PHYSICS & MATH

CERN Scientists Discover the Force

The best and worst of April Fools' pranks from around the Web. The first of April always brings out the prankster in people - even scientists. From the prestigious CERN declaring that The Force exists to Google displaying a fully reversed version of the search engine's homepage at com.

Ants Continue to Colonize Even When in Space

Developing Algorithms from Ants in Space Space, the final frontier; these are the voyages of ants. No seriously, back in January the International Space Station received a shipment of ants.

Can Magnetism Bend Heat And Sound? Study Reveals A New Dimension to Magnetic Fields

For many years researchers have sought to discover just how many uses magnetic fields can have. To date they have become essential in quantum computing, they are vital in medical imaging, and astronomers have even used natural magnetism to amplify the signals of light from far off supernovae and galaxies so that we here on Earth can see them hundreds or thousands of light-years away. But in a new study from researchers at Ohio State University, nanotechnologists have revealed that magnetic fields can impact our lives in far more real ways—controlling heat and sound waves that exhibit magnetic properties of their own.

Facts You Should Remember This Pi Day

This year's Pi Day is something special because it is the first date in a century that represents the first five digits of P or 3.1415. To celebrate this perfect day, grab yourself a piece of pie and check out these fun Pi facts.

VIDEO—Watch How Researchers Tricked Light Into Revealing Its Paradoxical Nature

If you ever thought that you were alone in not understanding how light could both be a particle and a wave, you need not worry because you weren’t. In fact, for the better part of a century since Einstein theorized the dual nature of light, even researchers have had a tough time digesting the out-of-the-box quantum physics that this notion required to be true. Many researchers simply assumed that since the math checked out, and Einstein being the brilliant genius that he was, that the theory was right. But now, with some clever experimental design and a super-powered electron microscope, researchers are putting the doubts to rest and proving Einstein’s theory once and for all.

The Light Theory—How Researchers Are Proving Einstein Right With a Snapshot

As one of these few disciplines, quantum physics falls into a realm of science where well-documented and highly regarded theories take precedence. But explaining these theories requires a deep understanding of the underlying science, and devising lab experiments to illustrate them is a near impossible feat. One research team of American and Swiss physicists with the EPFL Labs in Switzerland, however, are doing just that. And equipped with some wire, a laser and quick-capturing electron microscope they’re proving what Einstein theorized was true — light can act as a particle and a wave.

Fluid Mechanics Finally Reveal ‘How Many Licks to Get to the Center of a Tootsie Pop’

Ever wonder, like so many other children, exactly how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop? Well, while many others couldn’t resist the temptation of biting their way to center of the sugary treat, researchers at New York University have officially calculated exactly how much work is needed to get to the center of the beloved lollipop. And it turns out that it is hundreds more than the talking owl once told us.

Eons After the Big Bang, and 80 Years After It Was Proposed, Dark Matter Takes Form in Andromeda

For decades now, researchers have long believed that the ever-elusive dark matter has comprised roughly 80 percent of the entire universe’s mass. But in spite of advancing technology, taking astronomers past the moon to far off comets/planets and back, researchers have not yet been able to identify the existence of dark matter in our galaxy or any other, and have not yet been able to isolate the hypothetical invisible particles in Earth labs either. But in what appears to be a strange X-ray emission from nearby galactic clusters, two independent European research teams believe that they may have found the first true dark matter known to man—and it’s not too far away either.

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