physics
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GZA and Neil deGrasse Tyson team up on a hip-hop record about science
I do not know much about writing rap lyrics, but I’m guessing that most rappers do not meet with physicists and cosmologists from MIT and Cornell before sitting down to write. But that’s exactly what Wu-Tang Clan founding member GZA did during the creation of his new album, Dark Matter — a project the rapper […]
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C1ty By NuMb3r5: A formula for growing better cities
Theoretical physicist Geoffrey West says he's found the secret to bringing cities back from the brink. It's all in the numbers, he says. But numbers also may be our downfall.
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How we’ll get ultra-efficient solar cells by copying plants' 'quantum biology'
Some day solar cells will be as cheap as house paint, and the renewables vs. fossil fuel debate will seem as quaint as Whigs vs. Jacksonian Democrats. Getting there has inspired all kinds of crazy ideas, and the craziest, perhaps, is to do it exactly like plants do.
Thing is, your average plant turns out to be exploiting tricks of physics that most scientists used to think were only possible inside a lab, under high vacuum, at the intersection of a bunch of laser beams cooling a handful of atoms to near absolute zero.
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Physics breakthrough could mean solar panels made of nothing but glass
Exploiting an effect previously thought too small to be worth anyone's time, a bunch of researchers at the University of Michigan have figured out how to exploit the magnetic properties of light in a way that could ultimately lead to solar panels made entirely of glass or transparent ceramics. "We've all been taught that this […]