Ever wonder how the physics of Portal's portals worked? Or how Mario could walk on space rocks in Super Mario Galaxy? Games Demystified seeks to answer these pressing questions, with code samples and working demos. [more inside]
posted by hellojed on Nov 7, 2009 - 6 comments

Is The Large Hadron Collider Being Sabotaged from the Future? A couple of distinguished physicists posit that this indeed might be the case! [NYT Article]
posted by sk381 on Oct 14, 2009 - 128 comments

It is our opinion that all of Superman's recognized powers can be unified if his power is the ability to manipulate, from atomic to kilometer length scales, the inertia of his own and any matter with which he is in contact. The Grand Unifying Theory of Superman's powers. ('pdf) (via)
posted by slimepuppy on Sep 30, 2009 - 62 comments

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have been able to confirm the production of the superheavy element 114, ten years after a group in Russia, at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, first claimed to have made it. The search for 114 has long been a key part of the quest for nuclear science’s hoped-for Island of Stability.

Scientists image single molecule with atomic force microscopy. See the original abstract in Science. CNET reproduces a representation of the experiment.
posted by grouse on Aug 28, 2009 - 43 comments

The funicular railway is a kind of cable-based railway that gives me great joy because of its peculiar shape and its uselessness for doing anything other than what it does. A funicular carriage is generally stairstepped or terraced, so you can't repurpose these cars for other uses. They generally work in a particular way, too, as pairs: one goes up the mountain, one comes down the mountain! Maybe this kind of glee is why they seem to be especially popular in Japan today, where they can be taken to many popular sightseeing areas--but a fair number of funicular railway riders are probably there for the journey, not the destination. [more inside]
posted by wintersweet on Aug 25, 2009 - 64 comments

In Hypermusic Prologue, physicist Lisa Randall re-imagines her extradimensional theories of the universe as opera, with a score by Hèctor Parra. Some more about this on YouTube (the last three are in french, but you can hear some of the music): Episode 1 (Randall speaks), Episode 2 (scenery), Episode 3 (the music), and Episode 4 (more scenery).
posted by twoleftfeet on Aug 21, 2009 - 20 comments

Physics Games is a collection of browser games that all have at least a rudimentary physics model. Some of the games I've enjoyed are Roly Poly Eliminator, Totem Destroyer 1 & 2, Demolition City and Red Ball. Most are fairly simple but some are complex, notably IncrediBots 1 & 2, which might as well require an engineering degree (slight hyperbole). My absolute favorite type of game on this site is the destroy-castles-with-a-trebuchet game, handsomely represented by not one but three games, Castle Clout, Castle Clout: Return of the King (no Tolkien connection) and Crush the Castle. All this is but a small sample of what's on offer.
posted by Kattullus on Aug 14, 2009 - 21 comments

The Niels Bohr Library & Archives has completed a project to transcribe its collection of more than 500 oral histories of physics, including a few audio snippets of the interviews. And, if you'd like to put a face with that voice, check out the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives. [via] [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole on Jul 29, 2009 - 9 comments

"I can see the audience tonight, so I can see also from the size of it that there must many of you here who are not thoroughly familiar with physics, and also a number that are not too versed in mathematics- and I don't doubt that there are some who know neither physics nor mathematics very well. That puts a considerable challenge on a speaker who is going to speak on the relation of physics and mathematics- a challenge which I, however, will not accept: I published the title of the talk in clear and precise language, and didn't make it sound like it was something it wasn't- it's the relation of physics and mathematics - and if you find that in some spots it assumes some minor knowledge of physics or mathematics, I cannot help it. It was named." The Feynman Messenger series at Cornell has been made available online for the first time thanks to Bill Gates.
posted by hindmost on Jul 15, 2009 - 125 comments

System and method for creating exalted video games and virtual realities. This patent application, describing a new genre of "exalted video games," starts simple -- with a woman quoting Lenin -- and spirals out into a rambling tome on arts and economics over the course of 100 pages, from Aristotle to Clint Eastwood. It's easy to write off physicist/poet/entrepreneur Dr. Elliot McGuckin as a standard Internet crackpot -- except that he's also a professor at Pepperdine University, received a $125,000 grant from the Kaufmann Foundation, and teaches a class that was written up in the NYT. [more inside]
posted by waxpancake on Jul 15, 2009 - 68 comments

Liquid Sand: High-speed camera catches liquidlike behavior in a stream of granular material.
posted by homunculus on Jun 29, 2009 - 17 comments

TOE breaking Lorentz invariance - "by treating space and time differently as well as separately, the infinities in the quantum mechanics equations vanish, and gravity behaves as it should." [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Jun 27, 2009 - 44 comments

