The First Pizza Joint

Egyptological PSA

Please learn the difference between:

Hieroglyphs (Noun): “The text is written using hieroglyphs”

Hieroglyphics (Adjective): “This is a hieroglyphic text”

The Egyptological community thanks you for your time and cooperation.

The quest to crystallize time

Bizarre forms of matter called time crystals were supposed to be physically impossible. Now they’re not.

Christopher Monroe spends his life poking at atoms with light. He arranges them into rings and chains and then massages them with lasers to explore their properties and make basic quantum computers. Last year, he decided to try something seemingly impossible: to create a time crystal.

The name sounds like a prop from Doctor Who, but it has roots in actual physics. Time crystals are hypothetical structures that pulse without requiring any energy — like a ticking clock that never needs winding. The pattern repeats in time in much the same way that the atoms of a crystal repeat in space. The idea was so challenging that when Nobel prizewinning physicist Frank Wilczek proposed the provocative concept1 in 2012, other researchers quickly proved there was no way to create time crystals.

But there was a loophole — and researchers in a separate branch of physics found a way to exploit the gap. Monroe, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park, and his team used chains of atoms they had constructed for other purposes to make a version of a time crystal2 (see ‘How to create a time crystal’). “I would say it sort of fell in our laps,” says Monroe.

And a group led by researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, independently fashioned time crystals out of 'dirty’ diamonds3. Both versions, which are published this week in Nature, are considered time crystals, but not how Wilczek originally imagined. “It’s less weird than the first idea, but it’s still fricking weird,” says Norman Yao, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and an author on both papers.

Continue Reading.

holy shit

Mimosa pudica is an herb of the pea family and is known for its compound leaves that fold inward and droop when touched or shaken. This defense mechanism protects the leaf from harm and allows for reopening a few minutes later. 

Happy ‪#‎NationalWineDay‬! Here’s some red wine chemistry: http://wp.me/p4aPLT-hz

The eyestalk tentacles of snails are “muscular hydrostats” - the same type of structure as human tongues and elephant trunks.

This GIF shows how the toucan releases heat using its beak to cool itself off.

The toucan beak isn’t just beautiful, it’s also an adjustable thermal radiator that the bird uses to warm and cool itself. When the bird is hot, the blood vessels in their beak open up to allow more circulation to enable heat to escape. Birds can’t sweat so evolution has come up with some life hacks to get the job done. [video]

Khövsgöl Lake Festival, Mongolia, Celine Jentzsch Photography

Figure 1. Bun (Lepus townsendii) approaching ideal bun form (ei. a perfect fluffy orb) over the course of 5.2 hours. Ambient temperature -6°C to -15°C.

28.05.17 // new week, new window 💭