physics

Unfortunately, the Large Hadron Collider is too big to bring home and put on display in your living room. Scientist Sascha Mehlhase created a 4,500-piece Lego model of the collider back in 2011 at a cost of about $2,700. That was also too big for most people.

Now, he has created a smaller model of the ATLAS experiment, a particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider, and put it up as a candidate for an official Lego kit.

The project is on Cuusoo, a site for Lego enthusiasts to share their models and attempt to gather 10,000 votes in order for Lego to consider making their creations as kits. Mehlhase's ATLAS currently has 5,756 supporters, so it has definitely caught the eyes of Lego builders.… Read more

The Large Hadron Collider is a monumentally awesome machine, and has given us tentative confirmation of the existence of the Higgs boson, the so-called "God particle." Now scientists hope to follow that with a new accelerator that could explain what makes up 95 percent of the universe.

At three ceremonies around the world Wednesday, researchers hailed blueprints for the International Linear Collider (ILC), a 19-mile-long smasher that might help solve the riddle of dark matter and dark energy, unseen forces with major gravitational effects. … Read more

This week, experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats will install the world's first "Quantum ATM" in New York City.

Part art installation, part science experiment, and part social commentary, the new not-so-automated teller machine at 20 Rockefeller Center will take deposits and transfer them to a so-called quantum superposition, allowing the real-world cash to proliferate itself into seven billion accounts in the Quantum Bank.… Read more

If you've spent much time looking into the peculiar world of quantum physics and the notion of a so-called quantum superposition that theoretically allows a particle to be everywhere at once, you've surely thought of some ways that being able to manipulate such properties could be pretty awesome.

In my case, it's the strongest evidence I've found since turning 12 that the Santa Claus I grew up hearing about could actually exist.

But experimental philosopher Jonathon Keats is setting out to put quantum physics to a much more practical use, no matter how impractical the world of finance may find it.… Read more

Physicists can sometimes feel neglected.

Not always the party types, their lack of screen presence makes them seem weird, peculiar, and other-worldly.

Famous actor and renowned non-Scientologist Will Smith intends to narrow that gap. He knows that physics is the core of human life.

How can I make such a provocative statement?

Well, because I just read an interview he and his son Jaden gave to New York magazine, one intended, I think, to promote their new movie "After Earth."

In it, Smith boldly goes where few actors have gone before in declaring: "At heart, I am … Read more

Even some of the more faithful might have wondered over the last few days whether there truly is a God.

Famed physicist Stephen Hawking would like to help. Let's imagine there isn't, seems to be his preference.

Indeed, in a speech at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., on Tuesday night, he made jokes about God's supposed power and omnipresence.

"What was God doing before the divine creation? Was he preparing hell for people who asked such questions?" asked Hawking, clearly not afraid of meeting a reddish man with a fork and a … Read more

Turning to robots for speech and physical therapy may not be everyone's idea of high-quality, personalized health care. But for stroke patients -- particularly those in rural, isolated areas -- therapists can be difficult and expensive to come by, and rehabilitation can be elusive.

So a speech language pathologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is studying the interactions of stroke patients with the uBot-5, a child-size humanoid robot with arms and a computer screen through which therapists can interact with people. And for at least one stroke patient, the bot appears to be doing a stand-up job.… Read more

I fancy some physicists can be overly rational about love.

They analyze before, during, and after every act. They ask for feedback during and after every act.

While a French photographer might be having a post-coital cigarette and looking airily toward a window, a physicist might turn to his lover and offer: "So when your left hand touches my right shoulder, there's a 15 percent greater reaction in my nervous system than when your bottom lip touches my clavicle."

So just imagine what happens when two physicists meet, are together for seven years, and then one asks … Read more

Pop a properly manufactured CD into a CD player, and you'll hear music in a second or two. In more than 30 years of playing CDs I've never once encountered scanning, searching, or error messages; after I press "Play," the music starts. Stick a properly manufactured DVD or Blu-ray in a working player, and you always have to wait a while to start watching the movie -- or it might not play at all. You might have to do a firmware update to play the disc. With DVDs and Blu-rays, there's no such thing as … Read more