PhysicsCentral Features

Ultralight Lattices

2012-03-13 00:00:00

Strong, springy, and ultralight, these lattices can sit atop a dandelion in seed without damaging it, and carry about 1000 times its weight without being damaged!

Glassy Energy Landscapes

2012-03-09 00:00:00

Glass artwork demonstrates a rugged energy landscape.

The Big and Small of Rockets

2012-02-28 00:00:00

From the acidic digestive fluid in your stomach to the dry, cratered surface of Mars, rockets could soon make it possible to explore extreme environments as never before.

Bouncing Ball

2012-02-24 00:00:00

The simple act of bouncing a ball may not conjure up feelings of physics, but there is more physics going on than meets the eye. Tags: Force and Motion

Episode 2: Bistronauts

2012-02-17 10:33:31

Episode 1: Dancing Droplets

2012-02-17 10:25:23

X-treme Solar Flare

2012-02-16 00:00:00

X-class flare erupting from the sun

Magnets: Where Physics Meets High Fashion

2012-02-14 00:00:00

Physics enthusiasts aren't always the people you turn to for advice on the latest fashion trends, but it's impossible not to give physics at least partial credit for the recent nail craze--magnetic nail polish.

Patterns in the Sand

2012-02-09 00:00:00

When a Chladni plate vibrates patterns emerge in the sand. It?s not magic, or the hand of an invisible artist, but the vibrations themselves that cause the lines and patterns to emerge

Science off the Sphere

2012-02-08 09:13:00

Entangled Diamonds

2012-01-31 00:00:00

Quantum entanglement has been called ?spooky action at a distance? by Einstein and has often been called spooky or weird since then. Recently two diamonds, big enough to see with your eye, were observed to have entangled quantum mechanical states.

Haleakala Observatory

2012-01-26 00:00:00

High on a mountaintop in Hawaii, scientists search the sky.

Liquid Art

2012-01-19 00:00:00

These images captured the moment streams of liquid collide, bending the streams and forming beautiful images.

Aerogel: Fighting Fires

2012-01-12 00:00:00

This photo illustrates the insulating properties of aerogel. The crayons on top of the aerogel are not melting, protected from the flame by a layer of aerogel.

Rayleigh Scattering Sunsets

2012-01-05 00:00:00

What causes the orange hue in a sunset? Why is the sky blue? Rayleigh scattering can explains these natural wonders, leaving onlookers amazed.

Migration via quantum mechanics

2012-01-03 00:00:00

A perplexing property of quantum mechanics could be allowing birds to see and navigate the planet?s magnetic fields

Crystal Ball

2011-12-29 00:00:00

This ball is cannot tell you your future and it doesn?t drop to signal the beginning of a new year. No, this ball illustrates the physics concept of refraction.

Quantum Reality

2011-12-22 00:00:00

A thirty foot model of a buckyball is suspended in the tree tops, taking physics and making art.

Nano Cupcakes

2011-12-20 00:00:00

For a while carbon nanotubes have been a hot topic in science. Some of the latest research on nanotubes done at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, CO are fondly called Cupcakes,1,2 but you may only want a mental bite of these!

Topographic Moon Map

2011-12-15 00:00:00

This is the highest resolution topographic map of the moon to date taken from information gathered by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).

The Aurora Borealis

2011-12-08 00:00:00

The Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights, shines above Bear Lake, Eielson Air Force Base. Find out about the physics behind this phenomenon.

Cleaning with Sound

2011-12-06 00:00:00

Sound may not be a normal cleaning product in your house, but it is just the thing for cleaning delicate jewelry, surgical instruments, lenses, and many other small, intricate objects. Soon, it could also make cleaning big objects like houses or machines much more efficient.

Nano-Tagging Plants

2011-12-01 00:00:00

Nanoparticles are being used as biological markers

Galactic Cannibalism

2011-11-22 00:00:00

The Andromeda Galaxy, is one of the most distant objects that can be seen with the naked eye and it's on a collision course with our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

Lighting Up Wall Street

2011-11-17 00:00:00

High frequency trading computers can help make investors millions, but where in the world would be the best place for these computers to be located? Physics could help explain how to make your millions.

3D Printers & Fabbers

2011-11-08 00:00:00

If you can dream it, you can print it! Learn how these 3D printers are changing the invention process.

Striped Superconductors

2011-11-03 00:00:00

This psychedelic image is a graphical summary of a theory describing striped superconductors.

Graphene Printing Press

2011-11-01 00:00:00

It's been a year since Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim won the Nobel Prize in Physics for their breakthroughs with graphene. What is graphene up to now?

Solar Color Conversion

2011-10-27 00:00:00

Molecules that convert light from one color to another could improve the efficiency of solar cells, provided researchers can find better ways to handle them.

Spraying on Energy Efficiency

2011-10-25 00:00:00

In the next few years you might be able to buy a spray that could dramatically increase the energy efficiency of your house.

Tiny Antennas

2011-10-20 00:00:00

These antennas could be used in devices that use light in place of the electrical signals.

Molecular Transistor

2011-10-13 00:00:00

Physicists have made what they believe to be the first true single molecule transistor.

Crystal Ions in Space

2011-10-06 00:00:00

An ion trap allows physicists to capture atoms and hold them in crystal?like configurations in free space.

Moon Tracks

2011-09-22 00:00:00

This isn?t a new flavor of ice cream. No, this photo taken from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows the marks left behind by Apollo 17.

Diamond planets are a girl?s best friend

2011-09-20 00:00:00

What's better than a diamond engagement ring? An entire planet made of diamonds!

AB Effect

2011-09-15 00:00:00

In 1959 the Aharonov-Bohm effect took its place as a legitimate demonstration of unexpected physics in the quantum world.

Kelly Chipps

2011-09-08 14:23:07

Nuclear physicist, Kelly Chipps (AKA Nuclear Kelly), understands just how difficult it is for some people to understand physicists, with her diverse background she is striving to make physics accessible to everyone.

Electronic Tattoos

2011-09-08 10:26:27

Electronic sensors are used to gather all sorts of information. Perhaps you?ve seen some fitness monitors that look like arm bands, chest bands, or watches. There are brain monitors, some look like a swim cap with wires coming out. Mindball (a game using your brain waves) just has a single band you put around your head. Now imagine an electronic sensor that is wireless, flexible, and as inconspicuous as a temporary tattoo!

Attractive Tangles

2011-08-30 13:25:49

Scientists model the scenario in which Earth's magnetic field switches poles.

A Mirror Built for Space

2011-08-26 00:00:00

How do you design a mirror with a diameter of 6.5 meters that can survive a rocket launch into space, orbit the Earth at a radius of about one million miles for 5-10 years, and hold its shape at temperatures near -220?C? And why would you want to?

Mind over matter, light over mind

2011-08-16 00:00:00

Can lasers control your mind? Not exactly, but light can control the firing of neurons in the brain, and has been used to affect the behavior of mice.

Bundle of Tiny Carbon Nanotubes

2011-08-04 00:00:00

Crystal-like carbon nanotubes could serve as wiring for future computers.

Spin Ice Monopoles

2011-07-28 00:00:00

Spin ice is like magnetic ice and physicists have made analogies of magnetic monopoles in spin ice.

Hollow Atoms

2011-07-21 00:00:00

Physicists have removed the inner electrons from neon with a high energy X-ray laser, leaving behind a hollow atom shell.

