Psychologist Chris Moore saw first-hand how powerful and complex an emotion it is
Fuelled by the relief of having finished end-of-year exams, the pleasure of a warm late spring evening and quite a lot of alcohol, the house party was one of those that should have been remembered for all the right reasons. At some point, later in the night, Chris Moore and three friends were ready to leave. The party was some way out of town – Cambridge – and too far to walk, and, anyway, there was a car, temptingly, in the driveway, its keys in the ignition.
Somebody – Moore can’t remember who – suggested they drive back, and with the recklessness of youth and too much beer, they all got in. “I ended up in the front passenger seat and fell asleep,” he says. He came to, being taken out of the car by paramedics, then sitting by the side of the road, his face streaming with blood, surrounded by the lights of the emergency services. They had been in an accident, and Moore had hit the windscreen, asleep, and had deep lacerations on his forehead. He was the only one of the four who had been injured. What he didn’t know until the next day, in hospital after surgery, was that they had driven into a cyclist and killed him.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Carolina Andrade/The Guardian
© Photograph: Carolina Andrade/The Guardian
© Photograph: Carolina Andrade/The Guardian
© PA Wire
Three decades after its modest beginnings on Channel 4, the TV juggernaut now has its own channel and global subscribers
Thirty-two years ago, a small group of archaeologists gathered for a weekend in Somerset to make a TV programme about a field in Athelney, the site where once, 1,200 years ago, King Alfred the Great rallied resistance to the invading Viking army.
There weren’t many concessions to showbiz glitz. Instead, a group of blokes with unruly hair and a couple of women walked across a field, talked things over in the pub and, at one point, gathered around a dot matrix printer to watch it slowly disgorging some results. The most exciting artefact they found was a lump of iron slag. No soil was overturned.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: David Sillitoe/The Guardian
© Photograph: David Sillitoe/The Guardian
© Photograph: David Sillitoe/The Guardian
Among the ‘remarkable’ finds are an unusual beetle and a rare fungus
© Vicki Cridland/National Trust for Scotland/PA Wire
Scientists argue ape-like Sahelanthropus tchadensis that lived in Africa 7m years ago is best contender but more fossils are needed
In the murky first chapters of the human story is an unknown ancestor that made the profound transition from walking on all fours to standing up tall, an act that came to define us.
The odds of stumbling on the fossilised evidence of such an evolutionary prize are slim, but in new research, scientists argue that an ape-like animal that lived in Africa 7m years ago is the best contender yet.
Continue reading...
© Photograph: Didier Descouens
© Photograph: Didier Descouens
© Photograph: Didier Descouens
Grâce aux implants cérébraux d’Elon Musk, il pourrait bientôt être possible de contrôler des machines et des interfaces numériques simplement par la pensée.
L’article Contrôler les machines par la pensée ? C’est pour bientôt avec Neuralink d’Elon Musk est apparu en premier sur Toms Guide.
Vers un monde toujours plus technologique… et dystopique ? À la frontière sino-vietnamienne, la ville de Fangchenggang v a devenir un laboratoire à ciel ouvert pour la robotique humanoïde. Les autorités locales ont en effet choisi d’y introduire des robots intelligents afin de fluidifier le passage des voyageurs …
Aimez KultureGeek sur Facebook, et suivez-nous sur Twitter
N'oubliez pas de télécharger notre Application gratuite iAddict pour iPhone et iPad (lien App Store)
L’article La Chine déploie des robots humanoïdes à sa frontière avec le Vietnam est apparu en premier sur KultureGeek.
Réduire la dépendance aux carburants fossiles sur le champ de bataille est devenu un enjeu stratégique majeur. Pour y parvenir, l’agence américaine DARPA explore une voie aussi audacieuse que futuriste : transmettre de l’énergie électrique par faisceau laser, depuis un relais aéroporté jusqu’au sol, et sur des distances …
Aimez KultureGeek sur Facebook, et suivez-nous sur Twitter
N'oubliez pas de télécharger notre Application gratuite iAddict pour iPhone et iPad (lien App Store)
L’article La DARPA veut envoyer de l’électricité par laser sur 200 km est apparu en premier sur KultureGeek.
I used to set myself the challenge every December of predicting what might happen in physics over the following year. Gazing into my imaginary crystal ball, I tried to speculate on the potential discoveries, the likely trends, and the people who might make the news over the coming year. It soon dawned on me that making predictions in physics is a difficult, if not futile, task
Apart from space missions pencilled in for launch on set dates, or particle colliders or light sources due to open, so much in science is simply unknown. That uncertainty of science is, of course, also its beauty; if you knew what was out there, looking for it wouldn’t be quite as much fun. So if you’re wondering what’s in store for 2026, I don’t know – you’ll just have to read Physics World to find out.
