Sustainability
Caveat Emptor, Solar Homeowners
Comly Wilson at CleanEdison, which runs training and certification programs for green-tech installers, has put together a list of five things homeowners should know before buying solar.
Stories by George Musser
The Sciences
Humans Think Like Quantum Particles
Quantum theory once seemed like the last nail in the coffin of pure reason. Now it's looking like its savior
The Sciences
Hacking the Quantum: A New Book Explains How Anyone Can Become an Amateur Quantum Physicist
For years I've been thinking and hoping that quantum physics would become the next hacker revolution. DIYers in their basements, garages, and hackerspaces have already pioneered radio communications, PCs, household robots, and cheap 3-D printers--why not quantum entanglement, cryptography, computers, and teleportation?...
The Sciences
How to Build the World's Simplest Particle Detector
In about 10 minutes, using stuff you probably already have lying around your house, you can watch atomic nuclei and elementary particles for yourself using a diffusion cloud chamber--a rudimentary particle detector...
Space
How Do You Count Parallel Universes? You Can't Just Go 1, 2, 3, ...
Cosmologists have been thinking for years that our universe might be just one bubble amid countless bubbles floating in a formless void. And when they say “countless,” they really mean it...
The Sciences
String Theory in 26 Seconds [Video]
Someone once asked me to describe string theory in 26 seconds, so, a couple of months ago, I went down to Goleta Beach with my iPhone and recorded this little video.
Space
As If 1 Giant Black Hole Weren't Enough, What's a Galaxy Doing with 3?
Last Thursday, my colleague John Matson described a truly amazing galaxy known, somewhat unromantically, as BX442. It has a majestic spiral pattern while hundreds of its galactic contemporaries were gawky and misshapen a peculiar and special anomaly which suggests to many astronomers that cosmic pinwheels are ephemeral art forms, like Tibetan sand mandalas...
The Sciences
Does It Matter If Black Holes Are Popping into Existence around Us All the Time?
It may well have been the liveliest hour and a half I’ve ever spent in the company of theoretical physicists. In April, during a workshop I was attending on black holes, Bill Unruh gave a talk that challenged his colleagues on a point almost all of them thought had been settled in the mid-1980s...
The Sciences
Quantum Horse Races and Crystals of Light
I’d heard of quantum dice, quantum poker, quantum roulette, and even quantum Russian roulette, but a quantum horse race? I learned about this surreal game of chance last December during a symposium at the Centre for Quantum Technologies in Singapore...
Space
Charismatic Megaparticles Might Hint at Dark Matter, and Much Besides
At a lecture I went to some years ago, astrophysicist Trevor Weekes compared garden-variety elementary particles to mosquitoes. They are plentiful and easy to find indeed, they find you...
The Sciences
Is Dark Matter a Glimpse of a Deeper Level of Reality?
Two years ago several of my Sci Am colleagues and I had an intense email exchange over a period of weeks, trying to figure out what to make of a new paper by string theorist Erik Verlinde...
Particles for Peace: Middle Eastern Countries Collaborate on an Accelerator
Iranian, Israeli, Turkish and Arab physicists plan a joint accelerator
The Sciences
Which of the Basic Assumptions of Modern Physics are Wrong? Announcing the 4th Foundational Questions Institute Essay Contest
There's something unnerving about unifying physics. The two theories that need to be unified, quantum field theory and Einstein's general theory of relativity, are both highly successful...
The Sciences
Particles for Peace: Iranian, Israeli, Turkish and Arab Physicists Lay Plans for a Joint Particle Accelerator
SANTA BARBARA—Physics has always been one of the most globalized of professions. Physicists think of themselves as supranational, rising above national and cultural concerns.
The Sciences
Where Do Space and Time Come From? New Theory Offers Answers, If Only Physicists Can Figure It Out
SANTA BARBARA—"Maybe we're just too dumb," Nobel laureate physicist David Gross mused in a lecture at Caltech two weeks ago. When someone of his level wonders whether the unification of physics will always be beyond mortal minds, it gets you worried...
Sustainability
Clouds Over the Solar Industry in Britain [Guest Post]
A couple of years ago, I reported on the experiences of a solar homeowner in England, and I was curious how the situation in Britain has evolved since then.
The Sciences
The Emperor, Darth Vader, and the Ultimate Ultimate Theory of Physics
PASADENA—The theory is so obscure there's not a Wikipedia page about it yet. It might be impossible to formulate mathematically. One theoretical physicist calls it the Emperor Palpatine of theories, even more powerful and inscrutable than the Darth Vader theory that he and others have been studying intensively...
The Quantum Physics of Free Will
Do we have autonomy, or are our choices preordained? Is that a false choice? And what, if anything, does physics have to say about that?
The Sciences
Could Simple Experiments Reveal the Quantum Nature of Spacetime?
Conventional wisdom has it that putting the words “quantum gravity” and “experiment” in the same sentence is like bringing matter into contact with antimatter.
Physics
George and John's Excellent Adventures in Quantum Entanglement [Video]
Simply put, bottomlessly deep: that is the definition of a great discovery in science. From the principle of relativity to evolution by natural selection, the concepts that govern our world are actually not that hard to state...
