Physics & Math, features and articles | Educational Science

Aug 31, 2015

Passing Quantum Secrets: The Next Level Beyond Quantum Computing

This article was originally published on The Conversation. The publication contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The one thing everyone knows about quantum mechanics is its legendary weirdness, in which the basic tenets of the world it describes seem alien to the world we live...

Jun 30, 2015

Dark Pion Particles May Explain Universe's Invisible Matter

Dark matter is the mysterious stuff that cosmologists think makes up some 85 percent of all the matter in the universe. A new theory says dark matter might resemble a known particle. If true, that would open up a window onto an invisible, dark matter version of physics. The only...

May 31, 2015

After Higgs, Ramped-Up Collider Hunts for Next Puzzle

Don Lincoln is a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab, America's largest Large Hadron Collider research institution. He also writes about science for the public, including his recent The Large Hadron Collider: The Extraordinary Story of the Higgs Boson and Other Things That Will Blow Your Mind...

Mar 31, 2015

What's Next for the World's Largest Atom Smasher? How to Watch Live

Physicist Jon Butterworth, who works at the world's largest atom smasher, is intimately familiar with the drama that surrounded the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson. Butterworth will recount the trials and tribulations in the hunt for the most wanted particle, in a lecture tonight (April 1) at the Perimeter...

Mar 31, 2015

The World's Most Powerful Atom Smasher Restarts With a Big Bang

The world's most powerful atom smasher, the Large Hadron Collider, which provides a window into the universe just milliseconds after the Big Bang, came back to life this morning, after more than two years of maintenance and upgrade work, and it's stronger than ever. At 10:41 a.m. local time near...

Nov 30, 2016

Isaac Newton's Book Auctioned for Record-Setting $3.7 Million

A bound copy of Sir Isaac Newton's seminal book on mathematics and science was sold for $3.7 million, making it the most expensive printed scientific book ever sold at auction, according to Christie's, the auction house that handled the sale. The book has a Latin title — Philosophiae Naturalis Principia...

Sep 30, 2016

Does Your 'Self' Have a Soul?

Robert Lawrence Kuhn is the creator, writer and host of Closer to Truth, a public television series and online resource that features the world's leading thinkers exploring humanity's deepest questions. This essay, the third of a four-part series on the Self, is based on Closer to Truth episodes and videos,...

Mar 31, 2016

Collider Unleashed! The LHC Will Soon Hit Its Stride

Don Lincoln is a senior scientist at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab, the United States' biggest Large Hadron Collider research institution. He also writes about science for the public, including his recent The Large Hadron Collider: The Extraordinary Story of the Higgs Boson and Other Things That Will Blow...

Feb 29, 2016

Isaac Newton Biography

Isaac Netwon is synonymous with apples and gravity. He rose to become the most influential scientist of the 17th century, his ideas becoming the foundation of modern physics, after very humble beginnings. But first, the big question: Did an apple really fall on Newton's head and spur him to figure...

Dec 31, 2015

What 2016 Holds for the Mysterious World of Physics

The New Year may also be a year of discoveries for physicists plumbing the deepest mysteries of matter. Since 2013, when scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) confirmed they had discovered the Higgs boson, the particle that lends others mass, physics has been in a kind of limbo. The...

Dec 31, 2015

Without Basic Knowledge, Innovation Fails (Op-Ed)

Vikram Jandhyala is the vice provost for innovation at the University of Washington. He contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Understanding how innovation actually happens is one of the most intricate, and important, intellectual conversations occurring in technology circles, and it's clear that basic knowledge...

Oct 31, 2017

Lightning Bolts Are Churning Out Antimatter All Over Planet Earth

Particles split in the hot belly of a lightning bolt. Radioactive particles decay in the afterglow. Gamma rays rain down to Earth. Teruaki Enoto, a physicist at Kyoto University in Japan, proved for the first time, in a paper published Nov. 23, that lightning bolts work as natural particle accelerators....

Feb 28, 2017

French Mathematician Yves Meyer Wins Top Prize for 'Wavelet Theory'

A French mathematician known for his pioneering work on a theory used for applications ranging from image compression to the detection of gravitational waves from the merging of black holes has earned one of the world's top prizes in mathematics. Yves Meyer, a professor emeritus in mathematics at the École...

Nov 30, 2018

Proton-Size Droplets of Primordial Soup May Be the Tiniest in the Universe

By smashing particles together, physicists may have created the smallest droplet of fluid in the universe — a proton-sized bead of hot, primordial soup. This particle soup is quark-gluon plasma, the fluid that filled the cosmos during the first microseconds after the Big Bang. It's at trillions of degrees, and...

Sep 30, 2018

Stephen Hawking's Children and Colleagues Discuss Physicist's Final Book, Legacy

In his final book, released Oct. 16, Stephen Hawking tackles big questions about the universe, delving into physics, cosmology, the existence of God and the future direction of humanity. During a panel discussion held Oct. 15 at the Science Museum in London, Hawking's children and colleagues talked about the new...