Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Nov 17, 2023

The 9 most massive numbers in existence

Big numbers are everywhere, from the cells in the human body to the size of the universe. But once numbers edge past the realm of the physical, the human mind can struggle to grasp the sheer awesome scale of these numbers. Even infinity can seem easier to understand in comparison...

Nov 20, 2023

How long is a second?

There are 24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, and 60 seconds in a minute — so surely a second is just 1/(24 x 60 x 60), or 1/86400, of a day, right? Well, it turns out that defining time isn't that simple. We're used to thinking...

Nov 23, 2023

What is the largest known prime number?

Prime numbers have been investigated for more than 2,000 years, since at least the era of the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid. There are infinitely many, but what is the largest known prime number? Prime numbers are those that can be evenly divided only by 1 and themselves, such as 3...

Feb 22, 2024

World's oldest known decimal point discovered in merchant's notes from 1440s Italy

The decimal point is 150 years older than historians thought it was, newfound notes from 15th-century Italy reveal. Decimal points are so simple, it seems like they should have existed forever. These handy mathematical tools break up whole numbers into tenths, hundredths and thousandths, making computation much simpler than with...

Mar 14, 2024

12 surprising facts about pi to chew on this Pi Day

Math nerds everywhere are digging into a slice of pie today to celebrate their most iconic irrational number: pi. After all, March 14, or 3/14, is the perfect time to honor the essential mathematical constant, whose first digits are 3.14. Pi, or π, is the ratio of a circle's circumference...

Mar 14, 2024

Can you solve NASA's Pi Day 2024 riddle?

Happy Pi Day 2024! Have you ever wondered what it would be like to solve problems for NASA to help with the exploration of other planets in the solar system? In celebration of Pi Day 2024, you can do just that and take the annual NASA Pi Day Challenge. This...

Mar 15, 2024

Pi calculated to 105 trillion digits, smashing world record

A data storage company has decoded more than 100 trillion digits of pi — smashing the world record for calculating the never-ending number. Unraveling this hefty slice of pi required the equivalent computing power of hundreds of thousands of smartphones. Pi — often abbreviated as 3.14 — is an irrational...

Aug 10, 2007

Greatest Mysteries: What Causes Gravity?

Editor's Note: We asked several scientists from various fields what they thought were the greatest mysteries today, and then we added a few that were on our minds, too. This article is one of 15 in LiveScience's Greatest Mysteries series running each weekday. In the deepest depths of space, gravity...

Oct 15, 2008

Tiny Tide Travelers May Sense Gravity

Life is no beach for tidal creatures that must migrate in sync with the waterline. Imagine trying to gauge the tides that sweep through a Kenyan mangrove forest: how far the water rises up a given tree depends on the season, the phase of the moon, and the tree's position....

May 12, 2010

Best Visual Illusion Of 2010 Defies Gravity

WASHINGTON (ISNS) -- On May 10, Japanese scientist Kokichi Sugihara claimed to have discovered a technology that every sixth grader knows to be impossible: a magnet that attracts wood. In front of a crowd of hundreds, he played a video showing four wooden balls rolling up four ramps, supposedly pulled...

Oct 13, 2010

Gravity at Small Scales Remains a Mystery

WASHINGTON (ISNS) -- Scientists know how gravity works at big distances -- the inter-planetary or inter-stellar range -- but does it work the same way at the inter-atomic range? A variety of tabletop experiments are trying to explore this issue. Already some theorists say that a departure from conventional gravity...

May 4, 2011

6 Weird Facts About Gravity

Gravity: You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone Astronaut Loren J. Shriver pursuing floating chocolate-covered peanut M&M's on the aft flight deck of the shuttle Atlantis. (Image credit: NASA)Here on Earth, we take gravity so for granted that it took an apple falling from a tree to trigger...

May 10, 2011

NASA Gravity Probe Confirms Two Einstein Theories

A NASA probe orbiting Earth has confirmed two key predictions of Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity, which describes how gravity causes masses to warp space-time around them. The Gravity Probe B (GP-B) mission was launched in 2004 to study two aspects of Einstein's theory about gravity: the geodetic effect,...

Jun 15, 2011

Defying Gravity: Tokyo Photographer 'Levitates'

Natsumi Hayashi makes flying look easy. But the self-portraits that seem to show the Toyko photographer levitating above the ground are actually the result of a lot of hard work. Sometimes I need to jump more than 300 times to get the perfect shot, Hayashi told MSNBC.com on June 8....

Jan 9, 2012

What If There Were No Gravity?

There's nothing like a nasty cold to make you appreciate good health. The same goes for the state of the universe: Tweaking just one of the fundamental physical laws or constants, normally perfectly fine-tuned at the right values to allow stars, planets, atoms and life as we know it to...