What Periodic Videos did for chemistry, Sixty Symbols is doing for physics and engineering. Some behind the scenes action and general scienciness. [more inside]
posted by DU on Jun 26, 2009 - 13 comments

Genesis Revisited scientifically summarises the scientific field of Creation Science (warning: science) [transcript]
posted by East Manitoba Regional Junior Kabaddi Champion '94 on Jun 22, 2009 - 103 comments

Steam engine. Henry was first. Steam powered trains soon followed. Steam powered shovels, tractors, and rollers. Think technology has made steam obsolete? Not yet.
posted by Mblue on Jun 20, 2009 - 24 comments

The real world location behind “Up’s” Paradise Falls. But could that house really fly?
posted by Artw on Jun 2, 2009 - 54 comments

Pascal Boyer explores the field of crackpottery in his article How I found glaring errors in Einstein's calculations. "For some time now, I have been an avid reader and collector of webpages created by crackpot physicists, those marginal self-styled scientists whose foundational, generally revolutionary work is sadly ignored by most established scientists. These are the great heroes, at least in their own eyes, of alternative science." [more inside]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on May 22, 2009 - 46 comments

Solar activity normally follows an 11-year cycle. The new cycle was originally predicted to start in early 2008, but despite a few sunspots appearing last year, the Sun still features a remarkable lack of activity - the deepest minimum since 1913. However, NASA's STEREO mission has seen indications that activity is increasing again, in the form of a coronal mass ejection (video [.mov, 3.3 Mb]), with an accompanying radio burst.

[Previously]
posted by Electric Dragon on May 20, 2009 - 16 comments

Episode 4 - Problems "Okay, sometimes I almost want to give up everything." A fascinating insight into the Large Hadron Collider (loving the soundtracks too). YTL
posted by tellurian on Apr 25, 2009 - 22 comments

Friday Flash Frustration: Their cute little faces ask for the impossible. Get them to the other side. (via)
posted by DU on Apr 17, 2009 - 54 comments

New physics research: Time variation of a fundamental dimensionless constant
posted by shothotbot on Apr 1, 2009 - 26 comments

Friday Flash Fun: Green Moon Lab! Manipulate gravity and momentum to get to the exit in this sleek, simple, Portal-esque physics puzzler. Contains twenty levels plus an unlockable challenge mode. A little weak in the writing department, but the drunken swooping gameplay more than makes up for it. (via)
posted by Rhaomi on Mar 13, 2009 - 16 comments

The thermal time hypothesis. [more inside]
posted by CheeseDigestsAll on Mar 5, 2009 - 36 comments

Friday 3MB-Mac-and-PC-download fun: Jumpman. [more inside]
posted by Rinku on Feb 20, 2009 - 29 comments

World of Science contains budding encyclopedias of astronomy, scientific biography, chemistry, and physics. This resource has been assembled over more than a decade by internet encyclopedist Eric Weisstein with assistance from the internet community. MeFi visited Weisstein's Mathworld a couple years ago.
posted by netbros on Feb 18, 2009 - 6 comments

A fascinating talk about the composition of the universe [Youtube, approx 1 hour], presented by Sean Carroll, theoretical physicist at CIT. [via] [more inside]
posted by knave on Feb 11, 2009 - 29 comments

"It doubtless seems highly paradoxical to assert that Time is unreal, and that all statements which involve its reality are erroneous. ... I believe that time is unreal. But I do so for reasons which are not, I think, employed by any of the philosophers whom I have mentioned, and I propose to explain my reasons in this paper." ~McTaggart, The Unreality of Time, 1908. (Bonus: The Kant Song.)
posted by voltairemodern on Feb 10, 2009 - 96 comments

On Truth and Reality. Despite several thousand years of failure to correctly understand physical reality (hence the current postmodern view that this is impossible) it is actually very simple to work out how matter exists and moves about in Space. The rules of Science (Occam's Razor / Simplicity) and Metaphysics (Dynamic Unity of Reality) require that reality be described from only one single source existing, as Leibniz wrote: "because of the interconnection of all things with one another." [more inside]
posted by netbros on Jan 30, 2009 - 46 comments

CERN Podcast - Lighthearted chats at the CERN laboratory with "a bit of particle physics thrown in". Featuring visits from British satirists and comedians, including Chris Morris and Kevin Eldon.
posted by Blazecock Pileon on Jan 30, 2009 - 5 comments

Scientists from the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland have managed to teleport information from one isolated atom to another over a distance of one meter, without it ever crossing space. Here's how they did it. [more inside]
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on Jan 29, 2009 - 44 comments

Perfect Balance If this is Flash Fun, then today must be Friday. [more inside]
posted by DU on Jan 29, 2009 - 46 comments

