Enlarge / The hull of Henry VIII’s favorite warship, the Mary Rose , and many thousands of recovered artifacts are housed in the Mary Rose Museum in Portsmouth, England. (credit: Johnny Black) Henry VIII’s favorite warship, the Mary Rose , sank in battle in 1545. The shipwreck was successfully raised in 1982, along with thousands […]
Enlarge / Harvard scientists built “Totimorphic” structural materials that can adopt and maintain any possible shape. Scientists at Case Western Reserve University and Tufts University are exploring shapeshifting liquid crystals. (credit: Aurich Lawson/Harvard/Case Western Reserve) Luxo, Jr., Pixar’s trademark animated Luxo balanced-arm lamp, is based on a classic design known as the anglepoise lamp, invented […]
Enlarge / X-ray tomography visualization showing two quasicrystals as they start to meld together during cooling. University of Michigan scientists have discovered that quasicrystals exhibit a self-healing phenomenon that could reduce defects. (credit: Shahani Group/University of Michigan) Quasicrystals are a unique class of materials with considerable promise for practical applications because associated with their unusual […]
Enlarge / Philippe Tlokinski stars as Stanislaw Ulam in the new film Adventures of a Mathematician . (credit: Samuel Goldwyn Films) On November 1, 1952, the US detonated the first thermonuclear weapon , dubbed “Ivy Mike , ” off the Enewetak Atoll in what is now the Marshall Islands. Most of us consider the late physicist […]
Experience the mission to repair the Advanced Mass Spectrometer (AMS) aboard the International Space Station in Among the Stars, an original documentary series now streaming on Disney+. It’s problematic enough when something goes wrong with a complicated, $2 billion physics experiment on Earth. Those challenges are considerably greater when said physics experiment is on the […]
Enlarge / The output of a modern climate model allows us to detect trends despite the chaotic nature of the underlying system. (credit: NOAA ) Complex behavior is all around us. Think of something like the economy. It has lots of components, each with its own set of rules and all of them interacting in […]
Enlarge / 1775 portrait of Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, by Jean-Baptiste-André Gautier-Dagoty. X-ray analysis of letters between the queen and a Swedish count revealed words that had been blacked out, rendering them illegible—until now. (credit: Public domain) Most people associate Marie Antoinette with the affair of the diamond necklace, “Let them eat cake!” and […]
Enlarge / Researchers at North Carolina State University have created a soft and stretchable device that converts movement into electricity. The device works in wet or dry environments and has a host of potential applications. (credit: Veenasri Vallem) Scientists at North Carolina State University have developed a flexible, stretchy energy-harvesting device solely out of biocompatible […]
Enlarge / A laboratory reproduction of the Zen stone phenomenon in a lyophilizer. (credit: Nicolas Taberlet / Nicolas Plihon) Visit the Small Sea of Lake Baikal in Russia during the winter and you’ll likely see an unusual phenomenon: a flat rock balanced on a thin pedestal of ice, akin to stacking Zen stones common to […]
Creative Machines Lab at Columbia Engineering have developed a system of software-controlled lasers to cook food with precision, retain moisture with the final-cooked product, brown food within its original packaging, and create an entirely new meal creation process for a consumer. Who hasn’t dreamt of coming home after a long day and simply pressing a […]