Physics Week in Review: November 1, 2014
Hope everyone enjoyed their Halloween festivities. Here’s a few other related links: The ghostly glow of St. Elmo’s fire: it works the same way that a neon light glows. The Levitating Halloween Pumpkin with a superconductor inside. Bonus: More Conceptual Physics Halloween Costumes.This year, go out as The Holographic Principle!
'Theory of Everything' Brilliantly Dramatizes Paradox of Modern Science
I met Stephen Hawking in the summer of 1990, when I spent five days in northern Sweden at a conference attended by 30 or so leading cosmologists.
Failure to Launch Is Always An Option
Do not try this at home. A Russian Proton-M launch goes wrong – and it can happen to anyone (wait for the shock wave). A rocket is a controlled bomb.
Evidence Builds for Dark Matter Explosions at the Milky Way’s Core
Unexplained gamma rays streaming from the galactic center may have been produced by dark matter, but more mundane explanations are also possible
Complex Life Owes Its Existence To Parasites?
Is complex life rare in the cosmos? The idea that it could be rests on the observation that the existence of life like us – with large, energy hungry, complicated cells – may be contingent on a number of very specific and unlikely factors in the history of the Earth.
Ancient Halo Stars Cast the Milky Way’s First Light
Hubble spots a star in our galaxy’s halo that likely predates its oldest star clusters
Recent Lunar Discoveries Reveal a "New Moon"
Think you know about the Moon? I did, but then I started reading ‘The New Moon: Water, Exploration, and Future Habitation‘ (Cambridge University Press, 2014) and realized that my knowledge amounted to a teensy scrap of lunar dust.
Surfer-Physicist Offers Alternative to String Theory, Academia
In 2007 Garrett Lisi was a 39-year-old physicist, unaffiliated with any institution, toiling in obscurity on what he called "An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything,” which could account for all of nature’s forces.
Red Planet Spacecraft Prepare for Rare Comet Encounter
NASA's rovers and orbiters at Mars will witness a close encounter with a comet on October 19, an event that happens once every million years
Enormous Sunshield Tested for Space Telescope
Total Lunar Eclipse Visible Across North America Wednesday Morning
Here in North America, we are in the midst of a tetrad of lunar eclipses, the second one visible Wednesday morning. A tetrad of lunar eclipses means that there are four total lunar eclipses in a row.
How the Ansari X Prize Altered the Trajectory of Human Spaceflight
Looking up into the bright Mojave sky in 2004, I strained to keep my eyes on the tiny spaceship 50,000 feet up. "Three, two, one... release, release, release!" came the call over the loudspeakers.