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Physics of the Sneeze

Who knew? A team from MIT is investigating the physics of the sneeze, using concepts from fluid dynamics. A video from Nature, intended for a lay audience, is available here, whereas the lead...

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Five Signs of New Physics

Ethan Siegel writes in Forbes magazine that, despite results at the Large Hadron Collider falling completely in line with the Standard Model of particle physics, "there are a large number of...

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"The Map of Physics"

Dominic Walliman provides an eight-minute video entitled "The Map of Physics" to illustrate the different subdisciplines in the field and how they relate to each other.

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Physics of Volleyball Float Serve

Pete Heureux, a beach volleyball player with a degree in physics, analyzes the float serve for Volleyball Magazine. What I found most interesting was the information presented in Figure 7. Researchers...

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Book Review: "Why String Theory?"

A decade ago, two books for educated, lay readers attempted to poke holes in string theory: Peter Woit's Not Even Wrong (which I reviewed here) and Lee Smolin's The Trouble with Physics (which I...

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Brian Greene Demonstrates Quantum Mechanics on CBS Late Show

Columbia University physicist Brian Greene recently brought an animation of the double-slit experiment to the CBS Late Show with Stephen Colbert, to mark the 90th anniversary of the study that helped...

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2017 Nobel Prize for Detection of Gravitational Waves

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics has been awarded to a trio of scientists for their work on the detection of gravitational waves. The official award announcement is available here, whereas some...

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Frustration for New Theories

Via Peter Woit/Not Even Wrong, the Economist has an article on how elaborate experiments designed to test unified theories are not providing support for them.

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Possible New Clues on Dark Matter

Two recent Nature articles offer possible progress in the quest to characterize dark matter. A Science Daily article quotes one of the authors, Tel Aviv University professor Rennan Barkana, to the...

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What Makes Water Slippery?

This new article explain's water's slipperiness in terms of density, chemical-bonding, and friction. There's even a theory that there are two kinds of water! The writer quotes James Kakalios, whose...

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Book Review: "We Have No Idea"

Jorge Cham is the creator of PHD Comics and himself a Ph.D. holder from Stanford. Daniel Whiteson is professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. Put the two together and...

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Physics Data on Baseball Home Runs

The Twitter feed MLB Barrel Alert provides a lot of data on how well the batter has gotten the barrel of the bat on the ball for each home run hit in the major leagues. The tweets provide, in visual...

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The Technology Behind the Black-Hole Image

Five-Thirty-Eight explains the data collection and processing technology behind the just-released "glowing-doughnut" image of a black hole. As the article notes, the black hole was not directly...

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Book Review: "The Cosmic Cocktail"

If you were to leave the book The Cosmic Cocktail on your coffee table, any guests would likely think it pertained to bartending. However, this book by University of Michigan professor Katherine...

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Murray Gell-Mann (1929-2019)

To mark the passing of Murray Gell-Mann, who died 10 days ago at age 89, I offer a link to this 2000 article from The Atlantic on the often-difficult working relationship between Gell-Mann and his...

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New York Times Piece on Quantum Mechanics

Sean Carroll has a piece in the New York Times, arguing that physicists have largely lost interest in understanding the foundational principles of quantum mechanics. The article provides a clear...

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Physics of Bowling: The Near Impossibility of a Spare on the 7-10 Split

The 7-10 split is when the only pins standing after a bowler's first shot of a frame are the leftmost and rightmost pins in the back row. It's obviously extremely difficult to knock out both pins on...

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Physics of Football's Spiral Forward Pass

For fans of American football, the New York Times has an article (link) on three physicists' explanation of why the axis of a spiral forward pass changes -- from nose pointing up at release to nose...

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Physicist Samantha Schultz Helps Oakland A's Pitchers Optimize Their Delivery

The San Jose Mercury News reports on physicist Samantha Schultz's position as a pitching analyst with the Oakland A's Major League Baseball team (link). The following paragraphs from the article...

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Vox on 2021 Nobel Physics Prize to Climate-Change Researchers

Voxexplains the climate-change modeling -- "account[ing] for the roiling randomness present in everything from materials to the motion of the atmosphere, and still mak[ing] useful predictions" -- that...

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Vox on Olympic Ski Jumping

Vox explains "Why ski jumpers hold their skis in a V," as opposed to the older style of keeping their skis parallel (link).

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Book Review: "Einstein's Greatest Mistake"

David Bodanis begins his 2016 book Einstein's Greatest Mistake with a depiction of a once-great scientist who had become a forlorn figure in his later years. He was usually alone when he walked home...

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Physicist Alan Nathan on Baseball Podcast

My friend Alan Nathan, a retired professor of physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and one of the leading experts on the physics of baseball, appeared on the Society for American...

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2022 Nobel Physics Prize to Quantum Entanglement Researchers

The 2022 Nobel Prize in physics has been awarded to three researchers for their work in quantum entanglement and its applications. This posting from Daily Kos features a compilation of links,...

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Vox Explains Henrietta Leavitt's 1908 Discovery of How to Measure Distances...

Vox provides a very clear explanation of Henrietta Leavitt's 1908 discovery that allows us to estimate the distance to stars and galaxies. The book Einstein's Greatest Mistake (which I previously...

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