Popular Physics
The Sun is expected to increase its radiant output by about 10% per billion years. The rate at which the radius of the Earth's orbit would need to increase in order to keep the present value of the Sun's radiant flux at the Earth constant…
We describe a hands-on accurate demonstrator for cosmic rays realized by six high school students, whose main aim is to show the relevance and the functioning of the principal parts of a cosmic rays telescope (muon detector), with the help…
Among the many outreach and communication tools available in our digital era, traditional tools such as exhibitions still hold an important place. The ALICE collaboration is setting up a new exhibition at the experiment's site, as part of…
Quantum technologies can be presented to the public with or without introducing a strange trait of quantum theory responsible for their non-classical efficiency. Traditionally the message was centered on the superposition principle, while…
The end (for human scientists) is nigh? The posit of this discourse is that the majority, if not all, scientific research will eventually be undertaken by one, or a number of, weak artificial intelligences.
Climatologists have calculated that a complete melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet would cause global sea levels to rise by some 7.2 meters (23.6 feet). This article investigates the possibility of physically removing this excess water from…
The 2017 Nobel Prize in physics awarded to Rainer Weiss, Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne has generated unprecedented interest in gravitational waves (GWs). These notes are based on my lectures on various occasions - in the University of…
The Virtual Environment for Neutrinos (VENu) is a virtual reality-based visualisation of the MicroBooNE detector. MicroBooNE is a liquid-argon-based neutrino experiment, which is currently operating in Fermilab's Booster neutrino beam. The…
A new lease on life was given to ESA's International Gamma-ray Astrophysics Laboratory, because of its unique capability to identify electromagnetic counterparts to sources of gravitational waves and ultra-high energy neutrinos.
A time-dependent dark energy component of the Universe may be able to explain tensions between local and primordial measurements of cosmological parameters, shaking current confidence in the concept of a cosmological constant.
A star burns its nuclear fuel and balances gravitation by the pressure of the heated gas, during its active lifetime. After the exhaustion of the nuclear fuel, a low mass star finds peace as a {\em white dwarf}, where the pressure support…
The Zoo solution to Fermi's Paradox proposes that extraterrestrial intelligences (ETIs) have agreed to not contact the Earth. The strength of this solution depends on the ability for ETIs to come to agreement, and establish/police treaties…
In this article, I discuss the relationship of mathematics to the physical world, and to other spheres of human knowledge. In particular, I argue that Mathematics is created by human beings, and the number $\pi$ can not be said to have…
The usual main objection against any attempt in finding a physical cause for the planet distance distribution is based on the assumption that similar distance distribution could be obtained by sequences of random numbers. This assumption…
The interaction of a drum's head with its enclosed air is presented in the simplest possible form appropriate to the questions and issues that arise in understanding the timbre of the banjo. The inherent air-head impedance mismatch allows…
The students are introduced to navigation in general, and, in particular, the skills the medieval people of the Vikings used to navigate on the open sea. The topics of navigation and the Vikings are introduced by questions and a short…
This note is an attempt to explain in simple words why the famous relation $E=mc^2$ misrepresents the essence of Einstein's relativity theory. The note is addressed to high-school teachers, and a part of it - to those university professors…
The existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life forms among the thousands of billions of galaxies that dance in the Universe is beyond doubt. Meeting with one of them is only a matter of time. SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial…
We discuss how visions for the futures of humanity in space and SETI are intertwined, and are shaped by prior work in the fields and by science fiction. This appears in the language used in the fields, and in the sometimes implicit…
We propose the use of specific dynamical processes and more in general of ideas from Physics to model the evolution in time of musical structures. We apply this approach to two \'Etudes by F. Chopin, namely op.10 n.3 and op.25 n.1,…