Having said that – and setting aside the insane upheaval going on in US science – this year’s Physics World Live series will give you some sense of what’s hot in physics right now, at least as far as we here at Physics World headquarters are concerned.
The first online panel discussion will be on quantum metrology – a burgeoning field that seeks to ensure companies and academics can test, validate and commercialize new quantum tech. Yes the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology officially ends with a closing ceremony in Ghana in February, but the impact of quantum physics will continue to reverberate throughout 2026.
You can also look forward to an online event on nuclear fusion, which offers a path to limitless energy and a potential solution to the climate crisis. But it’s a complex challenge and the route to commercialization is uncertain, despite lots of private firms being active in the area as a counterweight to the huge ITER experiment that’s being built in southern France. Among them is Tokamak Energy, which this year won a Business Award from the Institute of Physics (IOP).
Another of our online panels will be on medical physics, bringing together the current and two past editors-in-chief of Physics in Medicine & Biology. Published by IOP Publishing on behalf of the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, the journal turns 70 this year. The speakers will be reflecting on the vital role of medical-physics research to medicine and biology and examining how the field’s evolved since the journal was set up.
Medical physics will also be the focus of a new “impact project” in 2026 from the IOP, which will be starting another on artificial intelligence (AI) as well. The IOP will in addition be continuing its existing impact work on metamaterials, which were of course pioneered by – among others – the Imperial College theorist John Pendry. I wonder if a Nobel prize could be in store for him this year? That’s one prediction I’ll make that would be great if it came true.
Until then, on behalf of everyone at Physics World, I wish all readers – wherever you are – a happy and successful 2026. Your continued support is greatly valued.
The post Happy new year: what’s happening in physics in 2026? appeared first on Physics World.
Longtemps considérées comme des viviers de recherche fondamentale, les universités européennes s’imposent désormais comme de véritables moteurs de création de valeur dans la « deep tech » (issue de la recherche fondamentale). En 2025, près de 80 jeunes entreprises issues de laboratoires académiques ont franchi un cap symbolique, atteignant soit …
Aimez KultureGeek sur Facebook, et suivez-nous sur Twitter
N'oubliez pas de télécharger notre Application gratuite iAddict pour iPhone et iPad (lien App Store)
L’article Les universités européennes pèsent lourd dans la « deep tech » est apparu en premier sur KultureGeek.
From cutting onions to a LEGO Jodrell Bank, physics has had its fair share of quirky stories this year. Here is our pick of the best, not in any particular order.
Researchers in the US this year discovered that a tiny jumping worm uses static electricity to increase its chances of attaching to unsuspecting prey. The parasitic roundworm Steinernema carpocapsae can leap some 25 times its body length by curling into a loop and springing in the air. If the nematode lands successfully on a victim, it releases bacteria that kills the insect within a couple of days upon which the worm feasts and lays its eggs. To investigate whether static electricity aids their flight, a team at Emory University and the University of California, Berkeley, used high-speed microscopy to film the worms as they leapt onto a fruit fly that was tethered with a copper wire connected to a high-voltage power supply. The researchers found that a charge of a few hundred volts – similar to that generated in the wild by an insect’s wings rubbing against ions in the air – fosters a negative charge on the worm, creating an attractive force with the positively charged fly. They discovered that without any electrostatics, only 1 in 19 worm trajectories successfully reached their target. The greater the voltage, however, the greater the chance of landing with 880 V resulting in an 80% probability of success. “We’re helping to pioneer the emerging field of electrostatic ecology,” notes Emory physicist Ranjiangshang Ran.
While it is known that volatile chemicals released from onions irritate the nerves in the cornea to produce tears, how such chemical-laden droplets reach the eyes and whether they are influenced by the knife or cutting technique remain less clear. To investigate, Sunghwan Jung from Cornell University and colleagues built a guillotine-like apparatus and used high-speed video to observe the droplets released from onions as they were cut by steel blades. They found that droplets, which can reach up to 60 cm high, were released in two stages – the first being a fast mist-like outburst that was followed by threads of liquid fragmenting into many droplets. The most energetic droplets were released during the initial contact between the blade and the onion’s skin. When they began varying the sharpness of the blade and the cutting speed, they discovered that a greater number of droplets were released by blunter blades and faster cutting speeds. “That was even more surprising,” notes Jung. “Blunter blades and faster cuts – up to 40 m/s – produced significantly more droplets with higher kinetic energy.” Another surprise was that refrigerating the onions prior to cutting also produced an increased number of droplets of similar velocity, compared to room-temperature vegetables.