Graphene Quilt

2011-07-14 00:00:00

This quilt won't just keep you warm; it can teach you about the four electronic states central to understanding the properties of graphene.

Human Genome Folded

2011-07-07 00:00:00

Inside cells there is a long code that holds all of an organism?s hereditary information, but how does that long code fit in that tiny space?

Nanoantennas ? detecting the very small

2011-07-05 00:00:00

How many ways can you think of to detect a single particle or atom? What uses would a tool that could do this have? The nanoantenna can! Read on to find out how and what uses it might have.

Physics of Goo

2011-06-23 00:00:00

Next time you put syrup on your pancakes remember that there is physics behind how the syrup flows.

Sensitive as a Bat: Navigating the World by Echoes

2011-06-21 00:00:00

Daniel Kish is the world's foremost expert on echolocation, and teaches the trick, learned from bats, to help the blind navigate like never before.

Stalactite Meets Stalagmite

2011-06-16 00:00:00

What might look like the top and bottom of a limestone cave, may actually revolutionize the world of tiny electronics.

Surface Folds

2011-06-09 00:00:00

What do brains and bread have in common? Physicists looking for patterns explain.

The Advanced Light Source: Where Physics Lets Science Happen

2011-05-31 00:00:00

The Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source produces x-rays a billion times brighter than the sun by flinging electrons around at nearly the speed of light. Find out how and the ways that scientists use these brilliant flashes of invisible light to probe the world of the unseen.

Entangling Qubits

2011-05-26 00:00:00

This small grey crystal of silicon inside a glass test tube contains 10 billion pairs of entangled spin qubits

Cloaking ? Making Something Appear Invisible

2011-05-24 00:00:00

Cloaking makes things appear to be invisible. What may seem like science fiction is really just science.

Sea Urchin Teeth

2011-05-19 00:00:00

This scanning electron microscope image shows the recently discovered calcite mineral bridges that connect the developing tooth plates in the sea urchin Eucidaris tribuloides, fascinating physicists with their strength.

Mussel Mucus

2011-05-12 00:00:00

Mussels generate their own self healing sticky material and now scientists are able to make a synthetic version in the lab.

Imaging the Invisible: The Dark Energy Camera

2011-05-10 00:00:00

The average digital camera is great for taking embarrassing pictures of friends and capturing a couple?s first kiss, but taking pictures of really faint galaxies that are millions of light years away requires some serious modifications or the Dark Energy Camera.

A Coil for Colliders

2011-05-05 00:00:00

Superconducting coil for future energy colliders

The First Superconducting Magnet

2011-04-28 00:00:00

The world?s first superconducting magnet, consisting of a wire coil made of lead, was manufactured in the Leiden Physics Laboratory in 1912.

Physics of Baseball

2011-04-26 00:00:00

Spring has sprung and the batters have swung. Baseball season has officially started. Although the games we watch in the big leagues could be drastically different by changing only one aspect; the bat.

Four Qubits, One Chip

2011-04-21 00:00:00

This computer chip includes four superconducting qubits that make up a version of a computer microprocessor.

Less is More for E. Coli

2011-04-14 00:00:00

New simulations show that reducing the number of spare DNA genes in the microbe E. coli can actually increase the bacteria?s chances of survival.

Answering the Call for Extreme Tires

2011-04-12 00:00:00

Robert Frost concerned himself with which road to take, but in some cases the more important question may be which tires to use. Learn about the newest technology in tires.

Spin Kaleidoscope

2011-04-07 00:00:00

This image shows a map of the electrical characteristics of a topological insulator, providing information that is helping physicists to better understand how these new materials work.

Professor Omega

2011-04-01 00:00:00

The headlines have called Professor Omega an evil genius bent on world domination, but he claims he's just misunderstood.

Atomic Transistors

2011-03-31 00:00:00

If you could look deep inside an infrared LED and had microscopic vision, you might see the image above, showing the microscopic image of the surface of gallium arsenide (GaAs) and how the arrangement of atoms on the GaAs surface affect its electric field.

Ionizing Radiation and Humans ? The Basics

2011-03-31 00:00:00

In the wake of the Fukishima Nuclear Reactor incident, radiation is on the minds of many people, but did you know that people are exposed to radiation everyday? Ionizing radiation, like many things, isn?t bad unless a living organism is exposed to too much of it.

James Roche

2011-03-25 00:00:00

James Roche is part artist, part skateboarder, part physicist, and full time funny man. This physicist and APS project coordinator knows how to make any experience fun and exciting. Physics after all, can be funny.

MESSENGER Measures Up

2011-03-24 00:00:00

The Sun?s closest neighbor, Mercury, now has a spacecraft zooming around its orbit. NASA?s Messenger spacecraft successfully achieved orbit around Mercury on Thursday , March 17th, 2011 around 9 p.m. EDT. This is the first spacecraft to begin orbiting Mercury, a milestone for US space exploration.

Nano Sized Light Switch

2011-03-17 00:00:00

Imagine having a switch the size of a molecule. It could control a tiny electric circuit built from single atoms and molecules.

Record energies force new thoughts on lightning

2011-03-15 00:00:00

Physicists using modern spacecraft have observed storms all over the planet and discovered that lightning can generate energies far in excess of what was previously thought possible. What's even more alarming is that some of them can generate anti-matter.

Cloud Waves

2011-03-10 00:00:00

When people think of waves they often look to the oceans, but waves can also be found high in the sky. In this picture Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean made waves in the clouds.

Berliner Helicopter

2011-03-03 00:00:00

What looks like a unique airplane was actually the first helicopter to make a controlled flight.

Nuclear Forensics and Unbaking the Cake

2011-03-01 00:00:00

At our nation?s ports, cargo ships from all over the world, carrying goods from granite to rubber duckies, enter the United States. But how do we know what?s really in each cargo box and if it is safe? One safety check requires trucks to pass through radiation monitors to see if there is any radioactive substance in the cargo entering the country.

Jelena Maricic

2011-02-25 00:00:00

People from all over the world like stories and physicist Jelena Maricic is no exception. Maricic may enjoy a good fiction novel, but when it comes to explaining how particles in the universe behave she brings science to explanations that don?t seem far from science fiction.

Rocky Planet: Kepler 10b

2011-02-24 00:00:00

The Kepler Spacecraft, after nearly 8 months of collecting data (May 2009 ? January 2010), discovered an exoplanet, Kepler 10b, that orbits a star other than our sun.

It?s Raining Antimatter? Upward?

2011-02-17 00:00:00

The electrons produce so many gamma rays that they shoot electrons and positrons out of the atmosphere and NASA?s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope intercepts these particles, showing evidence that thunderstorms may be producing antimatter.

Galaxy Demographics

2011-02-15 00:00:00

As observation techniques of distant objects advance, so does our knowledge about the universe. One recent observational study led by Pieter van Dokkum (Yale) and Charlie Conroy (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) indicates that there may be three times as many stars as previously thought!

Ben Van Dusen

2011-02-11 00:00:00

What does one of the largest three-dimensional models of the solar system, Quantum Chaos in Nanoelectronics, the iPad, teaching and disc golf have in common? Besides varying from large to very small; from complicated computer technology to simple physics; from inside to outside and to far outside our Earth, these varied interests have found a friend in Ben Van Dusen.

Light Magic

2011-02-10 00:00:00

While running a series of Monochromatic UV germicidal range finding experiments, Barry Ressler created a series of images that Pink Floyd would be proud of.

