Articles for category: Physics, Space

Astrophysics Says Neutron Stars Can Spin 700 Times Per Second and Remain Structurally Intact - Making Them the Closest Thing to a Perfect Natural Clock the Universe Has Ever Produced

Astrophysics Says Neutron Stars Can Spin 700 Times Per Second and Remain Structurally Intact – Making Them the Closest Thing to a Perfect Natural Clock the Universe Has Ever Produced

Sameen David

If someone told you there are dead stars out there spinning hundreds of times every single second without flying apart, you might think they were exaggerating. But that is exactly what neutron stars do, and they do it with a kind of terrifying elegance that makes your fastest wristwatch look like a toy. When you ...

Astrophysics Says the Silence Between Radio Signals From Deep Space May Not Be Absence - It May Be a Language Transmitted on a Timescale That Makes Human Communication Look Like a Single Blink

Astrophysics Says the Silence Between Radio Signals From Deep Space May Not Be Absence – It May Be a Language Transmitted on a Timescale That Makes Human Communication Look Like a Single Blink

Sameen David

You are used to thinking of silence as nothing happening. A pause in a conversation means someone is thinking, hesitating, or has run out of things to say. Now imagine that, on a cosmic scale, what looks like silence to you might actually be the middle of a sentence, stretched across thousands or even millions ...

Astrophysics Says White Dwarfs Cool So Slowly That No White Dwarf in the Observable Universe Has Had Enough Time Since Formation to Fully Cool Down - Every One That Will Ever Exist Is Still Warm

Astrophysics Says White Dwarfs Cool So Slowly That No White Dwarf in the Observable Universe Has Had Enough Time Since Formation to Fully Cool Down – Every One That Will Ever Exist Is Still Warm

Sameen David

If you could switch your eyes for X‑ray detectors and infrared telescopes, the night sky would feel a lot less cold than it looks. Scattered through the darkness are the burned-out cores of dead stars – white dwarfs – that, by every simple intuition, ought to be frozen and black by now. Yet astrophysics tells ...

5 Scientific Theories That Could Change How You See Reality

5 Scientific Theories That Could Change How You See Reality

Sumi

Everyday life tricks us into thinking reality is simple: solid objects, linear time, clear cause and effect. But modern science has quietly built a very different picture, one that’s weird, unsettling, and strangely beautiful. If you’ve ever had the feeling that there’s more going on beneath the surface of ordinary life, you’re not imagining it. ...

8 Mind-Bending Puzzles From Science That Still Have No Easy Answers

8 Mind-Bending Puzzles From Science That Still Have No Easy Answers

Andrew Alpin

If you think scientists have everything figured out, the universe has a dark sense of humor. For every problem we’ve solved, another one pops up, stranger and slipperier than the last. Some of these puzzles sit right at the edge of what humans can even imagine, like trying to describe a new color or explain ...

Particle Physics Says Every Atom in Your Body Has Been Dissolved in Ancient Oceans Locked in Stone and Exhaled by Creatures That No Longer Exist - and Will Continue Existing Long After You Are Gone

Particle Physics Says Every Atom in Your Body Has Been Dissolved in Ancient Oceans Locked in Stone and Exhaled by Creatures That No Longer Exist – and Will Continue Existing Long After You Are Gone

Sameen David

Look down at your hands for a second. What you are seeing is not really “you” in the way most of us imagine it. It is a temporary gathering of ancient particles that once drifted in primordial oceans, flashed through the hearts of exploding stars, cycled through dinosaur lungs, and slept for ages locked in ...

Particle Physics Says 99.9999999% of Every Atom Is Empty Space - Which Means the Surface You Are Touching and the Body Doing the Touching Are Almost Entirely Absence - and the Solidity You Feel Is a Force Not a Boundary

Particle Physics Says 99.9999999% of Every Atom Is Empty Space – Which Means the Surface You Are Touching and the Body Doing the Touching Are Almost Entirely Absence – and the Solidity You Feel Is a Force Not a Boundary

Sameen David

Look around you for a second. The chair under you, the phone in your hand, the bones in your fingers pressing against the screen all feel solid, dense, reassuringly “there.” Yet, at the level of atoms, almost everything you are interacting with is, in a very real sense, nothing. That comforting solidity is more like ...