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3D printing is the stuff of the future, today. Basically you can create absolutely anything, just by using a digital computer model of it. In the latest of its remarkable feats, 3D printing has saved the life of a 20 year old baby by creating a bioresorbable splint that stopped a life-threatening condition called tracheobronchomalacia. […]
Summer’s just around the corner, for those of us living in the northern hemisphere at least, and while we’ve been yearning for it all winter long, the scorching noon heat wave is here to remind us that summer’s not all fun and games. If you’re a commuter, then most likely summer’s your biggest worst enemy […]
Scientists closely working with the Large Hadron Collider, the largest and most powerful particle accelerator in the world, have identified evidence of the minuscule droplets produced in the aftermath of high energy proton and lead ions collisions. If their calculations are right, then these are the smallest droplets of liquid ever encountered thus far, just three to […]
Yesterday, residents in many parts of the US were treated to a wonderful sight as the sun became wrapped in a rainbow halo. Like a brilliant all seeing eye, the sun cast its rays from a most privileged position prompting some unsuspecting people to believe an alien invasion is nigh. ZME Science folks, however, know […]
The nucleus of an atom is closely shaped like a sphere or rugby ball, signifying that mass is evenly distributed inside it. What happens when you encounter an atom whose nucleus stays away from this conventional shape? Well, this would be a good hint to start finding alternative theories, and wouldn’t you know it scientists […]
How do you check a multi-billion dollar particle accelerator for defects or malfunctions? Sure, you could use various, equally expensive and sophisticated tools, but in some instances low tech comes in the aid of high tech, say a ping-pong ball. Wait, what ?! Yup, today researchers sent a carefully sterilized, slightly-smaller-than-regulation ping-pong ball through a 2-mile […]
Despite it makes up more than 85% of all matter in the Universe, dark matter, staying true to its name, has eluded scientists for decades ever since they’ve been trying to identify it with high power particle accelerators and detectors. Recent efforts seem to be paying off as various underground labs, as well as those […]
Billions of dollars and decades worth of research have been invested in fusion propelling technology, so that one day we might breach current spaceflight limitations that offer little hope of straying too far from our planet. Researchers at Washington University have recently made great strides forward in this respect and have successfully tested each stage […]
One of the most mysterious, and weirdest at the same time, phenomenae in quantum physics is quantum entanglement, in which two connected particles can share information instantly despite being separated, no matter the distance. Two particles, or so the theory holds, could be parted by light years in distance and still reflect each others’ stances instantly, […]
This might strike some of you as a surprise, but turbulence, a phenomenon we all encounter on a daily basis – be it while mixing coffee, starting your car (fuel and air mixture) or of course while flying – and which has been first scientifically described some 600 years ago, remains today one of the […]
What’s the difference between a solid and liquid? You might find this question trivial – naturally, liquids flow and solids… well, they don’t. From a physical point of view, however, things aren’t that simple. Intrigued by some ever so often encountered exceptions in the current accepted theory that describes the differences between the states of […]
Since it was first described sometime in the 1960s, the ionic thruster has remained confined to hobbyists basements, shadowed by the century old jet engine. Recent research at MIT, however, shows that in some respects the ionic thruster overwhelms the jet engine in terms of efficiency, suggesting that it definitely worth of more attention. “Ionic wind” […]
Driven by technological demand to breach the gigahertz (10^9 hertz) switching speed limit of today’s magnetic memory and logic devices, a team of researchers have devised a novel technique of switching magnetism that is at least 1000 times faster than that currently employed opening up the terahertz age (10^12 hertz). Hard drives, magnetic random access memory (RAM) and other computing […]
A $1.6 billion cosmic ray experiment on the International Space Station has come across evidence of antimatter in space, a remarkable finding that was recently presented during a seminar at CERN and which might help probe the mysteries of dark matter – one of the major components that make up the Universe. The find was made using […]
After scientists have devised materials that rend objects optically invisible, researchers in Spain have developed a method that allowed them to cloak 3-D objects from sound waves for the first time. While sound cloaking has been demonstrated before, this was the first time that a full 3-D object was concealed. The findings might help engineers […]
If you know your physics (or optics, to be more specific), you’ve probably heard a lot about Fermat’s principle (or the principle of least time). Basically, what it states is that the path taken between two points by a ray of light is the path that can be traversed in the least time. A ray […]
A team of researchers working at Harvard has measured the magnetic moment of the antiproton with unprecedented precision. “That is a spectacular jump in precision for any fundamental quality of the antiproton measurements. That’s a leap that we don’t often see in physics, at least not in a single step,” said Prof Gerald Gabrielse of […]
