Skip to main content

Physics Week in Review: November 22, 2014

Here’s a disquieting thought for your weekend: Dark Energy Might Be Stealing the Glue Holding the Universe Together. A new invisibility cloak simultaneously works for heat flow and electrical current.

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Here's a disquieting thought for your weekend: Dark Energy Might Be Stealing the Glue Holding the Universe Together.

A new invisibility cloak simultaneously works for heat flow and electrical current.

The Proton and Neutron Just Got Two Brand New Subatomic Cousins in the Baryon Family. A new LHCb result adds two new composite particles to the quark model.


On supporting science journalism

If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.


The Bittersweet Taste of Philae’s Limited Success. We’ve learned more about comets than ever before thanks to it. But we would’ve learned a lot more, if not for one unfounded fear.

The Bartender and the Barista: How physics makes beer easier to carry than coffee. (tl;dr: the foam of the beer reduces sloshing.)

Portable, stable atomic clocks may soon be small enough to fit in your pocket or on your wrist.

Quantum mechanics may allow bizarre types of artificial magnetic fields.

Is Quantum Entanglement Real? Albert Einstein and Bell's Theorem.

From solar panels to robots: 3D microtechnology with Origami folding art.

Neutrinos on Ice: How to Build a Balloon.

"How shall we study the morphology of the amorphous?" In Praise of Fractals (poem). Related: Jen-Luc Piquant adores these Hand-Built Porcelain Sculptures by Nuala O’Donovan that Mimic Fractal Patterns Found in Nature. "Borrowing from shapes found in coral, teasel flowers, and pine cones, O’Donovan examines not only patterns, but irregularities that arise from random or unexpected events."

Mesmerizing rebuild of a mechanical Fourier calculator: Albert Michelson's harmonic analyzer -- a 19th century mechanical calculator that can do Fourier analysis with just gears, springs and levers -- was found at the University of Illinois, and then lovingly restored by a trio of makers.

Wigner Energy: This Real Physics Phenomenon Would Make The Perfect Fictional Bomb.

This addictive browser-based fluid dynamics simulator by George Corney is keeping Jen-Luc Piquant from getting other stuff done.

How a $47 Shrimp Treadmill Became a $3-Million Political Plaything. “I am the marine biologist who put a shrimp on a treadmill—a burden I will forever carry.”

Geckos inspire scientists in US military-developed Spider-Man suit project. Silicone material moulded into microscopic slanted wedges grip glass, metal, wood and plastic in a similar way to gecko’s feet. Related: Giant Gecko Robots Will Save Us from Space Junk.

The man who can hear Wi-Fi wherever he walks thanks to a clever hack of his hearing aid.

When the end is just the beginning - a physicist explores the possibility that the cosmos is cyclical.

Anyone can access collision data from the Large Hadron Collider through the new CERN Open Data Portal.

Milky Way's Monster Black Hole Ignores Its 'Snack,' and Debate Swirls.

"It was only a matter of time before someone combined Chladni plates, ferrofluids, Ruben’s tube and a giant Tesla coil into one music video."

Non-Newtonian Fluid in Slow Motion, courtesy of The Slow Mo Guys:

What Wikipedia Taught Ben Lillie About His Grandfather. "To me, he was Grandpa Freddy. To the scientific community, he was Frederic M. Richards, a leading biophysics thinker—something I never knew until I visited his entry after he died."

Oppenheimer’s Folly: On black holes, fundamental laws, and pure and applied science.

Simulation assesses odds of intercepting interstellar communications.

Scientists Get To The Heart Of Fool's Gold (Iron Pyrite) As A Solar Material.

Mythbusters Explain Flexible, Bendable Gorilla Glass in Promo for Corning.

Six Episodes That Prove Castle Is "a scifi world of time travelers, cloaking devices, working phasers, ninjas and telekinesis."

Nobel Laureates Call for Release of Iranian Student Omid Kokabee.

Rush Holt, physicist and congressman, to lead American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The Chameleon in the Vacuum Chamber: A new proposal for an experiment that could test the presence of a fifth force with unprecedented precision.

