiting Mars at the same time as these rovers.

A group of "Aurora Chasers" in Canada appear to have stumbled on an extraordinary new astrophysical phenomenon, and—in typical internet fashion—endowed it with an amusingly ordinary name. Don't let the unassuming moniker fool you, though: Steve is a mind-bogglingly powerful event, albeit one that is apparently more common than scientists expected.

An exploding star has astronomers seeing quadruple—and they couldn’t be happier. Today in the AAAS journal Science , an international team of researchers led by Ariel Goobar at Stockholm University presents unique images of a special type of stellar explosion, called a Type 1a supernova , that will offer important new insights into gravity, dark matter, and the acceleration of the universe.

This week, we had a reader write in: Why has no one developed a battery that can be attached to a recumbent bike to gather energy when someone is pedaling? Thousands of hours of manual work is being wasted (not counting the health benefits) 

A hidden and indiscriminate threat, landmines injure and kill soldiers, civilians, and even inhabitants of now-peaceful regions every day. It’s impossible to know how many landmines are buried worldwide, but most estimates place the number somewhere between 100 million and 200 million devices. Once planted, landmines remain a threat until they are detected and detonated, a process that can take decades or longer if it is not a high priority in the region. Even when it is a priority, detecting these mines is slow and risky work.

From churning rapids to Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night , there is something about swirling motions that draws people in. The same can’t be said for the large, imposing structures that make up industrial chemical reactors found in water treatment centers and manufacturing plants. However, in some ways the two are closely connected.