It may be a little off to talk about invisibility when we’re not even in the visible spectrum, but ‘invisibility cloak‘ sounds just to awesome not to use it. Using a new kind of cloak that uses a very thin multilayer dielectric coating made of natural material (as opposed to metamaterials which are often used), […]
An international team of physicists have used one of the world’s most powerful lasers to create an unusual kind of plasma made out of hollow atoms, by using a breakthrough technique which involved emptying atoms of electrons from the inside out, instead of working from the outer shells inwards. This bizarre physics experiment shows once again […]
Since Einstein first postulated his theories of general relativity, physicists have constructed models describing the Universe that mainly revolve around the idea that the speed of light is constant through vacuum. Two new studies, yet to have been published in peer-reviewed journals, suggest that light through vacuum actually fluctuates, albeit the deviations are infinitesimal. Still, if […]
Aerogels are fantastic materials – typically, they are synthetic porous ultralight material derived from a gel, in which the liquid component of the gel has been replaced with a gas. They are ultra-light, and have numerous practical applications – most notable as insulators, but also in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industry, in biology and chemistry […]
When two fluid jets meet, they might coalescence or not depending on a number of factors. The 19th century born John William Strutt, 3rd, also known as Lord Baron Rayleigh made a number of significant contributions to physics during his lifetime, some of his most notable work being in the field of fluids dynamics. It was […]
Physics and heavy metal may not have much in common, but Matt Bierbaum and Jesse Silverberg have found a connection. Both of them are graduate students at Cornell University – and both of them love heavy metal and headbanging. It all started when Silverberg, who really loves rocking out, took his girlfriend to a metal […]
Trekkies have a reason to rejoice one again after Japanese researchers have successfully devised the first working phaser – a laser that shoots sound particles instead of light. It will take a while though until you’ll be able to zap your neighbors around with a sound canon, as the scientists still need to work around […]
Physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, once home to the longest particle accelerator for nearly fifty years, have used the world’s most powerful X-ray laser to distinguish at an atomic level the mechanisms of reaction of a catalyst in action. This unprecedented view will help scientists develop cleaner and […]
All life as we know it is primarily based on two elements: carbon and oxygen. Scientists at North Carolina State University investigating the conditions required for the formation of these life essential ingredients found that the Universe lives little room for error. Carbon and oxygen are formed as combustion byproducts after helium burns inside a […]
A few months ago, we were telling you about the mind boggling properties the new material called graphene has, and how practical uses will not take long to follow. Apparently, things moved even faster than we expected them – Berkeley researchers have created the first ever graphene audio speaker: an earphone. Their quality, even in […]
The science of physics has entered a new era once with the discovery of the much sought-after Higgs boson in July 2012. The elementary particle thought to be responsible for granting matter its mass has been theorized for decades, but only with the deployment of the multi-billion Large Hadron Collider in Geneva could such a […]
MIT researchers have published a detailed analysis of all the factors that could limit the efficiency of such a system, basically laying a roadmap for a research program to improve the efficiency of so-called artificial leafs. An artificial leaf has to produce a storable fuel, such as hydrogen, instead of electricity for immediate use; the […]
Creating glasses that don’t fog or freeze up could not only bring a world of comfort to millions of people, but it could also have a myriad of applications in cameras, microscopes, mirrors and refrigerated displays – to name just a few. While there have been many advancements in this field, so far, the main problem […]
To be quite honest, there are moments when I feel that I don’t understand quantum mechanics at all – the phenomena involved in the field are so complex and counter intuitive one can only stop and wonder if God does in fact play dice with the Universe… but at any rate, the advancements produced by […]
Researchers at University of Chicago have managed the difficult task of tying water vortex loops into knots, a feat akin to tying a knot out of a smoke ring. The implications of their research might further our understanding of physics and how the universe works. Knotted vortices have been theorized for well over a century, […]
A group of researchers at University of Rochester and the University of Ottawa have found a way to bypass Heisenberg’s famous Uncertainty Principle, and measure key quantum properties directly for the first time like the polarization states of light. The technique might provide valuable in encoding qubits, the building blocks of quantum information theory. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle […]
