I'm oddly attracted to The Titan Games. I think we can all agree that this is the newest incarnation of the popular '90s show American Gladiators. It's not the theatrics that I enjoy, it's the crazy competitions. As you can imagine, there's a bunch of cool physics to talk about for some of these events.…
This story originally appeared in the Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. New York is suing the oil giant ExxonMobil in a lawsuit that claims the company engaged in a “longstanding fraudulent scheme” to downplay the risks posed to its business by climate change regulations. The legal action, launched by New York…
Hal the robot boy is convulsing. His head shakes back and forth so rapidly, it looks like he’s vibrating. His eyelids droop over his blue eyes and his mouth is ajar. He makes no sound, other than the faint whirs of his motors. Hal was built to suffer. He is a medical training robot, the…
It’s an abnormally hot day in September and I’m standing in a cattail marsh in eastern Wisconsin, trying to change the way my students view the world. They’re all distracted—by the heat, homesickness, or the fact that they’ve lost a phone signal. The guys on the university hockey team are snickering about something. I’ve brought…
This story originally appeared on Mother Jones and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Google, Facebook, and Microsoft have publicly acknowledged the dangers of global warming, but last week they all sponsored a conference that promoted climate change denial to young libertarians. All three tech companies were sponsors of LibertyCon, the annual convention of…
Cybersecurity experts have sounded the alarm for years: Hackers are ogling the US power grid. The threat isn’t merely hypothetical—a group affiliated with the Russian government gained remote access to energy companies’ computers, the Department of Homeland Security published last March. In some cases, the hackers could even directly send commands to mess with hardware,…
Few things herald Thanksgiving as loudly as turkeys, flight delays, and long hours in front of the TV watching football. It's an important time in the football calendar, with the playoffs beginning to shape up for both college football and the NFL. But what about those impacts? I don't mind watching football, but there's no…
You might think this is a video showing the testing of the electromagnetic catapult system for an aircraft carrier, but you are wrong. No, this is a video of a near-perfect example of a real physics homework problem. Yes, that is what it is. First, you might ask, what is an electromagnetic catapult? So, you…
In a recent video, Celtics player Kyrie Irving stands on a basketball court, with his legs straight and feet planted together, and leeeeeeans forward. He looks like he's about to topple. But he doesn't. He calmly returns to a normal upright standing position, shakes out his arms and stretches his neck, and then leeeeeeans a…
Two years ago, scientists in Japan reported the discovery of a mouse that just could not stay awake. This creature, which had a mutation in a gene called Sik3, slept upwards of 30 percent more than usual: Although it awoke apparently refreshed, it would need to snooze again long before its normal lab mates’ bedtime.…