The Moon shows us the same face not because it ‘doesn’t rotate’ but because its rotation is perfectly synchronized with its orbit. We explore the exquisite principle of tidal locking written into the Earth-Moon system.
A palm-sized pink rodent overturns our assumptions about mammals again and again – a eusocial colony ruled by a single queen, a body in which spontaneous tumours are extremely rare, a death rate that barely rises with age, and a metabolism that endures on fructose when oxygen is cut off. A look at the intricate design of the naked mole-rat, from the primary sources.
More than 80,000 woodblocks have lasted over 770 years with no special machinery. From wild-cherry blocks, end pieces and lacquer to Janggyeong Panjeon’s siting, lattice windows and floor layer — the layered conservation design of the Tripitaka Koreana, separating fact from myth.
The eerie blue glow of a reactor pool is not the color of radioactivity, nor a broken speed limit of light. It is a ‘sonic boom of light’ left by a particle that outran light itself — inside water. Here is exactly how Cherenkov radiation works.
Its name says ‘shrimp’ but it is not a true shrimp; its fist flies through water like a bullet and boils it; and its famously dazzling eye actually distinguishes color worse than a human. A look at two intricate designs packed into the small creature that is the mantis shrimp, and the common beliefs they overturn.
A superconductor floating above a magnet stays put even when flipped or tilted. The force that lifts it and the force that locks it are two different laws of physics — the story of the Meissner effect and flux pinning.
