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Lattice QCD places quarks on a three-dimensional grid and calculates each cell’s evolution, much like numerical weather forecasting.
Matt von HippelPhysicists Solve a Big Quantum Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up.
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Brookhaven National Laboratory’s 2001 measurement found an unexpectedly large muon g-factor, hinting at undiscovered particles linked to dark matter.
Matt von HippelPhysicists Solve a Big Quantum Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up.
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The muon’s magnetic wobble records a tiny contribution from every particle in existence.
Matt von HippelPhysicists Solve a Big Quantum Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up.
@science
Lattice calculations and independent groups now conclude that known particles and forces fully explain the muon’s extra wobble.
Matt von HippelPhysicists Solve a Big Quantum Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up.
@science
After VEPP-2000 installed a new detector in 2010, its 2023 measurement found a significant change in pion production.
Matt von HippelPhysicists Solve a Big Quantum Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up.
@science
Recent lattice-based simulations agree with the newly measured pion rate, adding weight to a result that challenges older measurements.
Matt von HippelPhysicists Solve a Big Quantum Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up.
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A June 2020 prediction sharply disagreed with Fermilab’s April 2021 measurement, nearly reaching the threshold for claiming new particles.
Matt von HippelPhysicists Solve a Big Quantum Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up.
@science
After a decade of computational advances and more computing power, the BMW collaboration matched the experimental result.
Matt von HippelPhysicists Solve a Big Quantum Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up.
@science
A highly precise detector produced a new pion-rate measurement that sharply diverges from its own previous results.
Matt von HippelPhysicists Solve a Big Quantum Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up.
@science
Collider results disagree: new VEPP-2000 data align with lattice simulations, while earlier VEPP-2000 data and BABAR support the older rate.
Matt von HippelPhysicists Solve a Big Quantum Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up.
@science
The data-driven method disagrees with the latest experiment and BMW’s prediction, shifting the mystery to electron-positron collision data.
Matt von HippelPhysicists Solve a Big Quantum Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up.
@science
For 25 years, muon-wobble experiments and theory disagreed by one part in a million. New theory cut the gap to one in 100 billion.
Matt von HippelPhysicists Solve a Big Quantum Mystery. Now, Old Results Don’t Add Up.
@science
The spinning duct transforms protein solution through shear, narrowing, water removal, acidification, and molecular alignment.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
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Spider silk’s real advantage is specific strength: tensile strength measured against mass, where lightweight materials win.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
@science
Darwin’s bark spider produces silk with an ultimate tensile strength of about 1,600 megapascals.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
@science
Spider silk is made at room temperature inside a living organism through a low-energy, low-toxicity process.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
@science
In 1709, Francois Xavier Bon collected hundreds of spider egg sacs, boiled and combed them, then spun them into stockings.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
@science
Exactly how spider silk proteins assemble inside the spinning duct remains unresolved, making laboratory recreation difficult.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
@science
PiggyBac recognizes only TTAA, a four-letter sequence so common in silkworm DNA that precise insertion cannot be controlled.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
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Scientists exploit piggyBac by keeping its end sequences and replacing the DNA between them with a chosen gene, including spider-silk genes.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
@science
Final stretching aligns spidroins: hydrogen-bonded nanocrystalline sheets add strength, while amorphous regions provide stretch.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
@science
CRISPR-Cas9 uses a guide matching about 20 DNA letters to cut one precise location and copy donor DNA into the repair.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
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Natural spider silk costs roughly $7 million per kilogram, about 50 times the price of gold.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
@science
Farming spiders fails as an industry: they cannibalize one another, need substantial space, and cannot be reliably milked.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
@science
Equal-mass, equal-length ropes can make silk withstand roughly twice the force of steel despite silk’s lower strength per area.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
@science
A one-square-centimeter spider-silk rope could support 60,000 newtons, roughly the weight of a fully grown African elephant.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
@science
Darwin’s bark spider silk reaches 520 megajoules per cubic meter, versus 50 for Kevlar and 170 for ultra-high-strength steel.