The Italian Job: Problem Solved
posted by Artw on Jan 23, 2009 - 43 comments

Phriday Physics Phun! What is the force Superman exerts to stop a plane from crashing into the ground, or the speed and mass of Vince Vaughn's winning Dodgeball shot? What's the force exerted by a Dominique Wilkins windmill slam dunk, or the speed of a retired Charles Barkley? What's the frequency of a cat's purr? ...the mass of a snowflake? ...the pressure inside a can of soda? ..the reaction time of the human fingertip? The Physics Factbook, via hypertextbook.com, is "an encyclopedia of scientific essays written by high school students that can be used by anybody," containing over 800 entries and special topics. [more inside]
posted by not_on_display on Jan 16, 2009 - 28 comments

Richard Feynman Fan. YouTube playlists. [Previously.]
posted by McLir on Jan 3, 2009 - 10 comments

Cloth Physics Simulation
posted by Brandon Blatcher on Dec 29, 2008 - 25 comments

A Review of Criticality Accidents (3.7 MB pdf) Do you like reading comp.risks, or CVR transcripts from famous plane crashes? Then you may enjoy this technical analysis of 60 accidents where improper handling of fissile materials led to unexpected critical mass. [more inside]
posted by ikkyu2 on Dec 10, 2008 - 36 comments

There used to be this problem you see, until one of our own kindly settled it. His services are desperately needed once again.
posted by tkolar on Dec 3, 2008 - 191 comments

Confirmed: Scientists Understand Where Mass Comes From. An exhaustive calculation of proton and neutron masses vindicates the Standard Model. Matter is merely vacuum fluctuations.
posted by homunculus on Nov 23, 2008 - 52 comments

Is the Multiverse Real? Discover takes a look at theories that our universe is one of many. This blogger adds some interesting commentary. via
posted by Bookhouse on Nov 16, 2008 - 35 comments

Incredibots. Make crazy machines! Solve puzzles! Share with your friends! And that's just the beta. Similarly [more inside]
posted by DU on Nov 13, 2008 - 36 comments

"...the best place to hide bulls**t is in a refereed journal that’s not open-access!" The math-physics blog n-category cafe digs into the curious case of M.S. El Naschie. El Naschie is editor-in-chief of the journal Chaos, Solitons, and Fractals, published by the well-respected scientific publisher Elsevier and sold to academic libraries for US$4,520 a year. The problem? El Naschie has published 322 of his own papers in the journal -- papers that John Baez (of "This Week's Finds in Mathematical Physics" and "The Crackpot Index") describes as "vague, dreamlike imagery," "undisciplined numerology larded with impressive buzzwords," and "total baloney." Is El Naschie a reverse Sokal? Or a Markov process for producing random publishable papers? One thing's for sure -- he knows how to cure cancer.
posted by escabeche on Nov 12, 2008 - 49 comments

The Science of Scent. An entertaining and enlightening TED talk by biophysicist Luca Turin.
posted by louche mustachio on Nov 11, 2008 - 20 comments

A math professor was explaining a particularly complicated calculus concept to his class when a frustrated pre-med student interrupts him. "Why do we have to learn this stuff?" the pre-med blurts out. The professor pauses, and answers matter-of-factly: "Because math saves lives." "How?" demanded the student. "How on Earth does calculus save lives?" "Because," replied the professor, "it keeps certain people out of medical school."
posted by cthuljew on Nov 9, 2008 - 82 comments

Man loses father to smoking 50 years ago. Builds time machine.
posted by loquacious on Nov 6, 2008 - 143 comments

The DiVincenzo Code [youtube trailer, geekery]. Faced with a strict demand from a funding agency to allocate research funds towards the dissemination of research ideas to the public, an experimental physics group at the University of Oxford produced a feature-length (55 min) action thriller about murder, ancient prophecy, tea breaks, and quantum computation. [more inside]
posted by fatllama on Nov 5, 2008 - 6 comments

From the American Physical Society, Physics is a great free resource for those of you out there that want to keep up with current research topics in the vast world of physics. [more inside]
posted by ozomatli on Nov 4, 2008 - 6 comments

Quantum of culture. Terminology from quantum theory shows up frequently in art, films, poetry and sculpture. Robert P. Crease gauges the impact of quantum mechanics on popular culture. [Via]
posted by homunculus on Oct 27, 2008 - 20 comments

Physics Invader takes the classic Space Invaders idea and, as you might guess from the name, adds physics. Extra points awarded for pushing the heaps of Invader corpses off the edge of the screen! PEW PEW PEW! [more inside]
posted by 40 Watt on Oct 26, 2008 - 19 comments

Nobels for Physics announced. The prize will be shared between three individuals, including one American teaching at the University of Chicago. The other two winners are from Japan, Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa .
posted by leybman on Oct 7, 2008 - 19 comments