The notion of gun-propelled launch goes back to Jules Verne. Such Mass Drivers have been envisioned in numerous Sci Fi tales, including "Earthlight", by Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein's "The…

A light-emitting diode (LED) that emits more energy than it consumes has been published by researchers from MIT. That violates the second law of thermodynamics, right? Isn't that specifically…

I just saw the most annoying video about an interesting physics question. Apart from the over the top stereotypical German (supposed to be funny or is he for real?) and arrogant “look how clever we…

Artist Laura Hines has done a couple of gorgeous illustrations of Humboldt squid. Humboldt Squid #1 (above) is a rendering of this photograph from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute: It's a…

The building blocks of matter: Molecules: /> Many of the ancient Greek philosophers believed that allsubstances were composed of tiny particles or atoms; but it was not until the nineteenth…

Supersonic passenger jets are so 1970s. The Concorde has been gone for almost 10 years and most people don't miss it.  But its fundamental concept - people want to get places faster - has not…

A new imaging system uses walls, doors or floors as 'mirrors' to gather information about scenes that it can't see, even though those objects are not reflective. Yes, it could ultimately lead to…

Time is relative, of course, but we still hate to be late for appointments.  So there has always been research on making our keeping of time a little more accurate. A new clock tied to the…

New York University cultural anthropologist and Associate Professor Allen Feldman is visiting the University of Sydney, notes the blog site of the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry…

Whenever I try to explain something about particle physics to a layman, I run into the problem of mass/energy units. A Giga-electronVolt is not something you may expect people to be familiar with,…