Enlarge / The patterns of the ocellated lizard are predictable by a mathematical model with regard to phase transitions. (credit: UNIGE or Michel Milinkovitch) Zebras and tigers have stripes, cheetahs plus leopards have spots, and the ocellated lizard ( Timon lepidus ) boasts a labyrinthine pattern of black-and-green chains associated with scales. Now researchers from […]
Enlarge / (l-r) A quantum gas appears first as an elongated rod. As it rotates, it becomes helical, then it breaks up into blobs, each a swirling mass. Between the blobs tiny vortices appear in a regularly repeating series. (credit: MIT/Nature) Physicists at MIT have succeeded in getting “quantum tornadoes” to form in clouds of […]
Enlarge / A simulation of a black hole merger. (credit: LIGO/Caltech/MIT/Sonoma State (Aurore Simonnet)) I was pretty excited when LIGO, the giant double-eared gravitational wave observatory in the US, detected the first gravitational waves . When Virgo came online , triangulating gravitational wave signals became possible, and gravitational wave astronomy became a reality. Once the […]
Slow-motion video of boiling ice, a research project of the Nature-Inspired Fluids and Interfaces Lab at Virginia Tech. Dash a few drops of water onto a very hot, sizzling skillet and they’ll levitate, sliding around the pan with wild abandon. Physicists at Virginia Tech have discovered that this can also be achieved by placing a […]
The shell of a water/glycerol gas marble (bubble) remains liquid and spherical even after 101 days, and it reacts as a liquid film when punctured. These human-made bubbles could be used to create stable foams. (credit: A. Roux et al., 2022) Blowing soap bubbles never fails to delight one’s inner child, perhaps because they are […]
Enlarge / A representation of the two phosphorus nuclei (Q1 and Q2) with the electron (Q3) that helps mediate their interactions. (credit: Tony Melov / UNSW) Over the last few years, the big question in quantum computing has shifted from “can we get this to work?” to “can we get this to scale?” It’s no […]
Enlarge / Artist’s conception of a Tidal Disruption Event (TDE) — a star being shredded by the powerful gravity of a supermassive black hole. Material from the star spirals into a disk rotating around the black hole, and a jet of particles is ejected. There are decades of radio astronomy data in the archives of […]
Enlarge / Astronomers mapped out the stars (shown here in blue) and gas (green) of the strange galaxy known as AGC 114905. (credit: Javier Román and Pavel Mancera Piña) Three years ago, Filippo Fraternali and his colleagues spotted a half dozen mysteriously diffuse galaxies, which looked like sprawling cities of stars and gas. But unlike […]
Enlarge / Astronomers mapped out the stars (shown here in blue) and gas (green) of the strange galaxy known as AGC 114905. (credit: Javier Román and Pavel Mancera Piña) Three years ago, Filippo Fraternali and his colleagues spotted a half dozen mysteriously diffuse galaxies, which looked like sprawling cities of stars and gas. But unlike […]
Enlarge (credit: NASA ) Quantum radar has been on the… ahem… radar for a while now. Unfortunately, the theoretical and practical results from our explorations of the concept have been underwhelming. But before we get to the disappointments, let me give all you radar enthusiasts a reason for hope. A new paper demonstrates that, under […]