VeritasiumIs spider web really stronger than steel?
@science
The Smith Chart repeats every half wavelength, so another 92-millimeter lap produces the same stub reactance.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
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A standard Smith Chart handles one frequency, while real signals trace curves across frequency ranges.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
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A directional antenna array focused to roughly 10 degrees makes power in that direction 400 times stronger.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
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In an inductor, voltage leads current by exactly 90 degrees.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
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Reflections in a transmission line keep much of a signal’s power from reaching the antenna.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
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Smith Chart circle intersections reveal resistance and reactance while each point simultaneously reveals the reflection coefficient.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
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Household AC at 50–60 hertz has a wavelength of 5,000–6,000 kilometers, dwarfing ordinary house wiring.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
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To match impedance, move to normalized resistance one, then cancel the remaining reactance with a series component.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
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Series stubs require cutting into the main line, so parallel stubs are more practical for matching.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
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Philip Smith, Amiel Volpert, and Tōsaku Mizuhashi independently pursued graphical systems that made impedance matching faster and more dependable.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
@science
Constant-resistance lines become circles: zero resistance makes the largest circle, while infinite resistance approaches the point one.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
@science
A 50-ohm line measuring 36 ohms resistance and 74 ohms reactance has normalized impedance z = 0.7 + 1.5j.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
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Inductance fights changes in current, producing a larger opposing voltage when current changes faster.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
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One complete 360-degree Smith Chart rotation represents moving half a wavelength along the transmission line.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
@science
Every Smith Chart point encodes both an impedance and a reflection coefficient, with distance from center showing reflection strength.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
@science
Match resistance without a resistor by finding the right line position, then canceling reactance with a lossless inductor or capacitor.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
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A dangling cable connected to nothing can match a line’s impedance simply by trimming its length.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
@science
The Smith Chart compresses the entire infinite impedance range into one finite circle.
VeritasiumThe Scariest Chart In Electrical Engineering
@science
An elephant’s mass overwhelms its surface area, leaving little air resistance and enormous impact energy in a fall.
Kurzgesagt – In a NutshellWhat Happens If We Throw an Elephant From a Skyscraper? Life & Size 1
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Every size range is a different physical world, forcing evolution to redesign organisms as body size changes.
Kurzgesagt – In a NutshellWhat Happens If We Throw an Elephant From a Skyscraper? Life & Size 1
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Tiny animals can survive falls from great heights: low mass means little kinetic energy, while surface area slows and cushions them.
Kurzgesagt – In a NutshellWhat Happens If We Throw an Elephant From a Skyscraper? Life & Size 1
@science
Body size is biology’s most underappreciated regulator, shaping how organisms are built, experience the world, live, and die.
Kurzgesagt – In a NutshellWhat Happens If We Throw an Elephant From a Skyscraper? Life & Size 1
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For insects, water’s surface tension acts like glue, engulfing them beneath a surface they cannot break.
Kurzgesagt – In a NutshellWhat Happens If We Throw an Elephant From a Skyscraper? Life & Size 1
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Make an animal ten times longer and its surface area grows 100-fold, but its volume and mass grow 1,000-fold.
Kurzgesagt – In a NutshellWhat Happens If We Throw an Elephant From a Skyscraper? Life & Size 1
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Some insects breathe underwater inside a trapped air layer: oxygen diffuses in, while carbon dioxide diffuses out.
Kurzgesagt – In a NutshellWhat Happens If We Throw an Elephant From a Skyscraper? Life & Size 1
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An ant can be thrown from an airplane without serious harm. At its scale, falling is largely irrelevant.
Kurzgesagt – In a NutshellWhat Happens If We Throw an Elephant From a Skyscraper? Life & Size 1
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A wet mouse carries three grams of water, over 10% of its weight. Wet humans carry 800 grams, about 1%.
