At some point, we’ve all heard about time dilation – every sci-fi fan among us in particular. And yet, moving clocks DO slow down. This is not a fiction fantasy. It’s a little thing called Special Relativity.
Continue reading Why Moving Clocks Do Slow Down
A clock is ticking inside a mountain in Western Texas. It is a monumental clock. Hundreds of feet tall, its mechanism is designed to tick for 10,000 years. It’s a real clock. The first of several millennial clocks being built around the World, to endure for centuries. Tick…
Continue reading 10,000 Years Later…
A hypothetical Ninth planet has been lurking on the outskirts of our Solar System. But Planet Nine may not be a planet at all…
Continue reading Nine – The Elusive Planet in Our Solar System
For a while now, astrophysicists have known that our Universe is expanding, and accelerating. And much like the surface of a rubber balloon getting inflated, space is getting bigger, and bigger, and bigger…
Continue reading The Universe Expands Far Faster Than Anticipated…
The Universe never sleeps. Every now and then, the night sky presents us mere mortals with some heavenly spectacle. A Bonnie Tyler moment. This Friday, the Moon will enter the catwalk dressed in red to accomplish its otherwise normal nightly travel around the Earth. For one night only. A strange and rare celestial sight at dusk – a total lunar eclipse.
Continue reading Crimson Moon – A Total Lunar Eclipse
On 19 June 2018, a peculiar number emerged from the blockchain space. The series of numbers and letters sent the cryptosphere into overdrive, sparking rampant talk of quantum computing breakthroughs, time travel, Satoshi’s return, and the esoteric meaning of Bitcoin.
Continue reading Time Travel or Quantum Leap – Where Does Bitcoin Meet Relativity?
No need to be an atomic scientist, when you’re considering the state of the World today, to understand the picture is an alarming one. Allegorically-speaking, the Earth is now only two minutes away from impending catastrophe.
Continue reading Closer to Midnight… – The Countdown to Doomsday Earth
Negative mass has always been theoretically possible, and the concept has finally made it from a mathematical idea on paper to a reality achieved in the lab. Scientists at Washington State University have created a fluid with negative mass.
Continue reading The Bizarre Behaviour of Negative Mass
Just over a century ago, Einstein proposed the existence of waves in the spacetime continuum – the logical deduction from his Theory of General Relativity. In February 2016, scientists finally announced the detection of those “ripples” in gravity, using the technique of laser interferometry.
Erm…No. Not Mona Lisa! (Rolls eyes.) Think again!! This is LISA – the Lisa Pathfinder satellite, the key element for a grand new project: a space-based gravitational observatory.
Continue reading Hunting Ripples in the Fabric of Space-Time – The Trials and Tribulations of LISA
You know how when you throw a rock into a pool, that makes ripples in the water? And how Einstein once upon a time predicted that the very mass of stars and planets should warp spacetime? Although we have had a justified inkling that Einstein was right for quite some time, we had never before detected such a phenomenon. Until THIS happened…
Continue reading The Discovery of Gravitational Waves – Merging Black Holes and Advanced LIGO
What kind of Scientist are you?Already this article is beginning to sound like one of those sempiternal quizzes you so often get on social media… but it actually shows how science reality connects. Are you having a scientific identity crisis? Continue reading Lateral Thinking in Science – Who Are You?
Modern-Day Hipsters Take Heed…With his wind-swept mane, the inimitable Richard Feynman looked devilishly handsome. And he darn-diddly knew it too! As for Fritz Haber, Rosalind Franklin and Neil deGrasse Tyson, they were the original hipsters. That’s according to BuzzFeed anyway… Continue reading Proving that Physicists were the Original Hipsters
Let’s talk about size… 😉 How big are the objects floating in our Universe and how big can they get? Starting with a “big” object, our very own Moon… Embark on a tour of space… A tour of our Universe…
Continue reading Size Matters… in Astrophysical Terms
1/60 minute. 1/3,600 hour. 1/86,400 day. 1/1 hertz. The duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of a 133 55Cs caesium isotope corresponds to one second. But what does it look like? And where might you find a second?
Continue reading Just a Second…
Deep down, in huge subterranean caverns… Underneath the Franco-Swiss border… 300 feet underground… lies a beast of unprecedented power… and mystery. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that man summons to explore the uncharted corners of the sub-atomic realm… After two years of a deep slumber, the mighty beast has awoken…
Continue reading Physics at 13 TeV – Cranking Up the LHCAmazing timelapse footage of the Earth (including aurorae, lightning and city lights) as seen from the International Space Station. Just mesmerizing…
Continue reading The World Outside My Window… What a Window!!
About four billion people on our planet actually live in places with no house numbers, no street names, or without anything that constitutes a proper address. They are effectively off-the-map, with no voting rights or access to public utilities. A new company called What3Words proposes to revolutionise that…
Continue reading Where The Streets Have No Name
Geothermal energy prospectors have long used gravity meters in their search for the right subsurface characteristics. But these have been point measurements. GOCE now provides this information across the World at a resolution never before achieved on that scale.
Continue reading Geothermics and Gravity – The IRENA Global Atlas for Renewable Energy
“Dark matter?” You cannot see it. But there is something there. As for what it is, it’s anybody’s guess! Dark matter does not interact with light. At all. Which makes it difficult to detect. “But if you cannot see it? How do you know it is in fact there?” Well, it does interact with gravity, and as it does so it bends the path of any light ray passing nearby...
Continue reading That Mysterious Missing Matter – Cocktail Party Physics
A ground-breaking one-year space mission involving twin astronauts Mark and Scott Kelly should help doctors, scientists and mission planners better understand the physical and psychological impacts of a long-duration spaceflight.
Continue reading The Real-Life Space Twin Paradox
The Einstein Field Equations of General Relativity are vast and complex, but they can be written with deceptive simplicity.
Continue reading The Field Equations of General Relativity
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