Just how small is an atom?
Adults PhysicsJust how small are atoms? And what's inside them? The answers turn out to be astounding, even for those who think they know. This fast-paced animation uses spectacular metaphors (imagine a blueberry the size of a football stadium!) to give a visceral sense of the building blocks that make our world.
The beginning of the universe, for beginners
Adults PhysicsHow did the universe begin -- and how is it expanding? CERN physicist Tom Whyntie shows how cosmologists and particle physicists explore these questions by replicating the heat, energy, and activity of the first few seconds of our universe, from right after the Big Bang.
What Color is the Universe?
Adults PhysicsWhen you stare up at the night sky, you might think that the universe is really black, but that's just because our eyes aren't sensitive enough to see the billions and billions of multicolored stars out there. Ever wonder why certain stars are certain colors? And what color is our sun, really? If we looked at enough stars, could we figure out the average color of the universe?
Dark matter: The matter we can't see
Adults PhysicsThe Greeks had a simple and elegant formula for the universe: just earth, fire, wind, and water. Turns out there's more to it than that -- a lot more. Visible matter (and that goes beyond the four Greek elements) comprises only 4% of the universe. CERN scientist James Gillies tells us what accounts for the remaining 96% (dark matter and dark energy) and how we might go about detecting it.
Exploring other dimensions - Alex Rosenthal and George Zaidan
Adults PhysicsImagine a two-dimensional world -- you, your friends, everything is 2D. In his 1884 novella, Edwin Abbott invented this world and called it Flatland. Alex Rosenthal and George Zaidan take the premise of Flatland one dimension further, imploring us to consider how we would see dimensions different from our own and why the exploration just may be worth it.
Project Loon - Google's Internet Balloons - Future Thinking - Head Squeeze
Adults PhysicsWe are becoming increasingly more dependent on the internet to help run our lives. But much of the planet is outside the web, zones that are without web coverage. Ordinarily, this is more of a nuisance than a calamity. But in the aftermath of disasters, restoring internet coverage can be the difference between life and death.
The fundamentals of space-time: Part 2 - Andrew Pontzen and Tom Whyntie
Adults PhysicsLight always travels at a speed of 299,792,458 meters per second. But if you're in motion too, you're going to perceive it as traveling even faster -- which isn't possible! In this second installment of a three-part series on space-time, CERN scientists Andrew Pontzen and Tom Whyntie use a space-time diagram to analyze the sometimes confounding motion of light.
There's No Such Thing As Cold
Adults PhysicsYou've felt cold before. Sometimes it's cold outside. But what if I told you that "cold" isn't real? There's no substance or quantity called "cold" in science. We can't measure the amount of "cold" in something. Instead it's about what's NOT there. In this week's video, learn the difference between heat and temperature, why a wind makes us feel colder, and what it's like to live as a mass of jiggling atoms. This is the physics of cold.
Astronauts Grow a Water Bubble in Space
Adults PhysicsDuring Expedition 40 in the summer of 2014, NASA astronauts Steve Swanson and Reid Wiseman - along with European Space Agency astronaut Alexander Gerst - explored the phenomenon of water surface tension in microgravity on the International Space Station. The crew "submerged" a sealed GoPro camera into a floating ball of water the size of a softball and recorded the activity with a 3-D camera.