Big or Small, Take Your Pick of Black Holes

Medium-sized black holes either don't exist or are very rare, say astronomers of the new study. The smallest known black holes formed from exploding supernovas, and are about 10 times larger than the Sun.Black holes in contrast, are billions of times larger than the Sun, and reside deep in the core of most galaxies. Middle of the road black holes are generally thousands of times larger than the Sun.The results are based on a comprehensive analysis of globular cluster RZ2109, using the European S.. Read more »

Back to the Fusion.

Greetings readers! After a short and sweet vacation, I'm back with a story from the Wall Street Journal, on average Joes who build homemade nuclear-fusion reactors as a hobby ( see, the WSJ isn't always abysmally bland).Amateur fusioneers like Richard Hull (pictured) spend copious amounts of time in their basement laboratories, tinkering with things like Tesla coils, causing flashes and sparks to spurt out of their homes in an alarming display (at least to their neighbors). Tesla coils are us.. Read more »

Highlights from the Blogosphere

This week's good reads:"Can I Break Just One Rib?"WWdN: In ExileWil Wheaton goes roller-skating with his offspring and learns that Newton's laws of motion aren't limited to science class."Is Your Breakfast a Sad and Soggy Affair?"The Guardian/Improbable Research columnFind out why "crunchiness declines in the presence of a soggifying liquid.""It's a Sure Bet"JPL BlogJosh Willis talks about climate change, randomness, and why it's a bad idea to bet against global warming."Test Your Science Savvy".. Read more »

One Hundred Thousand Time's a Charm.

Despite 18 years of orbit and 2.72 million miles traveled, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope continues to dutifully make its way around the Earth.Yesterday, the Hubble completed its 100,000 orbit in space. To celebrate, scientists aimed the telescope at part of a nebula near the star cluster NGC 2074 (about 170,000 light-years away from the Earth), capturing the dazzling display (see picture on left) on camera.The Hubble as been around well, almost as long as I've been alive. In fact, many if not al.. Read more »

In Quest for Speed, Olympic Swimmers Use Physics.

In light of the recent, thrilling accomplishments of the U.S. men's Olympic swim team, I thought it proper to focus on just how much physics goes into every aspect of Olympic swimming- from training and pool design right down to those tiny swim suits.In ultra competitive swimming, flow is everything. Understanding how a swimmers movements or force impacts the water as his or her body gracefully glides and pushes is key to understanding how motion affects flow. Here is where fluid mechanics comes.. Read more »

Highlights from the Blogosphere

"False Alarm for Mars Bug"Cosmic Ray"The Discovery, Re-Discovery, and Re-Re-Discovery of Computed Tomography"Skulls in the Stars"Goodyear's Tire Solution"Stock Car ScienceGood tires can make all the difference. A bit of NASCAR science from the author of The Physics of NASCAR"The Things I Didn't Believe in Graduate School"Star Stryder"What Lies Beneath"Cocktail Party PhysicsScience in the service of art and archaeology"Lightning Car"Top GearOne of the co-hosts of the BBC's long-running auto show,.. Read more »

Not So Smooth: Dark Matter in Lumps and Clumps

A team of cosmologists in the U.S. and Switzerland have created the most complex and intricate dark matter computer simulation yet. For a month, they followed what happens to billions of dark matter particles 20 years after the Big Bang, over a span of 13.7 billion years. The simulation provides, for the first time, a dazzling panoply of the dark matter structure of a typical galaxy; all the way down to extremely tiny, detailed scales. To view a bit of the action, check out the video above.Da.. Read more »