Kurzgesagt – In a NutshellWhat Happens If We Throw an Elephant From a Skyscraper? Life & Size 1
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Fairy flies measure 0.15 millimeters and swim through air with hairy wings because ordinary insect flight fails at their scale.
Kurzgesagt – In a NutshellWhat Happens If We Throw an Elephant From a Skyscraper? Life & Size 1
@science
A liquid’s apparent fracture threshold may reflect the testing machine’s speed limit, not the liquid’s true limit.
Rohini SubrahmanyamWe Know Simple Fluids Can Flow. Turns Out, Some Can Fracture.
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In complex fluids, long molecular chains absorb fracture energy and slow cracks. Simple fluids lack that mechanism.
Rohini SubrahmanyamWe Know Simple Fluids Can Flow. Turns Out, Some Can Fracture.
@science
A hydrocarbon blend, despite being a nonelastic simple fluid, can fracture under tensile stress instead of simply flowing.
Rohini SubrahmanyamWe Know Simple Fluids Can Flow. Turns Out, Some Can Fracture.
@science
A liquid’s critical fracture stress scales with viscosity multiplied by strain rate, so faster stretching offsets lower viscosity.
Rohini SubrahmanyamWe Know Simple Fluids Can Flow. Turns Out, Some Can Fracture.
@science
Simple fluids relieve stress by flowing, while brittle solids store elastic energy and release it through growing cracks.
Rohini SubrahmanyamWe Know Simple Fluids Can Flow. Turns Out, Some Can Fracture.
@science
When pressure drops, cavitation creates intermolecular voids that can rapidly merge into a glass-like crack.
Rohini SubrahmanyamWe Know Simple Fluids Can Flow. Turns Out, Some Can Fracture.
@science
Liquid fracture may not require elasticity, challenging a longstanding assumption drawn from viscoelastic fluids.
Rohini SubrahmanyamWe Know Simple Fluids Can Flow. Turns Out, Some Can Fracture.
@science
With a faster apparatus, less-viscous liquids such as honey or water might also fracture.
Rohini SubrahmanyamWe Know Simple Fluids Can Flow. Turns Out, Some Can Fracture.
@science
The hydrocarbon blend fractured every time researchers measured it, producing a sharp pop.
Rohini SubrahmanyamWe Know Simple Fluids Can Flow. Turns Out, Some Can Fracture.
@science
Cracks in tested simple liquids traveled at approximately 500 to 1,500 meters per second, versus 0.07 in melted polystyrene.
Rohini SubrahmanyamWe Know Simple Fluids Can Flow. Turns Out, Some Can Fracture.
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Light bends downward in an accelerating rocket because the rocket moves during the beam’s crossing.
VeritasiumWhat Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity
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Matter does not fall into a gravitational well. It follows the straightest paths through spacetime curved by mass.
VeritasiumWhat Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity
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If you feel weightless and your accelerometer detects no acceleration, you are in an inertial frame.
VeritasiumWhat Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity
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A rocket can curve past a planet while its occupant experiences constant-velocity, force-free motion.
VeritasiumWhat Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity
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An orbiting astronaut follows a geodesic. The orbit is circular in space but helical through spacetime.
VeritasiumWhat Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity
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The equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass has been tested to approximately one part in 10 trillion.
VeritasiumWhat Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity
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General relativity has passed virtually every experimental test applied to it over roughly the past century.
VeritasiumWhat Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity
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Near the Sun, starlight deflected twice as much as strictly Newtonian calculations predicted.
VeritasiumWhat Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity
@science
Standing on Earth equals accelerating upward at 9.8 meters per second squared in deep space.
VeritasiumWhat Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity
@science
Gravity is not a force in general relativity. Objects follow geodesics through curved spacetime.
VeritasiumWhat Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity
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Albert Einstein’s happiest thought was realizing free fall feels identical to weightlessness deep in space.
VeritasiumWhat Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity
@science
Matter tells spacetime how to curve, and spacetime tells matter how to move.
VeritasiumWhat Everyone Gets Wrong About Gravity

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