Physics
Category archives for Physics
The E-Cat is back, and people are still falling for it!
Posted by Ethan on May 21, 2013 
“Science literacy is a vaccine against the charlatans of the world that would exploit your ignorance.” -Neil deGrasse Tyson Well, I guess it’s that season again. The charlatan who claims to have invented a cold fusion device — the same device whose flaws were exposed here two years ago — has just held an “independent…
“Einstein’s Greatest Blunder” was REALLY a blunder!
Posted by Ethan on May 17, 2013 
“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” -Albert Einstein Back when Einstein first proposed his theory of General Relativity, his revolutionary picture of the Universe was met with a mix of curiosity, awe, and intense skepticism. It isn’t every day that your most cherished of all physical theories — the…
The Rise and Fall of Supersymmetry
Posted by Ethan on May 15, 2013 
“Supposedly she’d died, but here she was again–somewhat changed, but you couldn’t kill her. Not when the truest part of her hadn’t even been born.” -Denis Johnson Over the past 100 years, our picture of the Universe has changed dramatically, on both the largest scales and the smallest. On the large-scales, we’ve gone from a…
Where does an earthquake’s energy come from?
Posted by Ethan on May 10, 2013 
“As seismologists gained more experience from earthquake records, it became obvious that the problem could not be reduced to a single peak acceleration. In fact, a full frequency of vibrations occurs.” -Charles Francis Richter You’ve all been around long enough to be familiar with the severe damage that earthquakes can cause, rattling and cracking the…
The Far Future of our Solar System
Posted by Ethan on May 8, 2013 
“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.” -Alan Watts “They do not see what lies ahead, when Sun has faded and Moon is dead.” -J.R.R. Tolkien One of the most amazing facts about the Universe is that, despite only having spent a few hundred years…
Why Science Is Anything But A Crime
Posted by Ethan on May 3, 2013 
“Talent hits the target no one else can hit; genius hits the target no one else can see.” -Arthur Schopenhauer You’ve probably heard the story, by now, of Kiera Wilmot, the 16-year-old girl who performed a mildly dangerous chemistry experiment on school grounds, mixing together household cleaner and aluminum inside a sealed container. You can…
Putting Einstein to the Test
Posted by Ethan on May 1, 2013 
“The views of space and time which I wish to lay before you have sprung from the soil of experimental physics, and therein lies their strength. They are radical. Henceforth space by itself, and time by itself, are doomed to fade away into mere shadows, and only a kind of union of the two will…
The Cosmic Speed Limit
Posted by Ethan on April 26, 2013 
“All our sweetest hours fly the fastest.” -Virgil If you’ve been around the block once or twice, you know that the speed of light in a vacuum — 299,792,458 meters-per-second — is the absolute maximum speed that any form of energy in the Universe can travel at. In shorthand, this speed is known as c to…
How far away is stuff?
Posted by Ethan on April 24, 2013 
“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” -Douglas Adams Well, maybe “peanuts” isn’t going to do. When you look out at the night sky, all sorts…
The Beginning of the Universe and the Limit of Knowledge
Posted by Ethan on April 19, 2013 
“Despite its name, the big bang theory is not really a theory of a bang at all. It is really only a theory of the aftermath of a bang.” -Alan Guth So you finally understand it. The Big Bang tells us that the Universe was hotter, denser, and expanding at a faster rate in the…
