Zoom image will be displayedNeutrinos and antineutrinos are copious within this Universe, but we can only detect which flavor (electron, muon, or tau) the neutrino is when it interacts with another particle. During the in-between times, when it’s traveling, it’s...
Zoom image will be displayedWhen cooled to low enough temperatures, certain materials will superconduct: the electrical resistance inside them will drop to zero. When exposed to a strong magnetic field, some superconductors will exhibit levitation effects, and with a properly...
Zoom image will be displayedBy examining this strobe image of a bouncing ball, you cannot tell for certain whether the ball is moving toward the right and losing energy with each bounce, or whether it’s moving toward the left and...
Zoom image will be displayedIf you look farther and farther away, you also look farther and farther into the past. If the number of galaxies, the densities and properties of those galaxies, and other cosmic properties like the temperature and...
Zoom image will be displayedWe normally conceive of our Universe as having emerged from a preceding period of cosmic inflation, with our Big Bang occurring where one region of inflating space ceased inflating and transitioned to being dominated by matter...
Zoom image will be displayedFrom anywhere in the Universe, any object that’s in free-fall will have its trajectory determined by the force of gravity: defined by Einstein as the curvature of space. If there were some form of negative mass...
Zoom image will be displayedToday, the Universe has evolved into the complex, life-friendly place we know it to be because we were able to form neutral atoms early on in the Universe. Yet without just the right quantum properties and...
When a gravitational wave passes through a location in space, it causes an expansion and a compression at alternate times in alternate directions, causing laser arm-lengths to change in mutually perpendicular orientations. Exploiting this physical change is how we developed...
Whether two particles collide inside an accelerator or in the depths of space is irrelevant; all that matters is that we can detect the debris of what comes out, including newly created “daughter” particles. Although the flux of high-energy particles...
In theory, every quanta within each quantum field theory has a spectrum of excitations it can occupy, and those excitations occur within that quantum field theory, impacting the zero-point energy of empty space. Given the particles and fields we know...
