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.
Stories by George Musser
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?
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.
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...
Could a Balloon Fly in Outer Space?
Here’s the sort of crazy idea that animates our office conversation at Scientific American . It all started with my colleague Michael Moyer’s joke that a certain politician could build his moon base using a balloon: just capture the hot air and float all the way up...
Magnetoastrocoolness: How Cosmic Magnetic Fields Shape Planetary Systems
AUSTIN, Texas—Astrophysicists have a funny attitude toward magnetic fields. You might say they feel both repelled and attracted. Gravitation is assumed to rule the cosmos, so models typically neglect magnetism, which for most researchers is just as well, because the theory of magnetism has a forbidding reputation...
Astronomers Catch Black Hole Spitting Out Material
AUSTIN, Tex.—One of the great ironies of the universe is that black holes, the ultimate vacuum cleaners, create more of a mess than they clean up. (It is a complaint that many people who finally prevailed on spouses and roommates to clean up after themselves might appreciate.) How is it that, in sucking up surrounding material, they squirt much of it right back out?...
Science Is the 99 Percent
AUSTIN—A regular feature of American Astronomical Society conferences is an evening lecture on the state of science funding. Let's just say it's not a great date night.
Melting Glaciers Muck Up Earth's Gravitational Field
Photographs never quite capture the sparkling blue tint of glacial ice, so when I visited the Perito Moreno glacier in Patagonia on a backpacking trip through South America some years ago, I was happy to get this camera angle: the blue of the Argentine flag gives you a sense of what the blue of the ice looks like in person...
Life's Journey: 5 Tiny Organisms Hitch a Ride on Mission to a Martian Moon [Slide Show]
The Russian sample-return spacecraft will carry a zoo of microbes to Phobos and back to test whether life can survive the interplanetary journey
My Electric Bill Was WHAT?!? Analyze Your Power Use with These Three Websites
In one of the best quips I've ever heard at a scientific conference, cosmologist Max Tegmark complained about a lecturer's vagueness and pleaded for some quantitative predictions: "numbers—you know, the kind with decimals in them." Like Tegmark, I love data...
What the World Looks Like, If You Move Backward in Time [Video]
Oops, I said my last post on the recent Foundational Questions Institute conference would be my final one, but I can't resist just one more. At the conference, Gavin Crooks at Lawrence Berkeley Labs, who studies molecular machines and gave a great talk on how life balances time asymmetry with thermodynamic efficiency, showed this brilliant short film by Rocketboom...
How Life Arose on Earth, and How a Singularity Might Bring It Down
It didn't take long for the recent Foundational Questions Institute conference on the nature of time to delve into the purpose of life. "The purpose of life," meeting co-organizer and Caltech cosmologist Sean Carroll said in his opening remarks, "is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide." Well, there you have it...
Quantum Cheshire Cat: Even Weirder Than Schrödinger's
Just when you thought you'd heard every quantum mystery that was possible, out pops another one. Jeff Tollaksen mentioned it in passing during his talk at the recent Foundation Questions Institute conference...
How Dark Matter Messes with Our Galaxy [Video]
One mystery solves another: dark matter explains the puzzling shape and environs of the Milky Way
Free Will and Quantum Clones: How Your Choices Today Affect the Universe at its Origin
The late philosopher Robert Nozick, talking about the deep question of why there is something rather than nothing, quipped: "Someone who proposes a non-strange answer shows he didn't understand the question." So, when Scott Aaronson began a talk three weeks ago by saying it would be "the looniest talk I've ever given," it was a good start...
Time on the Brain: How You Are Always Living In the Past, and Other Quirks of Perception
I always knew we humans have a rather tenuous grip on the concept of time, but I never realized quite how tenuous it was until a couple of weeks ago, when I attended a conference on the nature of time organized by the Foundational Questions Institute...
Do Physicists Make the World a Better Place?
This past week, I’ve been attending the Foundational Questions Institute conference on the nature of time, and in the coming weeks, I hope to share with you some of the mind-blowing things I’ve found out...
Can You Really Get Solar Panels Installed for Free?
It sounds too good to be true: you can go solar without paying a cent. I first mentioned this proposition, known formally as a power-purchase agreement, two years ago: a company such as SunRun or SolarCity installs panels on your roof at its expense and, in exchange, collects the government subsidies...
