Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Mar 31, 2018

A City-Size 'Telescope' Could Watch Space-Time Ripple 1 Million Times a Year

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A gravitational wave detector that's 2.5 miles long isn't cool. You know what's cool? A 25-mile-long gravitational wave detector. That's the upshot of a series of talks given here Saturday (April 14) at the April meeting of the American Physical Society. The next generation of gravitational wave...

Feb 28, 2018

Stephen Hawking Never Answered His 'Most Interesting' Scientific Question

Stephen Hawking died today (March 14), leaving behind a massive legacy of work as an astrophysicist, science communicator, activist, and figure of pop culture admiration. And on the day of his death, a question he raised and worked on until the last years of his life remains unanswered: Can information...

Jan 31, 2018

How a Student Photographed a Single Atom With a Store-Bought Camera

Look closely and you'll see it: a pale, purple pixel hanging in a black field between two cylindrical needles.What looks like a shimmering speck of dust is actually something much, much smaller: a single atom of strontium, isolated in an ion-trap machine at the University of Oxford. That's small. Really...

Jan 31, 2018

Tumbling Cat or Olympic Snowboarder? Turns Out, the Physics Is the Same

If you want to understand how snowboarders, skiers and other flipping, whirling Winter Olympians perform complex tricks while shooting through open air, you need to understand cats. Cats always (or at least usually) land on their feet. Turn a cat on its back and drop it from 15 feet, and...

Dec 31, 2017

Superpowered Chinese Lasers Could Soon Rip Open Raw Vacuum

Physicists are getting close to building lasers powerful enough to rip matter out of a vacuum. According to a report published Jan. 24 in the journal Science, a team of Chinese scientists is getting ready to start construction this year on a 100-petawatt laser in Shanghai known as the Station...

Nov 30, 2019

Student Solves a Decades-Old Physics Mystery

A university student recently solved a question that's puzzled physicists for over half a century: Why do gas bubbles appear to get stuck inside narrow vertical tubes? The answer may help explain the behavior of natural gases that are trapped in porous rocks. Years ago, physicists noticed that gas bubbles...

Oct 31, 2019

Daylight Saving Time Ends Sunday (So You Get 1 More Hour of Sleep)

This Sunday, people across the United States can rest easy, literally, as they'll get an extra hour of sleep because daylight saving time comes to an end. The change happens at 2 a.m. local daylight time on Nov. 3. While most wireless devices will fall back on their own, it's...

Apr 30, 2019

If There Were a Time Warp, How Would Physicists Find It?

It may sound like the stuff of science fiction, but scientists have already detected a time warp. But what does this mean? Basically, a time warp is some phenomenon that changes the flow of time by speeding it up or making it run more slowly. Physicists have known about time...

Oct 31, 2020

Birth of magnetar seen for the first time

Two neutron stars slammed together far away from Earth. The energy of their collision lit up their corner of the sky with a brief flash of gamma radiation, followed by a softer, longer-lasting glow across the electromagnetic spectrum. Peering into that fading light, researchers spotted an unusual infrared signal —...

Sep 30, 2020

Meet the zeptosecond, the shortest unit of time ever measured

Scientists have measured the shortest unit of time ever: the time it takes a light particle to cross a hydrogen molecule. That time, for the record, is 247 zeptoseconds. A zeptosecond is a trillionth of a billionth of a second, or a decimal point followed by 20 zeroes and a...

Jun 30, 2020

Earth's magnetic field changes 10 times faster than once thought

Our planet's dynamic magnetic field can change direction far more quickly than scientists suspected. This bubble of magnetism holds our atmosphere in place and protects us from harmful cosmic radiation and solar winds. But a few times every million years, the field's polarity reverses and the magnetic North Pole and...

Mar 31, 2020

'Dancing' star's weird, spirograph orbit proves Einstein right (again)

Einstein's theory of general relativity has been proven right (again!), thanks to the wobbly dance of a high-speed star swirling around the monster black hole at the center of our galaxy. Astronomers with the European Southern Observatory (ESO) have been watching that star — named S2 — orbit our local...

Oct 31, 2021

Rare Einstein manuscript is 'most valuable' ever to come to auction

A rare, 54-page manuscript co-written by Albert Einstein and his lifelong friend and engineer Michele Besso, in which the pair lay out the foundations of Einstein's famous theory of general relativity, will hit the auction block in Paris on Tuesday (Nov. 23). According to Christie's, which is hosting the sale,...

Oct 31, 2021

Rare Einstein manuscript sells for record-smashing $13 million at auction

A 54-page manuscript co-written by Albert Einstein and Swiss engineer Michele Besso has sold at auction on Tuesday (Nov 23) for a record-breaking $13 million. According to Christie's auction house, which hosted the sale, the manuscript has set a new record for the most expensive autographed scientific document ever sold....

Aug 31, 2021

Scientists pinpoint age of molten 'Einstein ring'

New science from a stunning 2020 Hubble image illuminates the back story behind a shining loop of light. The circle, also called an Einstein ring after the famous physicist who predicted its existence, came about due to a galactic-scale illusion. The galaxy this so-called molten ring curls around is called...