Category Archives: Scicomm

The Hyperion dispute and chaos in space

Posted on August 24, 2025 by VM

When reading around for my piece yesterday on the wavefunctions of quantum mechanics, I stumbled across an old and fascinating debate about Saturn’s moon Hyperion. The question of how the smooth, classical world around us emerges from the rules of … Continue reading →

Posted in Scicomm, Science | Tagged butterfly effect, classical chaos, decoherence, ensemble interpretation, Hyperion, Leslie Ballentine, Maximilian Schlosshauer, measurement problem, Nathan Wiebe, quantum chaos, Saturn, Titan, wavefunction, Wojciech Zurek | Comments Off

What on earth is a wavefunction?

Posted on August 23, 2025 by VM

If you drop a pebble into a pond, ripples spread outward in gentle circles. We all know this sight, and it feels natural to call them waves. Now imagine being told that everything — from an electron to an atom … Continue reading →

Posted in Scicomm | Tagged classical mechanics, coherence, decoherence, delocalisation, Newton's second law, quantum information, Quantum mechanics, quantum superposition, Schrödinger equation, uncertainty principle, wavefunction, wavefunction collapse, zero-point motion | Leave a comment

A new kind of quantum engine with ultracold atoms

Posted on August 7, 2025 by VM

In conventional ‘macroscopic’ engines like the ones that guzzle fossil fuels to power cars and motorcycles, the fuels are set ablaze to release heat, which is converted to mechanical energy and transferred to the vehicle’s moving parts. In order to … Continue reading →

Posted in Scicomm | Tagged adiabatic compression, adiabatic expansion, Bose gas, Bose-Einstein condensate, Fermi gas, internal combustion engine, Otto cycle, Pauli energy, quantum engine, quantum thermodynamics, thermodynamic efficiency | Comments Off

What keeps the red queen running?

Posted on August 6, 2025 by VM

AI-generated definition based on ‘Quantitative and analytical tools to analyze the spatiotemporal population dynamics of microbial consortia’, Current Opinion in Biotechnology, August 2022: The Red Queen hypothesis refers to the idea that a constant rate of extinction persists in a … Continue reading →

Posted in Scicomm | Tagged continual turnover, evolutionary biology, PRX Life, red queen hypothesis, species extinction, Stanford University | Comments Off

A limit of ‘show, don’t tell’

Posted on August 3, 2025 by VM

The virtue of ‘show, don’t tell’ in writing, including in journalism, lies in its power to create a more vivid, immersive, and emotionally engaging reading experience. Instead of simply providing information or summarising events, the technique encourages writers to use … Continue reading →

Posted in Scicomm | Tagged Friends, narrative, narrative populism, Physics World, polarons, science communication, The Hindu | Leave a comment

A microscope that catches the slightest hints of heat

Posted on August 2, 2025 by VM

A superconducting transition-edge sensor (TES) is a device well-known for its extreme sensitivity to photons, the particles of light — so much so that they can count photons one by one. They also have very little noise, which makes their … Continue reading →

Posted in Scicomm | Tagged atomic force microscopy, bolometry, critical temperature, electromagnetic fields, hexagonal boron nitride, hyperbolic phonon-polaritons, infrared laser, niobium, optical power, phonons, quantum materials, quasiparticles, scanning probe, superconductor, terahertz fields, transiditransition-edge sensors | Comments Off

Frugality is a toxic chalice

Posted on July 28, 2025 by VM

From ‘Earth Imaging Satellite NISAR Exposes NASA’s Weaknesses, ISRO’s Strengths’, NDTV, July 26, 2025: At the end of the day, the US scientists have swallowed their pride and are sheepishly going to watch the launch of a satellite where they … Continue reading →

Posted in Analysis, Scicomm | Tagged frugality, Indian Space Research Organisation, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, launch insurance, NASA, NISAR, Space Applications Centre, synthetic aperture radar | Leave a comment

Physicists test if they can load antimatter on a truck

Posted on July 24, 2025 by VM

Physicists in Europe have reported that it’s possible to transport charged particles on a truck for four hours without disturbing them in any way. This seemingly run-of-the-mill announcement, reported in Nature on May 14, actually contains within its details the … Continue reading →

Posted in Scicomm | Tagged antimatter, Antimatter Factory, BASE-STEP Penning trap, CERN, CP-violation, CPT symmetry, Large Hadron Collider, liquid helium, Penning trap, quantum field theory | Leave a comment

Quasiparticles do the twist

Posted on July 19, 2025 by VM

Physics often involves hidden surprises in how matter behaves at the smallest scales. A fundamental property in physics is angular momentum, which describes how things spin or rotate, from planets all the way down to particles. Angular momentum is involved … Continue reading →

Posted in Scicomm, Science | Tagged angular momentum, blue sky research, centrosymmetry, chiral crystals, Debye temperature, Einstein-de Haas effect, phonons, quasiparticles, tellurium, torque | Leave a comment

Sniffing out the mystery chemistry of superheavy atoms