ASU astrophysicists Steven Desch and Alan P. Jackson set out to explain the odd features of ‘Oumuamua and have determined that it is likely a piece of a Pluto-like planet from another solar system. The mysterious pancake-shaped object dubbed ‘Oumuamua (Hawaiian for “messenger from afar arriving first”) generated considerable controversy earlier this year with the publication […]
Enlarge / “Exploded” view of the new computer model of the Antikythera mechanism, showing how it might have worked. (credit: Tony Freeth) Scientists have long struggled to solve the puzzle of the gearing system on the front of the so-called Antikythera mechanism—a fragmentary ancient Greek astronomical calculator, perhaps the earliest example of a geared device. […]
Enlarge / The experimental setup. (credit: Tobias Westphal / University of Vienna) Gravity may feel like one of the most familiar forces, but it’s actually among those we understand least. We know our current model of gravity is inconsistent with quantum mechanics. It also fails to account for the phenomena we’ve termed dark matter and […]
Enlarge / In a new version of the classic 19th century thought experiment, Maxwell’s demon plays the role of a gambler who knows when to quit while it’s ahead. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images) Entropy (aka the second law of thermodynamics) is a harsh mistress. If you think of the universe as a cosmic casino, the […]
Finnish researcher Jakub Kubecka won this year’s Dance Your PhD contest with a rap-based dance inspired by his work on the physics of atmospheric molecular clusters. The global pandemic ruined most of our plans for 2020, but it couldn’t keep graduate students around the world from setting their thesis research to dance, submitting videos produced […]
In 1697, a man named Jacques Sennacque wrote a letter to his cousin, a French merchant named Pierre Le Pers, requesting a certified death certificate for another man named Daniel Le Pers (presumably also a relation). Sennacque sealed the letter with an intricate folding method known as “letterlocking,” a type of physical cryptography—the better to […]
Enlarge / The remains of a shredded star formed an accretion disk around the black hole whose powerful tidal forces ripped it apart. This created a cosmic particle accelerator spewing out fast subatomic particles. (credit: DESY, Science Communication Lab) Roughly 700 million years ago, a tiny subatomic particle was born in a galaxy far, far […]
Scientists have shown how a new class of Turing patterns work by using synthetic biology to create them from scratch in the lab. Shortly before his death, Alan Turing published a provocative paper outlining his theory for how complex, irregular patterns emerge in nature—his version of how the leopard got its spots. These so-called Turing […]
Enlarge / Radiant: The Scientist, the Dancer, and a Friendship Forged in Light explores the lives of Marie Curie and Loïe Fuller. (credit: Aurich Lawson / Getty Images) Both the arts and the sciences flourished in Paris during the years of the so-called Belle Époque at the dawn of the 20th century. This was when Nobel Prize-winning […]
Harvard astronomers have a new theory about the origin of the comet that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Some 66 million years ago, a catastrophic event occurred that wiped out three-quarters of all plant and animal species on Earth, most notably taking down the dinosaurs. An errant asteroid from the asteroid belt has been […]