Stories by Jennifer Ouellette

Cocktail Party Physics bids farewell to the Scientific American blog network, but you can still find Jennifer Ouellette covering science news at Gizmodo.

Hawking makes headlines, LIDAR makes it big in Hollywood, and how to simulate a hurricane on a bubble are among this week's physics highlights.

Metamaterials make magnetic "wormholes", the case for complex dark matter, and solving the mystery of interweaved phone books are among this week's physics highlights.

Chances are you've never heard of physicist Jacob Bekenstein, who devised a nifty formula for calculating a black hole's entropy. Here's why you should remember his name

A nifty ferrofluid clock, dark matter might be a superfluid, and stunning photographs of the Perseid meteor shower are among this week's physics highlights.

Harnessing spooky action in "quantacells," the physics of MMA fighter Rhonda Rousey, and remembering Hiroshima are among this week's physics highlights.

Folding graphene like origami, the physics of how cereal gets soggy, and left-handed W bosons are among this week's highlights.

One whale's excrement is another man's treasure: ambergris is worth its weight in gold.

Fun with qubit chemistry, remembering Nobel laureate Yoichiro Nambu, and even more science of Ant-Man are among this week's physics highlights.

Pluto mania reigns supreme, the pentaquark's discovery confirmed, and the 70th anniversary of the Trinity Test are among this week's physics highlights.

Why puddles stop spreading, five ways physics affects your gas mileage, and calculating how long it would take to drive to Pluto are among this week's physics highlights.

Solving the mystery of how glass forms, Space-X Falcon 9 crashes and burns, and the physics of those no-stick ketchup bottles are among this week's physics highlights.

Why neutron stars are kinda like black holes, robots that mimic how fish swim, and how gravity might doom Schroedinger's cat are among this week's physics highlights.

A fifth tau neutrino, graphene makes the world's thinnest lightbulb, and how you can measure the Earth's axial tilt this solstice are among this week's physics highlights.

The physics of butterfly flight, the universe as a fruitcake, and all the things we still don't understand about water are among this week's physics highlights.

Pluto's moons tumble in order, celebrating 20 years of Bose-Einstein condensates, and insight into the Coriolis effect are among this week's physics highlights.

Squeezed quantum cats, the death of John Nash, and 24,992 ways to tie a necktie are among this week's physics highlights.

Laser-etched logrithmic spirals,  light bulb physics, and the fractal nature of urban growth are among this week's physics highlights.

A tongue-in-cheek blog post on the best and worst scientific fields to write about reveals a disheartening aversion to physics.

The first results from the upgraded Large Hadron Collider, syntactic foam, a Fibonacci clock, and a worm with a fractal nose glove are among this week's highlights.

It’s back, baby! The Large Hadron Collider sees its first low-energy collisions after restarting. A government laboratory found a way to listen to recordings on fragile wax cylinders inside dolls made by Thomas Edison in 1890.

This week, Quanta featured a three-part series on spacetime. Part 1 is by K.C. Cole: Wormholes Untangle a Black Hole Paradox. A bold new idea aims to link two famously discordant descriptions of nature.

Here’s a treat for fans of movies and the brain: an article called Strange Continuity. Throughout evolutionary history, we never saw anything like a montage.

In honor of Tax Day in the US, here is a piece on the IRS’s Favorite Mathematical Law: Armed with Benford’s law, “the IRS can sniff out falsified returns just by looking at the first digit of numbers on taxpayers' forms.” So, beware.