Climate change deniers were ecstatic – our planet wasn’t warming as fast as models predicted it; ha! Everything crumbles down, global warming is a hoax and all is good in the world, right? Wrong. The main question in science is “Why?”, and researchers started asking the question. Are all the models wrong, is there something […]
Astronomers have made the first accurate measurement of a supermassive black hole’s spin, providing new insights that might help scientists probe the mysteries the surround them. Supermassive black holes have an incredibly huge gravitational pull that doesn’t let anything in its surroundings escape its hungry maw, be it dust, rock or even light. Some are […]
I have nothing but the deepest admiration and respect for fighters – always faithful in the face of peril and always ready to put their necks on the line in order to save people from the hellish depths. As one can imagine, firefighting tech has evolved a great deal from simple fireproof clothing and a […]
We’ve never shun away from praising the almost miraculous properties of graphene, the wonder material set to become even more paradigm shifting than plastic. Graphene has found been found to have the potential to revolutionize a myriad of scientific fields, from genetics, to electronics, to nanotech, to security, to just about anything you could think of. The energy […]
Particles and unparticles Ok, we know a lot about particles – from electrons and neutrons to the more elusive quarks and leptons, and to the holy Graal of the Standard Model – the Higgs boson; but what’s an unparticle? Well, the Standard Model is just a theory, and there are other theories out there. Unparticle […]
Pollination is the game, “summon bees” is the spell, and electricity is the mana – that’s how I’d try to explain it to a gamer. A little more on the serious side, flowers advertise presence of nectar to bees using electrical signals, basically indicating if they’ve been visited by another bee or not. Usually, plants […]
The (still debated) asteroid that slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago and played a crucial role in wiping dinosaurs out, may have actually been a binary system- 2 asteroids engaged in an orbit around each other. Double trouble The surprising claim comes from analyzing the proportion of asteroid craters on Earth that were […]
Birds may not be the smartest bunch out there, but man do they know how to navigate! Pigeons can get around towns and even continents with stunning accuracy – except for a particular spot in New York. Whenever homing pigeons were launched from that particular spot, they would always get lost. They could easily go […]
Scientists at Duke University have devised a metamaterial that uses microwaves to image objects or scenes in real time, all through a set-up no larger than a book. Currently, the same imaging is being made with robust, huge machinery – the kind you see in airports used to scan people before they board flights – […]
NASA announced in a recent statement that they have beamed an image of the legendary painting to the Lunar Reconaissance Orbiter, a spacecraft currently orbiting the Moon, to test communication abilities with the satellite, using laser technology. The image was first converted to a suitable digital format, after which it traveled just less than 400.000 […]
In an amazing breakthrough, scientists at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) have for the first time demonstrated an extremely appealing, yet still obscure concept – intelligent molecules. By definition intelligence is the ability to learn and understand or deal with new situation and the latter is exactly what the researchers’ polymer molecules can do, namely react to external stimuli and reversibly […]
A materials science researcher at MIT has devised a novel technique using nanoparticles that allows heat flow to be treated much in the same way as light. This means that like electromagnetic waves, heat was successfully focused and reflected. The findings could help spark further research which might one day aid in the development of […]
Besides being a great family time activity and an awesome display of art for some who have way too much time on their hands, dominos are also a great mathematics exercise. Although most dominos are the same size, it’s well documented that the first domino piece can topple a second larger domino piece, which in […]
Magma forms much deeper than geologists previously believed, according to a new study conducted by Rice University. Magma and Crust The group led by geologist Rajdeep Dasgupta put very small samples of peridotite under very large pressures, to find out if the rock can liquify, at least in small amounts, as deep as 250 […]
A recent study conducted by Californian and Japanese seismologists claims that stable fault areas might not be so stable, in terms of earthquake generation. The controversial findings suggest that creeping fault behavior (more on this in the next paragraph) is actually not only instable, but also capable of creating fast slipping earthquake ruptures. Faulty issues […]
A novel technique for cooling antimatter down to the point where it might become almost stationary might provide scientists with a better basis for studying one of the greatest modern mysteries today. Antimatter, as it name implies, is the total opposite of matter and when the two meet they cancel each other out. For instance […]
Well, the year really kicked off in style. This research is really next level physics, and in order to understand it (even slightly), we’re going to delve into some serious physics. Dancing around absolute zero Over the years, physicists have made significant progress in cooling objects closer to absolute zero (0 Kelvin, the temperature at […]
