As we approach spring, the arctic gradually comes out of its long winter night. And as polar winters get milder and milder every year, people started noticing something unusual: the Sun sometimes rises on the wrong day—and in the wrong place.
Continue reading “Climate change might anticipate the arctic sunrise”
Cassini will terminate its 20-odd-years-long mission in September. But it’s determined to go out with a bang. In yesterday’s press conference, NASA announced that the probe, during a 2015 flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, found clues that the ocean within the icy moon has almost all we think it needs to spark life. Continue reading “Enceladus: a song of ice and tides”
Think about the most quiet place you’ve ever been to. Now imagine something even quieter. What does that sound like? If you can’t figure it out, physics can help: let’s start by looking at how sound works. Loudspeakers, vocal folds and instruments all function by the same principle: rhythmically push and pull on air. The air molecules, in turn, push and pull on their neighbors, … Continue reading The sound of silence
Think about it: the idea that the Sun is essentially the same thing as any star doesn’t make any sense. I mean, just look at them, they could hardly be more different! So how the heck do you go about proving such an outrageous idea? Well, it’s been quite a long journey, that started from a number of guesses by ancient “scientists”. Granted, some of them turned out relatively correct, … Continue reading A star like any other?
I grew up in a famously foggy place. Usually, it’s just a nuisance, but if you know how it works, at least you can add a little poetry to it. The first thing you need to know is that warm air keeps moisture better than colder one. Which is to say, water remains a vapor more easily in warm air. When a mass of warm … Continue reading A very foggy title
No Christmas landscape is complete without snow. Lots of snow. And every little snowflake is unique, everyone knows that! How come, tho? Snow is nothing else than teeny tiny ice crystals that form in the clouds and stay solid all the way down to the ground. Water crystallizes around microscopic imperfections, like dust particles floating in the clouds. Once the initial nucleus is formed, the … Continue reading Every snowflake is unique
In the cold of Canada, a man blows a soap bubble, which immediately freezes. Since that’s awesome, the guy makes a nice video about it. Who knows, maybe he even knew about all the physics that was going on in front of his camera. Let’s start from the easiest thing: why does the bottom of the bubble freeze last? The answer is gravity: the outermost … Continue reading Frozen bubbles
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