Donald Trump just ended his mercifully short victory speech, the majority of which consisted of Trumpisms we’ve already heard a million times before—except for one. Now (in addition to Muslims and walls and his smokin’ hot daughter), Donald Trump would like to talk to you about physics.
A group of nearly 2,000 professional physicists and astrophysicists have signed a letter, drafted by members of the Equity & Inclusion in Physics & Astronomy Facebook group and addressed to the Supreme Court justices, repudiating the lines of questioning put forward by Justices Antonin Scalia and John Roberts which…
This painful video is going around today as a story about a teacher who lost his job after accidentally bashing a student in the nuts with the flat side of an axe during a classroom demonstration. But according to someone who was there, it was actually the teacher with his sack on—or rather, just a little too close…
MIT administrators are erasing links to Walter Lewin, an extremely popular, now-retired physics professor, after an internal investigation determined he had been sexually harassing at least one female student online.
In an absurd twist to everything you know and love, physicists tackling what sounds like a question for the chronically stoned—"What if the entire universe is just one big hologram?"—have come to a tenuous conclusion that, yeah, that might actually be the case.
That half of the population that pees standing up knows of the ages-long struggle to find the perfect position for avoiding urinal splashback. But worry no more: a group of physicists at BYU has dedicated time, energy, and specially-calibrated nozzles to solving the problem, and they believe they've finally done it.…
Mars canyon! Tree gold! Boomerang returns! Mouse immunity! Dark matter! Early humans! Old linguistics! And playing god, the fun way! It's your decrepit old Science Watch, where we watch science—with an eyebrow raised!
"Do Black Holes Have 'Hair?'" "The giraffes that sailed to medieval China." "What would happen if you got zapped by the Large Hadron Collider?" Uh, chill out, science. Take a day off.
You're on the internet, so I bet I know what you think is cool: light sabers! Like in Star Wars, your favorite movie. Well guess what? Scientists are actually working to make your ridiculous fantasy a reality.
In other news today, the discovery of the amplituhedron, "a newly discovered mathematical object resembling a multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions," means that space and time may be illusions. If you understand this, please explain it in the discussion section below. [Image: Shutterstock]
Some of the world's greatest scientific minds are feverishly arguing over what would happen if you jumped into a black hole. All they can agree on: don't jump into a black hole.
Is the universe made up not of particles or fields, but of "bundles of properties, such as color and shape?" Uh, maybe.
Scientists have measured all the light released in the universe since the Big Bang. Everyone take Monday off.
Physicists say they have discovered a new type of friction. Yeah right.
In terms of "coolest ways to die," it's hard to beat "sucked into a black hole." The question's just: what would that entail, exactly? No one has first-hand experience. Would you spend weeks floating past its event horizon, before eventually being ripped apart? Or would you—as string theorist Joseph Polchinski…
The time has come for "Hey, Science," our relentlessly scientific weekly feature in which we have your most provocative and/ or dumb scientific questions answered by real live scientists (or related experts). No question is too smart for us to tackle, quite unfortunately. This week, scientists ponder the question: Are…
There is no (definitive) manual on How to Teach Quantum Physics, obviously, but one imagines that if such a manual existed it would likely recommend against opening your first lecture half-naked, curled into a fetal position while footage of Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and 9/11 play on the projector. And yet! Columbia…
The Telegraph reports that a group of nerds from the University of Leicester have ruined Batman for a different, much larger group of nerds by proving with "science" that Batman couldn't have used his cape to glide from the tops of tall buildings, as he is often depicted doing in non-documentary films and television…
It's barbecue season, and you need to sound smart while drinking beer around your charred meat. But how will you discuss the most important scientific news of the year — and maybe of the decade — if you don't know anything about it? It's okay. We're here to explain what "the God Particle" is, and whether or not the…
Scientists emerged from their particle-smashers on Tuesday to let the world know that they still haven't found the Higgs boson—the so-called "God particle" that could explain why objects have mass—and that they still need a few more months, at least, to find this totally real thing that is not an excuse for physicists…