Happy Groundhog's Day

2011-02-02 00:00:00

Will the groundhog see his shadow and promise 6 more weeks of winter? More importantly, what is a shadow and where in this folklore is the science?

Physics of Colonizing Space

2011-02-01 00:00:00

Our planet has long sheltered humanity from the harsh climates of outer space. The Earth's electromagnetic field protects us from a barrage of harmful particles and its atmosphere allows us to breathe freely while destroying small inbound space rocks.

Snowflake Science

2011-01-27 00:00:00

The sky is falling! No, those are just snowflakes falling from the clouds. In this Physics in Pictures explore what conditions make snowflakes and what all snowflakes have in common.

fMRI ? The Future Mind Reader?

2011-01-18 00:00:00

fMRI?s might be the future technology to read your thoughts and emotions. There have been claims that fMRI can determine if you are telling the truth, what image you are looking at, and perhaps in the future, what you are thinking , feeling, or your intending.

Andrea Ghez

2011-01-14 00:00:00

There?s a great celestial chasm lurking at the heart of our galaxy, capable of swallowing anything that gets too close. It hides in plain sight, and its pull is strong enough to whip stars around like they were toys. Now a team at the University of California Los Angeles is methodologically peeling away its secrets. Meet Andrea Ghez, black hole hunter extraordinaire.

Happy New Year!� Laserfest Takes Over Times Square

2011-01-13 00:00:00

When the ball dropped on New Year?s Eve, 2010, it stood for more than the closing of a decade. It marked the end of Laserfest(www.laserfest.org), celebrating the 50th anniversary of the invention of the laser. In this picture, Laserfest says thank you and goodbye in Times Square

Smoke Rings in Water

2011-01-06 00:00:00

A smoke-ring flow pattern - or vortex ring--can develop, pinch-off, and be regenerated, all without forces, when the flow is driven by chemical reactions.

Holograms: Virtually Approaching Science Fiction

2011-01-04 00:00:00

Hologram applications are still futuristic, but advances in holography are bringing us closer than ever to capturing holographic images in real time.

Andrew Noble

2010-12-17 00:00:00

Andrew Noble hopes to use his knowledge of physics in a way you might not expect. He is working to help preserve the diversity of life on Earth.

Pulling the Plug on Conventional Charging

2010-12-14 00:00:00

Imagine walking into your bedroom and your cell phone starts charging immediately, you don't even have to bother plugging it in. These capabilities are being developed in scientists' labs around the country thanks to a technology known as inductive charging.

LED Hula Hoopers and Fire Hoopers Show Physics in a Whole New Light

2010-12-09 00:00:00

What does dancing have to do with physics? One photographer uses his understanding of light and technology to capture fire dancing and hula hooping, which inadvertently reveal different forces in physics and the nature of light.

Melanie Lott

2010-12-03 00:00:00

Meet a dancer and a physicist who has been analyzing dancers as they pirouette.

Graphene

2010-11-30 00:00:01

And the 2010 Nobel Prize goes to the Andr� Geim and Konstantin Novoselov for graphene! Wait, isn?t that what?s in our pencils? Well, yes and no. See how the graphite in pencils and common adhesive tape lead these two to a Nobel Prize.

Shoot the Moon!

2010-11-18 00:00:00

Lasers are used to track satellites. At the Goddard Space Flight Center lasers are used to track the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which is collecting data as it orbits the Moon.

The 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics is?

2010-11-18 00:00:00

In 2004, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were looking for a metallic substance that could be used as a semiconductor. With the use of adhesive tape, their method of making graphene led to receiving the 2010 Nobel prize.

Sam Wurzel

2010-11-12 00:00:00

If you?ve ever searched for a microcontroller or a transistor online, you may have come across Octopart.com, a search engine for electronic parts co-founded by Sam Wurzel in 2006.

USA Science and Engineering Festival

2010-11-11 00:00:00

James Roche explains how LiDar and the squealing wall work at the Laser Haunted House at the 2010 USA Science and Engineering Festival.

Sputnik and Satellites

2010-10-26 15:36:36

Sputnik I was the world's first artificial satellite. It marked a new era in political, military, technological and scientific developments, beginning the space age and the U.S.-U.S.S.R space race. Satellites use gravity to stay in orbit. Learn about the differences between Newton's and Einstein's explanations of gravity as it relates to satellites.

Nicola Spaldin

2010-10-18 11:44:58

When Prof. Nicola Spaldin was growing up in the British mountains where her ?parents ran a hiking center,? it was apparent that she loved the outdoors and discovering her surroundings. She took this curiosity into her academic career, where she studied materials that can have more than one job.

Chad Orzel

2010-09-27 11:53:13

Chad Orzel, a physicist and blogger, is not afraid to weigh in on the controversial issues of the day. On June 29th, 2010, for example, he made reference to "the immense suckitude of the refereeing" at the then-ongoing World Cup.

It?s Raining Gamma Rays

2010-09-27 11:41:26

If you happen to step outside into a thunderstorm, I bet the last thing you are concerned about is getting hit by gamma rays. A team of scientists has been using satellite data to find out where gamma ray pulses are coming from with a great deal of accuracy in order to clarify if these pulses are related to lightening.

Looking to the Stars: Creating Fusion in the Lab

2010-09-24 10:55:22

The sun produces HUGE amounts of energy. In just five seconds, the sun gives off an amount of energy equal to the electricity used by the entire world?s population in one year! How does the sun make all of this energy? It makes it through fusion. This Physics in Action explores fusion and how scientists at MIT are getting closer to producing this great source of energy.

Gamma Ray All-Sky Map

2010-07-05 11:33:00

The Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope is our high energy eye in orbit keeping a look out for big events in the universe and creating an extensive detailed map in the process. A high energy map of our universe reveals many interesting objects such as pulsars, super-massive black holes and possibly clues to its beginning.

Seeing Lightning in the Ash

2010-05-06 11:01:00

The eruption of the Eyjafjallaj�kull volcano in Iceland created an ash cloud that disrupted air traffic throughout Europe. And as if the magma and ash violently spewing out of the volcano's crater wasn't scary enough, the eruption also generates lightning!

Blowing in the Wind

2010-03-31 09:32:59

Flying kites and tumbling plastic bags show that wind carries kinetic energy. The purpose of a windmill is to harness that energy. From the earliest versions 2,200 years ago in Persia to the Megawatt turbines today, windmills use physics to harness nature's chaotic fiery for human benefit.

Perfect Spheres to Test Einstein

2010-03-11 10:53:24

Einstein is looking at you through a near perfect glass sphere. In fact this is the most precise sphere that humans have ever created. The surface of this little marble is so smooth that any bumps or scratches are no higher than 40 atoms. Cool! But why?

Infrared Light

2010-01-27 08:52:19

What do night vision goggles, land mine detectors, and studies of the universe have in common? In some way, all of them are connected to a small range of light sandwiched between visible light and microwaves on the electromagnetic spectrum?infrared light.

Finding Water on the Moon

2010-01-25 13:58:51

How do you find water that is frozen beneath the surface of the moon? Send a high-speed satellite to plunge into the lunar surface like a man-made meteor and then examine the debris. When it comes to finding water in an extraterrestrial desert, NASA doesn?t mess around.