Students at the University of Manchester in the UK created a 30 500-piece LEGO model of the iconic Lovell Telescope to mark the 80th anniversary of the Jodrell Bank Observatory, which was founded in December 1945. Built in 1957, the 76.2 m diameter telescope was the largest steerable dish radio telescope in the world at the time. The LEGO model has been designed by Manchester’s undergraduate physics society and is based on the telescope’s original engineering blueprints. Student James Ruxton spent six months perfecting the design, which even involved producing custom-designed LEGO bricks with a 3D printer. Ruxton and fellow students began construction in April and the end result is a model weighing 30 kg with 30500 pieces and a whopping 4000-page instruction manual. “It’s definitely the biggest and most challenging build I’ve ever done, but also the most fun,” says Ruxton. “I’ve been a big fan of LEGO since I was younger, and I’ve always loved creating my own models, so recreating something as iconic as the Lovell is like taking that to the next level!” The model has gone on display in a “specially modified cabinet” at the university’s Schuster building, taking pride of place alongside a decade-old LEGO model of CERN’s ATLAS detector.
The curves and curls of leaves and flower petals arise due to the interplay between their natural growth and geometry. Uneven growth in a flat sheet, in which the edges grow quicker than the interior, gives rise to strain and in plant leaves and petals, for example, this can result in a variety of shapes such as saddle and ripple shapes. Yet when it comes to rose petals, the sharply pointed cusps – a point where two curves meet – that form at the edge of the petals set it apart from soft, wavy patterns seen in many other plants.
To investigate this intriguing difference, researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem carried out theoretical modelling and conducted a series of experiments with synthetic disc “petals”. They found that the pointed cusps that form at the edge of rose petals are due to a type of geometric frustration called a Mainardi–Codazzi–Peterson (MCP) incompatibility. This type of mechanism results in stress concentrating in a specific area, which goes on to form cusps to avoid tearing or forming unnatural folding. When the researchers suppressed the formation of cusps, they found that the discs revert to being smooth and concave. The researchers say that the findings could be used for applications in soft robotics and even in the deployment of spacecraft components.
The Wild Cards universe is a series of novels set largely during an alternate history of the US following the Second World War. The series follows events after an extraterrestrial virus, known as the Wild Card virus, has spread worldwide. It mutates human DNA causing profound changes in human physiology. The virus follows a fixed statistical distribution in that 90% of those infected die, 9% become physically mutated (referred to as “jokers”) and 1% gain superhuman abilities (known as “aces”). Such capabilities include the ability to fly as well as being able to move between dimensions. George R R Martin, the author who co-edits the Wild Cards series, co-authored a paper examining the complex dynamics of the Wild Card virus together with Los Alamos National Laboratory theoretical physicist Ian Tregillis, who is also a science-fiction author. The model takes into consideration the severity of the changes (for the 10% that don’t instantly die) and the mix of joker/ace traits. The result is a dynamical system in which a carrier’s state vector constantly evolves through the model space – until their “card” turns. At that point the state vector becomes fixed and its permanent location determines the fate of the carrier. “The fictional virus is really just an excuse to justify the world of Wild Cards, the characters who inhabit it, and the plot lines that spin out from their actions,” says Tregillis.
And finally, a clear sign of a good brew is a big head of foam at the top of a poured glass. Beer foam is made of many small bubbles of air, separated from each other by thin films of liquid. These thin films must remain stable, or the bubbles will pop, and the foam will collapse. What holds these thin films together is not completely understood and is likely conglomerates of proteins, surface viscosity or the presence of surfactants – molecules that can reduce surface tension and are found in soaps and detergents. To find out more, researchers from ETH Zurich and Eindhoven University of Technology investigated beer-foam stability for different types of beers at varying stages of the fermentation process. They found that for single-fermentation beers, the foams are mostly held together with the surface viscosity of the beer. This is mostly influenced by the proteins in the beer – the more they contain, the more viscous the film and more stable the foam will be. However, for double-fermented beers, the proteins in the beer are slightly denatured by the yeast cells and come together to form a two-dimensional membrane that keeps the foam intact longer. The head was found to be even more stable for triple-fermented beers, which include Trappist beers. The team says that the work could be used to identify ways to increase or decrease the amount of foam so that everyone can pour a perfect glass of beer every time. Cheers!
You can be sure that 2026 will throw up its fair share of quirky stories from the world of physics. See you next year!
The post The quirkiest stories from the world of physics in 2025 appeared first on Physics World.
C’est une première historique : grâce aux capacités spectroscopiques du télescope spatial James Webb, des astronomes estiment avoir identifié l’atmosphère la plus convaincante jamais observée autour d’un monde solide situé hors de notre Système solaire. TOI-561 b, un monde de lave sous haute surveillance Au centre de cette …
Aimez KultureGeek sur Facebook, et suivez-nous sur Twitter
N'oubliez pas de télécharger notre Application gratuite iAddict pour iPhone et iPad (lien App Store)
L’article James Webb détecte de l’atmosphère autour d’une exoplanète rocheuse, et c’est une première est apparu en premier sur KultureGeek.
Connexion