How WWII Made Rock Climbing Safer. Falling is never a good idea, but it used to be way worse.

Ancient Meteorite Reveals New Evidence on the Solar System's Beginnings.

The Metaphysics of Interstellar, which almost had 6 wormholes and 5 black holes. A conversation with Chris Nolan and Kip Thorne. Related: The Lost Chapter of Interstellar tells Dr. Mann's story. Also: Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains the End of Interstellar in Case You Didn't Understand It. Finally, some folks would like you to shut up already about the inaccuracies of Interstellar, but the fine tradition of nerd-gassing arises "not as an expression of distaste or disgust but as a celebration of artists attempting to embrace all the forces of nature that surround us,” per Neil de Grasse Tyson.

Wired was on a roll this week with tons of posts inspired by the film. Case in point: Time Travel (of a sort) is Real. Here Are The People and Spacecraft Who Have Done It. Related: Rhett Allain pondered, What's the Best Item to Carry With You During Time Travel? (Wait, I know this one: a sonic screwdriver!) Maybe you've heard of Euler's Identity: The Baffling and Beautiful Wormhole Between Branches of Math. Bonus: The XKCD Guide to the Universe’s Most Bizarre Physics. There was also A Guide to Flatland: What It’s Like to Live in Two Dimensions. And We All Might Be Living In An Infinite Hologram. On the exoplanet front, here's the backstory on Gliese 667Cc and the ugly battle over who really discovered the first Earth-like exoplanet. Finally, here's How a Superchilled Telescope Will Look Back at the Dawn of the Universe.

Gravity may have saved the universe immediately after the Big Bang, say researchers.

How Looking for Ciphers in Shakespeare Shaped Modern Codebreaking.

How The Enigma Machine Worked, In One Infographic.

Geneva-Based Artist Chaotic Atmospheres Imagines the Geometric Insects of a Polygonal Planet in Digital Illustration Series.

New research harnesses the repulsive power of magnets to reduce the force of head-to-head collisions on the football field.

An old algorithm showing the benefits of quantum mechanics to solve certain problems has finally been run on a quantum computer.

Quantum mechanical calculations reveal the hidden states of enzyme active sites.

Saddle up for maximum snack satisfaction (mathematically speaking).

Graphene-based scanner to reveal hidden aspects of artwork.

"I'm a physicist." "Wow you must be clever!" Why our idea of intelligence is out-dated.

Slight Twitches in Atomic Timekeeping May Reveal Dark Matter.

Researchers discern the shapes of high-order Brownian motions.

Wittgenstein’s Radiator and Le Corbusier’s treacherous knot.

The Geometry of Love. "the Metaphysical poets proved that you can in fact engage the heart with science."

Napoleon's Guide to Improperly Using Cryptography.

Doubles (short film): When Two Universes Collide, A Man Meets His Dream Girl's Exact Double. Per io9: "One day, our universe starts to merge with an alternate universe and gradually, duplicate versions of every human being on Earth start to appear. It's disorienting at first, but then one office worker meets the dopplegänger of the girl of he's in love with."

A Proof of the Math Fact of Rolle in Short Words.

This Is How You Mathematically Predict Lightning Strikes.

Molecular modeling and physics: A tale of two disciplines.

NASA's (Un)Censored Moonwalkers. The astronauts weren't thrilled, but public affairs ensured the public would read every word spoken on the Moon.

The Best Way to Get Girls Into Science and Tech? Help Them Become "Makers," Says Intel.

"Topological insulators" are promising for spintronics, quantum computers.

Physicist Sumio Iijima: 'True education means fostering the ability to be interested in something.'

Would Game of Thrones' armour be viable in actual combat?

Doctor Whom: An Unhappy Doctor Confronts Customer Service About His Newly Regenerated Self.

'Wavelight', A Beautiful Time-Lapse of Star Trails Against the Wave Sandstone Formation in Arizona.

Finally, The latest TED-Ed Animation by educator Natalya St. Clair and animator Avi Ofer explores how painter Vincent Van Gogh’s colorful brush work captured the chaos of natural mathematical concepts like turbulence.