Peter Sorokin

2010-01-20 13:58:09

Peter Sorokin invented the world's second and third lasers and pioneered the ability to build lasers in all colors of the rainbow. And if that wasn't enough for one man, he is using laser physics to explain the light from distant stars.

Free Floating Plasma Orb or Squid Ghost

2010-01-20 11:44:41

Ghost of discharged capacitor found haunting a glass of water! What could be more scary than that? Try a hot ball of electric plasma.

Laser-Plasma Creates Electro-Optic Shocks

2009-11-19 09:10:53

High power laser pulses create shock-waves and bubbles in plasma.

Dust devils on Mars!

2009-10-21 07:44:42

What does this image look like to you? Could it be a close up of a tattoo or a lizard's back or even silly putty that was rubbed on a newspaper?

Feynman Diagrams: The science of doodling

2009-10-07 10:47:45

Every popular explanation of particle physics is liberally illustrated with cartoon-like pictures of straight and wiggly lines representing electrons, photons, and quarks, interacting with one another. These so-called Feynman diagrams were introduced by Richard Feynman in the journal Physical Review in 1949, and they quickly became an essential tool for particle physicists.

James Wynne

2009-10-06 09:22:22

James Wynne is the author of numerous articles and scientific journals and the holder of many patents, including several in laser dentistry and laser dermatology, and has received numerous Outstanding Innovation Awards throughout his career at IBM.

Red Dye Crowned in Milk

2009-09-18 08:38:07

This crown is formed by the splash and droplets of a 2 mm drop of red dye impacting on a thin layer of milk.

Margaret Murnane

2009-08-24 07:31:00

Margaret Murnane has a fascinating story to tell - if you can keep up with her. In a sense, Murnane is the fastest person who ever lived.

Mildred "Millie" Dresselhaus

2009-08-20 09:53:23

Millie Dresselhaus is one of the very first laser scientists. She quickly took this new invention and started using it to investigate the properties of matter. As well as pioneering laser science, she has promoted opportunities for women in science.

Lithium-ion batteries

2009-08-17 07:45:19

Lithium-ion batteries already power your cell phone and your laptop, and they may soon power your car. What makes these batteries so great?

Centrifugal Instability of an Oscillating Boundary Layer

2009-08-06 09:45:41

A cylinder twisting back and forth in water, produces a "centrifugal instability," as shown by fluorescent dye. This fluid pattern will not only help scientists better understand ocean dynamics, but it is also aesthetically beautiful.

Magnetic Properties of Thin Films

2009-07-02 08:50:25

This spectroscopic image shows what are called microwave-frequency magnetic resonances of an array of parallel, metallic thin film nanowire "stripes". The peak in the center reflects resonances occurring at the stripe edges. The strong horizontal bar of violet, black, and white, is due to resonances in the body of the stripes.

LaserFest Photons

2009-06-16 14:42:35

Photons are the particles that make up light. Who knew that they were also soft and cuddly? Welcome to LaserFest 2010!

Micro-origami

2009-05-26 13:06:19

When you dry your hands after washing them they don?t typically warp and wrinkle. That?s not the same with paper.

Exploding White Dwarf Star

2009-05-07 13:55:46

Astrophysicists are able to "explode a star" in a virtual computational laboratory by applying physics to calculate the mechanism and progression of the explosion.

Mary Lee McJimsey

2009-02-23 14:03:25

Spend a little time in Mary Lee McJimsey?s classroom and you will soon realize that she is not your traditional physics teacher.

MHDPD-Magneto Hydro Dynamic Propulsion Device: The Experiment/ The Attenuation

2009-01-22 14:34:26

Red and green dye reveals the turbulent fluid flows from the magneto hydro dynamic propulsion device.

Relativity Train

2009-01-22 14:34:26

This train has endured space and time to teach physics to those wandering through the Bolivian desert.

Fiddle Physics

2008-12-09 09:35:31

Physicists are using sophisticated recording equipment and computer models to probe how a violin makes its sound. Could they be on the verge of discovering the "secret of Stradivari"?

Cornstarch Dimples

2008-10-08 14:33:25

A vibrating cornstarch solution appears to come alive and grow fingers. A dimple in the fluid created by a burst of air expands into a deep hole.

Dark Matter

2008-09-08 09:09:45

In 2006, an investigation of the Bullet cluster, which is composed of two colliding clusters of galaxies, provided important evidence for the existence of dark matter.�

Our Very Own Black Hole

2008-06-17 15:36:13

The Milky Way is a vast spiral, similar to our neighbor the Andromeda galaxy.

Optical Tweezers

2008-06-17 14:57:15

Unwind a chromosome to see how it?s put together? Sort cells with a light beam? Make a model of a molecular motor? All these and more?welcome to the world of optical tweezers, where cells and even individual molecules are manipulated with laser light.

Planet Pluto Goes Poof

2008-06-17 14:37:04

Pluto?now reclassified as a "dwarf planet"?was discovered after American astronomer Percival Lowell predicted that a "Planet X" was perturbing the orbits of Uranus and Neptune.

Quark-Gluon Plasma

2008-06-17 11:33:31

A millionth of a second after the Big Bang, the universe was an incredibly dense plasma, so hot that no nuclei nor even nuclear particles could exist.

Through a Lens Darkly

2008-06-17 11:15:00

What limits the sharpness of an image? The answer has to do with the wave nature of light.

Superconductors

2008-06-17 09:59:26

How would you like to board a Maglev train and then speed off to your destination at more than 300 miles per hour? The magnets that levitate these trains are an application of superconductivity.

Slow Light

2008-06-16 15:55:58

Suppose you and a friend tried to measure the speed of light. You have a powerful flashlight and a stopwatch, and your friend has a mirror. You walk away until the two of you are 100 meters apart. You aim the flashlight at the mirror, turn the light on, and wait to see the reflection. How long do you have before the light gets back?

Carol Paty

2008-06-12 11:59:00

Hiking, camping, kayaking and snorkeling while traveling throughout the Czech Republic, Turkey, Austria, Hawaii, Greece, Wales, Wyoming, Scotland, and most recently Germany. This is the life of a space scientist... if your name is Carol Paty. She shows us that you don't need to stay at home to in order to study the solar system.

Major Matthew H. Briggs

2008-06-12 11:59:00

Since earning my B.S. in Physics from the University of Alabama in 1997 I have committed the last 10 years as a pilot in the USAF.

Becky Thompson

2008-06-11 11:42:16

Imagine starting a new internship, first week on the job and you don't know a soul. But you're curious. How did these people get here? What are they like? Where do they come from? Do they have any cool body piercings?

Tubular Peas

2008-06-09 15:08:07

Nanotubes, discovered in 1991, are a new form of carbon. With four electrons available for bonding, the carbon atom can combine with others in a number ways and produce many useful materials.

Tiny Machines

2008-06-09 14:43:11

In 1959 the physicist Richard Feynman gave a talk called "There?s Plenty of Room at the Bottom," on the possibility of microminiaturization. To encourage progress he offered a prize of $1,000 to anyone who could build an operating electric motor that fit into a 1/64th inch cube, and within months, someone had done it.

Sonic Shock

2008-06-09 10:31:58

Have you ever heard a sonic boom? Have you ever seen the shock waves that cause one?

Power to the Pentaquark

2008-06-09 10:18:40

What?s inside an atom? What?s inside a proton? These are questions asked by physicists, who seek to understand matter on the most fundamental level.

Neutrino Nomads

2008-06-05 12:10:54

The neutrino is a ghostly particle that leaves hardly a trace of its passing. Most neutrinos go right through Earth without any deviation or interaction, and trillions harmlessly pierce your body each second.

Neutrino Astrophysics

2008-06-05 10:42:49

Very large stars can end their lives in a cataclysmic explosion called a supernova. The photographs show a supernova in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way located only about 160,000 light years away.

Old as the M4 Planet

2008-06-04 17:20:14

In the universe, we may or may not be alone, but at least there seem to be plenty of planets. Over the last decade, extra-solar planet-finding has become a growth industry, with some 100 already identified by their effect on the motion of their central star.

Space Weather

2008-06-04 16:53:23

How's the space weather today? Quiet enough for a safe trip to the moon? Quiet enough to operate your GPS navigation system accurately? So active that it would crash your power grid? Like our everyday weather, space weather can change suddenly, become violent, and interfere with our lives.

Hubble Goes Deep

2008-05-30 10:33:16

As residents of the Milky Way galaxy, we live in a huge spiral system of about 10 11 stars.

GRACE Under Fire

2008-05-28 11:48:32

Remote and beautiful, Antarctica is covered by an ice sheet averaging several kilometers in thickness that locks up some 70% of Earth?s fresh water?if it all melted, the oceans would rise about 70 meters.

Fluids in Space

2008-05-28 11:16:54

We have all seen images, such as the one at the right, of astronauts floating inside a spacecraft. If these astronauts used a spring scale to weigh themselves, they would detect no weight at all. Does no weight mean no gravity?

Far Out Planets

2008-05-28 10:54:52

Are we alone in the universe? To begin to answer this question, we could first ask if Earth is unique in the universe.

Matters of State

2008-05-27 11:44:55

We know about solids, liquids, gases, and plasmas ?these are the well-known states of matter. But now there?s another, called the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), and it?s been predicted for a long time.

Fusion Machines

2008-05-27 11:16:47

In 1951, the astrophysicist Lyman Spitzer devised a way to contain a hot plasma?an ionized gas?with the hope of producing a sustained fusion reaction that could lead to electric power generation.

Plasma Power

2008-05-27 10:58:29

Everyday objects can be classified into solids, liquids, and gases. However, the matter in a lightning bolt, a flame, and the Aurora Borealis are something quite different.

The Theory of Everything... Everything Alive!

2008-05-13 14:07:49

Physicists like to explain a broad range of phenomena with a few simple mathematical laws.

Energetic Degenerates

2008-05-13 13:48:06

If systems "seek" the lowest possible energy, why don't atomic electrons all cascade down into the ground state?

Deep Impact

2008-05-09 14:21:28

Comets are relics from the origin of the solar system, carrying material about 4.5 billion years old.

Catch a Cosmic Microwave

2008-05-09 13:53:44

A trio of recent findings on cosmic microwave background radiation lends strong support to the idea that the entire observable universe was once smaller than an atom and underwent a "super-charged" Big Bang.

The Little Constant that Couldn't?

2008-05-09 10:33:31

Physicists measure the values of basic quantities like the speed of light and the charge of the electron. Cosmologists use the results in studies of the origin of the universe, some 12 billion years ago, and they assume the numbers have not changed over this time.

Ice Ages

2008-05-09 10:00:47

In the controversy over global warming, some people have suggested that human-induced warming might be a good thing if it kept us out of the next Ice Age.

Harlan Schone

2008-05-07 17:14:00

During his long career as a physics professor, you were just as likely to find Harlan Schone with a hammer and nail, improving substandard housing in his community, as you were to find him in a solid-state physics lab doing research.

Laura Smoliar

2008-05-07 17:14:00

Laura Smoliar became interested in physics at a young age ? her mother was a physicist. ?Sometimes I?d get to go to her lab,? Smoliar said. ?It was a fun place. There were lots of toys.?

Myriam Sarachick

2008-05-07 17:14:00

Myriam Sarachick had a tough decision to make when it was time to choose her major. She had to decide between mathematics, music, literature and physics.

Rob Semper

2008-05-07 17:14:00

Rob Semper is the Executive Associate Director of the Exploratorium, a science museum in San Francisco.

Vincent Rodgers

2008-05-07 17:14:00

When Vincent Rodgers was six years old, he and his twin brother Victor got toy robots for Christmas. "The most fascinating thing about this," Rodgers recalls, ?was a panel you could take off the side [so] you could actually see inside."

What the WMAP!

2008-05-07 11:23:25

Cosmology is one of the great success stories of contemporary physics. A few investigators began theorizing about the history of the universe in the 1940s, but there was precious little observational evidence to work with.

Waving Back

2008-05-07 10:54:45

Of the forces in nature, gravity is by far the weakest.

Catch an Earthquake

2008-05-07 10:17:57

San Francisco and Los Angeles, home to about 7.5 million people and to much of the economy of California, lie close to the infamous San Andreas fault.

CT Scans

2008-05-07 09:59:27

William Roentgen made the first x-ray image in 1895, but the technology remained essentially the same until the late 1960s. These images were projected onto flat detectors, such as film or electronic sensors.

The Buzz about Antimatter

2008-05-06 17:22:17

Matter and Antimatter: the cloud chamber track of an electron-positron pair

Andrew Post-Zwicker

2008-05-06 17:14:47

Andrew Post-Zwicker is absolutely fascinated by plasmas. He is shown here on a bad hair day (actually a demo with a van de graf generator).

Chris Quigg

2008-05-06 17:14:47

As a child, Chris Quigg wanted to make the laws of nature. He thought that was the difference between physics and engineering: physicists make the law and engineers apply the law.

Jorge Pullin

2008-05-06 17:14:47

Jorge Pullin has made a career of studying a weighty subject: gravity. He uses theories of gravity to predict what will happen when black holes collide.

Richard Superfine

2008-05-06 16:46:50

"I grew up in Philadelphia building houses with my father," says Richard Superfine-yes, that is his real name. "That has led me to always appreciate experimental work and using my hands and getting tangible results."

Alex Szalay

2008-05-06 16:42:33

"All my life, I've liked to take long shots," said Alex Szalay, a former rock star who studies astronomy at Johns Hopkins University.

Al Osborne

2008-05-06 16:31:00

Al Osborne doesn't have much of an accent anymore, but there's still a bit of the Texas drawl that even a few decades in Italy haven't erased.

Hakeem Oluseyi

2008-05-06 16:31:00

Hakeem Oluseyi, an astrophysicist, inventor, educator, amateur voice-actor, and self-described ?regular guy? from Mississippi, doesn?t remember exactly how he first became interested in science.

Marcello Pavan

2008-05-06 16:31:00

Marcello Pavan loves physics. He says that becoming a physicist is like joining the 'secular priesthood': "some people get the calling and some people don't."

Sekazi Mtingwa

2008-05-06 16:31:00

In addition to carrying out his own research in accelerator and high energy physics, MIT physicist Sekazi Mtingwa travels to Africa several times a year to promote science.

Building at the Nanoscale

2008-05-06 16:21:01

The thickness of a human hair is about 200 microns, 20 times the length of this guitar.

Black Holes

2008-05-06 15:37:46

A star exists in a delicate balance between the crushing force of gravity, on the one hand, and the push of incredibly hot gases on the other.

Gravitational Waves

2008-05-06 11:22:36

In our everyday world, we observe all sorts of waves, including sound waves, water waves, and radio waves. But what about gravitational waves?

Big 'G'

2008-05-06 10:46:19

In 1665, Isaac Newton recognized that all matter attracts all other matter, but he also recognized that the gravitational attraction of everyday objects for each other was far too small to be measured in his time.

Antihydrogen Antics

2008-05-05 15:56:45

As StarTrek fans know well, the fuel for warp drive is antimatter.

Luz Martinez-Miranda

2008-05-05 15:46:53

Luz Martinez-Miranda learned physics in a unique way: through optics.

Patricia Mooney

2008-05-05 15:46:53

"For me, physics is done in a community, and research involves social interactions," says Patricia Mooney.

Sergio Ulloa

2008-05-05 15:46:53

Like many physicists, Sergio Ulloa loves constantly learning new things.

Jim Valles

2008-05-05 15:40:47

A physicist at Brown University, Valles uses strong magnetic fields to cancel the effects of gravity on frog embryos, so they float in thin air.

Geoffrey West

2008-05-05 15:37:18

Like many people, Geoffrey West had difficulty with his high school physics classes.

Alice White

2008-05-05 14:57:34

Alice White proves that you can go home again. White grew up in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, the daughter of two physicists.

Bouncing Jets

2008-05-05 14:50:16

Oil is slick but did you know it can also bounce?

Cracking Up

2008-05-05 14:50:16

If you dropped a wineglass, you'd expect it to shatter, not skitter across the floor like a silver goblet.

My Cup Runneth Down

2008-05-05 14:41:13

It might seem intuitively obvious that a layer of dense liquid resting on a less dense liquid is an unstable situation. What isn't as obvious is the complex way that liquids arranged in this manner and tend to move.

Supernovae Surprise

2008-05-05 14:41:13

There's no avoiding the tragic end of a large star's life; it dies in a catastrophic explosion called a supernova.

Steady Drip of Progress

2008-05-05 14:38:20

It flows in rivulets, puddles in depressions, falls from the sky; you can even buy it at Costco--three-dimensional, "bulk" water is everywhere.

Speed Trap

2008-05-05 14:35:17

Like traffic cops with radar guns, physicists can now gauge the speed of electrons in a current.

A 'Soapy' Solution

2008-05-05 14:32:51

Researchers have been frustrated in their attempts to confirm the long-standing theory that describes how dyes mix in turbulent liquids.

Turbulence

2008-05-05 14:29:30

The erratic, swirling fluid motion known as turbulence increases wind resistance, and airplane manufacturers go to great lengths to eliminate rough surfaces that promote it.

Smashing Ions

2008-05-05 14:26:18

Brookhaven National Laboratory's new Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) smashes two high-energy beams of gold nuclei together head-on, in an attempt to create a state of matter, called quark-gluon plasma, that last existed only ten millionths of a second after the Big Bang.

Simply Shocking

2008-05-05 14:22:37

Sparks branch for the same reason that coral reefs and snowflakes do, according to new computer simulations.

Crystal Clear

2008-05-05 12:14:30

When an all-electron Wigner crystal (top) is squeezed too tightly, the electron wave functions begin to overlap (middle), and then create a quantum liquid (bottom).

The Sharpest Focus

2008-05-05 12:10:50

A team of researchers has announced a new technique that allows light to be focused to a smaller spot than ever before.

Red Rover, Red Rover

2008-05-05 12:06:18

With dwindling hope, scientists at the European Space Agency have awaited a nine-note musical message, much like the sound I hear on my daughter's cellphone when it receives a call.

Random Acts of Light

2008-05-05 12:00:42

Somewhere between a light bulb and a laser is an unusual and sometimes puzzling type of light source called a random laser.

Radioactive Hotdog?

2008-05-05 11:56:45

A spark flying between a metal doorknob and your hand is an intricate chain of electrical events.

Thanks for the Memories

2008-05-05 11:52:05

On September 21, 2003 the spacecraft Galileo ended a 14-year mission exploring Jupiter and its four largest moons.

Tiny Tubes

2008-05-05 11:48:54

Entangled pairs of particles, in which measuring the state of one simultaneously determines the state of the other, are a central part of proposed schemes for quantum cryptography and teleportation.

Tracking Traveling Excitons

2008-05-05 11:37:33

Researchers have tracked their first exciton. A team of researchers recently reported that they imaged the wave-like motion of the particle, which is essential to the operation of lasers in CD players and grocery scanners.

Structures of the Early Universe

2008-05-05 11:29:05

Enormous structures in the early universe which are invisible to the unaided eye become apparent when observed using a telescope sensitive to mm-wave light.

Polymers to Polyhedrons

2008-05-05 11:25:30

Nanoparticles covered in stringy polymers might someday form the building blocks for drug delivery systems or disease assays.

A New Twist

2008-05-05 11:04:03

The frictionless flow of atoms within solid helium may be confined to the axis of a screw dislocation, a spiral defect like the one in this crystal of silicon carbide.

Nanotube Nests

2008-05-05 11:00:53

Researchers have assembled carbon nanotubes into arrays of loops, lassos, and hooks.

Molecular Motion

2008-05-05 10:49:52

The scanning tunneling microscope (STM) can make impressive images of single atoms and molecules on surfaces; now it has been used to measure a molecule's internal motion.

Mini-BooNE

2008-05-05 10:46:16

MiniBooNE (mini booster neutrino experiment), a new experiment at Fermilab, has just begun its search for neutrino oscillations.

Mesoscopic Mystery

2008-05-05 10:42:18

Researchers continue to push rival interpretations of a vexing problem in mesoscopic physics, the size scale where quantum and classical worlds co-exist.

The Little Chill

2008-05-05 10:39:14

Some lasers can burn through solids, but others, shined on the right materials, have a chilling effect.

The World's Largest Cyclotron

2008-05-05 10:35:45

If you are asked how a watch works, one of the first things you might do is open one up and look at the parts inside.

In Synch

2008-05-05 10:31:17

Electrons don't normally know one direction from another, so researchers were perplexed a few years ago when they found a cold plane of electrons suddenly choosing to conduct many times better in one direction than in the perpendicular one.

T-ray Vision

2008-05-05 10:09:49

X-rays may be as familiar as your local dentist's office or airport security checkpoint, but it's unlikely that you've ever encountered a powerful T-ray, a beam of terahertz radiation.

Trilobite Molecules

2008-05-05 10:07:07

Researchers predicted the existence of a giant two-atom rubidium molecule with an electron cloud resembling a trilobite, the ancient, hard-shelled creature which lived in the Earth's seas over 300 million years ago.

Turning Circles

2008-05-05 10:04:21

Quantum communication schemes using light normally rely on the two types of photon polarization to encode information a bit at a time.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Tadpole

2008-05-05 09:43:13

Against a stunning backdrop of thousands of galaxies, this odd-looking galaxy with the long streamer of stars appears to be racing through space, like a runaway pinwheel firework.

Optical Corral

2008-05-05 09:30:00

If you want to keep a horse confined, put it in a corral. Now, it appears the same thing can be done with light.

Underwater Desert

2008-05-05 09:25:40

Windblown dunes can engulf houses, roads, and airfields, but researchers have had a hard time studying them under controlled conditions.

Veins of Gold

2008-05-05 09:15:56

Researchers dream of building crystals from the ground up to achieve tight control of their periodic structure.

The Incredible Shrinking Nucleus

2008-05-05 09:10:05

Objects in nucleus may be smaller than they appear. At least, that's what current research suggests.

High-Speed Chase

2008-05-05 09:06:17

Relativity theory insists that no matter what speed you choose for your spaceship--snail-like or close to light speed--the laws of physics always look the same.

Galaxies Galore

2008-05-05 09:02:55

Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute today unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind.

Flapping Flags

2008-05-05 08:59:54

The symbolic beauty of a flag flying high in the wind is simple to understand.

Fire!

2008-05-05 08:56:16

From bonfires to match sticks, flames usually have simple, predictable shapes.

Water Tubes

2008-05-02 10:17:57

Physicists have created a new form of water, one that stays liquid at hundreds of degrees C below zero.

MRI Magic

2008-04-25 10:04:56

Medical x-rays provide images of the body but utilize radiation that in large doses can damage cells. A completely different technology, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), emerged in the late 1970s.

Seeing Atoms

2008-04-24 15:24:33

What does it mean to see an atom? Suppose you tried to use the world?s strongest optical microscope to see an atom. What would happen?

Plasma Jets

2008-04-24 14:36:09

From the surface of the sun to the violent cores of quasars, many astrophysical objects shoot plasma in sharply defined streams, guided by magnetic fields.

Photonic Phocus

2008-04-24 13:56:46

Astronomers at the Space Telescope Science Institute today unveiled the deepest portrait of the visible universe ever achieved by humankind.

Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On

2008-04-24 13:46:40

Puny tremors may be the real movers and shakers of the seismic world.

Ingenious Algae

2008-04-24 11:45:47

Many of the oceans' algae have evolved natural "sunscreens" as protection from the sun's ultraviolet rays.

Ferrofluid Fun

2008-04-22 10:18:13

Have you ever seen a liquid magnet? If magnetic material is ground into an extremely fine powder, with a particle size of about 10 nanometers, and suspended in a liquid, the resulting magnetic suspension is called a ferrofluid.

Sound, Lights, Action!

2008-04-21 17:44:59

Sonoluminescence is a way to turn sound energy into light. When intense sound waves are created in a flask of water, a tiny air bubble in the water can give off flashes of light.

Solar Flares

2008-04-21 14:36:28

You may have seen the ?northern lights? in the fall of 2003, even if you live as far south as Texas or Italy.

Natural Reactors

2008-04-21 12:02:11

The first controlled nuclear reactor, built during World War II, was a great achievement, but it was not the first reactor to operate on planet Earth.

Chaos Rules

2008-04-21 11:15:52

In the 17th and 18th centuries, Newtonian mechanics was triumphant in its explanation of the solar system.

David Kestenbaum

2008-04-16 11:50:00

David Kestenbaum had planned on becoming a physicist, but a funny thing happened on the way to his Ph.D. His girlfriend dumped him. ?It was one of those weird quirks of fate,? David recalls.

David Landau

2008-04-16 11:50:00

Teaching and research are often portrayed as residing at opposite ends of the learning spectrum, but to David Landau, the two are closely interrelated.

Kris Larsen

2008-04-16 11:50:00

If you were to attend one of Kris Larsen?s classes, you might hear her describing the magnetic fields on the sun as a giant magnetic hernia. On another day, she might be comparing the shape of the universe to a Pringle?s potato chip.

Lawrence Krauss

2008-04-16 11:50:00

Krauss, a prolific author, works in a new field called ?particle astrophysics? that examines the interactions of two size extremes - fundamental particles smaller than atoms, and the entire universe.

Terence Hwa

2008-04-16 11:50:00

Terence Hwa's research is in unconventional areas, as he shuttles between statistical physics, molecular biophysics and theoretical genomics. He says, ?I don't fit into any particular community.?

Charles Holbrow

2008-04-16 11:42:02

Charles Holbrow's first memory of his interest in physics comes from when he was about 13 years old. He saved up money from his paper route to buy Millikan's Electrons. ?I read about two pages and it made no sense to me whatsoever.?

Brian Greene

2008-04-16 10:43:26

Brian Greene believes that he and a growing number of physicists have caught a glimpse of the answers to some of the deepest questions that physicists face today, and he wants to share them with you. Photo: Andrea Cross/WGBH-TV.

Carlos Gutierrez

2008-04-16 10:43:26

As a child Carlos Gutierrez wondered why there weren't more Hispanics in physics. He asked his teachers if they knew of any Hispanic physicists. When they couldn't name any, Gutierrez wasn't sure if he was cut out to be a physicist.

The Whole Picture

2008-04-15 16:06:30

Biologists dream of a point-and-shoot camera that can reveal details smaller than a wavelength of light in living cells.

Wholly Ozone

2008-04-15 16:06:30

According to recent research, cosmic rays may be enlarging the hole in the ozone layer.

Good Vibrations

2008-04-15 16:01:40

Born of the marriage of two cutting edge techniques, a new method can image bundles of DNA strands by sensing vibrations within the molecules.

Albin Gonzalez

2008-04-15 15:50:00

Medical physics is not a well-known field, but it's an extremely important one, says medical physicist Albin Gonzalez. Gonzalez works with high-tech machines of the same type of accelerators used in cutting-edge science.

Anita Goel

2008-04-15 15:50:00

Anita Goel is fascinated by motors. Not the kind of motor that resides under the hood of your family car, but the molecular motors that make their way along strands of DNA, reading and replicating genetic information.

David Goldhaber-Gordon

2008-04-15 15:50:00

David Goldhaber-Gordon knows a thing or two about chocolate. While he served as the chocolate steward for Harvard's Society of Fellows, it was his burden to select just the right truffles and bar chocolates for weekly Society functions.

Timothy Gay

2008-04-15 15:50:00

Timothy Gay of the University of Nebraska often engages in what he calls ?physics propaganda.? He says, ?As working scientists, we need to explain to the public why what we?re doing is cool and interesting.?

Blowin' in the Wind

2008-04-15 14:24:16

After crossing Florida, Hurricane Katrina headed into the Gulf of Mexico early on August 26, 2005 as a Category One hurricane.

Charles Falco

2008-04-15 10:58:05

Every once in a while, you meet someone who proves that the worlds of science and art are not intellectual opposites. Charles Falco is such a person.

Janet Conrad

2008-04-14 15:50:12

?If you were to pick out the kid in the class who would be a physicist, you wouldn't pick me,? says Janet Conrad.

Jim Gates

2008-04-14 15:50:12

Sitting in Mr. Coney's physics class as a junior in a segregated high school, Jim Gates had an epiphany. Watching a ball roll down an inclined plane and learning that a simple equation could describe its motion, Jim Gates knew that he wanted to be a physicist.

Jolie Cizewski

2008-04-14 15:50:12

Cizewski grew up in Maryland. Her parents didn?t have high school diplomas. Her father earned a GED, and her mother, a refugee from Czechoslovakia, attended a high school that closed during World War II.

Manuela Campanelli

2008-04-14 15:50:12

Physics is international. Look at the life of Manuela Campanelli, a physicist born in Switzerland, educated in Italy, who has worked in Germany and the United States and is married to a physicist from Argentina.

Steve Gass

2008-04-14 15:50:12

Over 3,000 people a year lose fingers to table saws. One day in his workshop, Gass looked at his saw and wondered how quickly he could stop the blade in the event of accidental contact. His physics experiments led to SawStop.

Sam Zeller

2008-04-14 11:50:52

When Sam Zeller was in high school, some of the boys in one of her science classes put frog guts in her purse.

David Stevenson

2008-04-14 11:36:29

Over a hundred years ago, French science fiction writer Jules Verne wrote a novel called Journey to the Center of the Earth, in which a team of explorers descends below the ground, deep inside the Earth. David Stevenson has thought of a way to someday make Verne?s dreams a reality. Maybe.

Dripping Faucets

2008-04-10 16:59:09

When the faucet drips, most people call the plumber or get out their tools, but some physicists are content to study the phenomenon instead.

Crystal Cannibals

2008-04-10 16:51:53

The crystallization process that turns a liquid to a solid is brutally competitive, according to an analysis of experiments performed on the Space Shuttle.

Cold Molecules

2008-04-10 16:41:20

Physicists have cooled single atoms and molecules with two or three atoms to just a few thousandths of a degree above absolute zero, but it has proved hard to push larger molecules below about 10 degrees Kelvin.

Doo-Wop Deuteron

2008-04-10 16:41:20

The simplest nucleus in nature is that of the hydrogen isotope, deuterium.

Cold Atoms

2008-04-10 15:46:31

This year's physics Nobel Prize went to three researchers who were the first to observe and study the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), a new phase of matter.

An Especially Elegant Universe

2008-04-01 14:01:00

Joe McMaster, producer, director, and writer of Nova's The Elegant Universe, is not a physicist. Fortunately, he had the patient help of the show's star and narrator, physicist Brian Greene, as he put together the PBS production delving into String Theory.

Laser Cooling and Trapping

2008-04-01 10:57:00

Absolute zero, as cold as it gets, resides at the very bottom of the temperature scale.

You are My Shining Star

2008-04-01 09:01:08

To a star, size matters. The more massive the star, the higher the pressure and temperature in its core, the brighter it shines, and the sooner it exhausts the hydrogen fuel supply for its fusion reactions.

Nuclei Knockdown

2008-04-01 08:40:06

At RHIC--the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, located at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York--gold nuclei traveling at nearly the speed of light smash into each other, destroying themselves and producing a spray of other particles.

Saturn's Rings

2008-03-31 17:12:32

Saturn?s rings have posed a big challenge ever since Galileo first laid eyes on them in 1610 through his 20-power telescope.

Granular Materials

2008-03-28 09:07:09

In our everyday world, matter is usually classified into solids, liquids, and gases. But what about dry sand?

Do You See What Eye See?

2008-03-28 08:50:20

It?s been hard to miss the publicity for LASIK, the laser surgery that reshapes the cornea to improve the eye?s ability to focus.

Giant Magnetoresistance

2008-03-28 08:24:09

Nobel-prize-winning research led to the MP3 player and HDTV-on-demand.

The Circle Game

2008-03-28 08:12:06

Like a planet orbiting the sun, some ideas keep coming around. In the 1920s, the inventors of quantum mechanics scuttled the notion that an atom behaves like a tiny solar system.

Steve Giddings

2008-03-26 08:42:31

Gravity is very important to Steve Giddings ? both when he is pondering its place in a unified theory of everything and when he is clinging to a sheer ice cliff in the course of one of his climbing excursions.

AMANDA, Light of my Ice...

2008-03-21 08:52:20

An underwater telescope called AMANDA, frozen deep in Antarctic ice, peers down at ghostly neutrinos that pass through Earth from above the Northern Hemisphere.

Allison Porter

2008-03-16 19:02:56

Allison Porter breaks down many stereotypes. The 24-year-old Miss Washington 2004 graduated from Harvard in 2002 with a degree in astrophysics.

Juli Morgan

2008-03-16 18:49:16

Juli Morgan is a modern-day explorer. A geophysicist at Rice University, she has sailed on nine ?research cruises? on specially designed ships to distant parts of the world.

Lene Hau

2008-03-16 18:40:15

In 1999, after years of practice, Lene Hau learned how to bicycle at the speed of light.

John Decker

2008-03-16 18:29:19

Though it sounds like a major career shift to most people, going from doing plasma physics research in Boston to making graphite guitars in Hawaii has been a smooth transition for John Decker.

Anne Catlla

2008-03-16 18:09:39

As an applied mathematician, Anne Catlla, a postdoctoral associate at Duke University, applies mathematical methods to a wide range of physical phenomena, learning about a variety of interesting subjects in the process.

Crystal Clean

2008-03-16 17:47:40

The chemical reactions that keep sulfur and other pollutants from leaving automobile tailpipes rely on catalysts in the form of microscopic particles dispersed within the large surface area of a porous material.

Corona... Gasp!

2008-03-16 17:37:49

In late October 2002, the time that some parts of the world were observing autumn?s explosion of color, the Sun gave a colorful show of its own to solar physicists.

'Hole' Fiber Fights Cancer

2008-03-16 17:13:49

A holey fiber may be able to plug the "holes" in the list of laser colors is affordable to most scientists.

Catching Neutrinos

2008-03-16 17:06:42

The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) in Ontario, Canada has been designed to "catch" neutrinos from the sun.

Catch a Quasiperiodic Wave

2008-02-29 14:26:57

Quasicrystals are unusual metallic alloys whose atoms are arranged in orderly patterns that are not quite crystalline.

Blinding Light

2008-02-29 14:19:40

Light slows down when it enters a medium such as glass or water, and its new speed depends on the material.

All Mixed Up

2008-02-25 13:23:49

If you fill a barrel part-way with red beads, add some green beads, and then roll it around the room a bit, will your beads blend?

Transparent Nuclei

2008-02-25 13:23:49

A two-quark particle shot into a large nucleus is ordinarily absorbed, as its quarks interact with the nuclear quarks. But in some cases it can sail right through. Now a research team has reported that they have observed this so-called color transparency in the lower energy realm, where such quark-scale effects aren't normally seen. The results?which are somewhat controversial?could help theorists who hope to bring the clean calculations of high energy, particle physics down into the messy world of lower energy nuclear physics.

Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

2008-02-12 16:52:25

Networks are everywhere: from social networks and terrorist networks linking people through the World Wide Web and beyond to biological networks communicating within a cell and from linguistic networks describing how words relate to each other to �networks tracking how diseases spread globally.

Catherine Asaro

2008-02-12 16:52:25

Former physics professor Catherine Asaro is a rising star among science fiction authors. Her books range from ?hard? science fiction, with scientific plot devices and premises laid out in intricate detail, to softer science fiction novels that use futuristic technology as a kind of backdrop to character-driven plots.

Fred Begay

2008-02-12 16:52:25

Ancient Navajo thought contains many parallels to modern scientific concepts, including radiation (Tsa'jilgish in the Navajo language), and lasers (Hatsoo'algha k'aa'), according to Navajo physicist Fred Begay, who has spent hundreds of hours translating and making the connections between traditional Navajo beliefs and modern science.

Michael Binger

2008-02-12 16:52:25

Not many people would drop $5000 on a celebratory dinner for 25 friends at the Voodoo Lounge in Las Vegas, but that?s just what particle physicist Michael Binger did last August.

Goldilocks Proteins

2008-02-05 17:17:34

Milky-white cataracts, the world's leading cause of blindness, can occur when proteins in the lens of the eye aggregate, or collect, forming clumps.