Predicting the whirlwind
In more than 20 years as a meteorologist, Joshua Wurman had seen – and chased – more than 150…
Category: Recent Work
How Bose–Einstein condensates keep revealing weird physics
A Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), the first of which was shown experimentally 22 years ago, isn’t your garden variety state of…
Seeking a Second Opinion
In November 2012, when she was 52 years old, Shannon Semple was diagnosed with a disease she didn’t have. She…
How nonequilibrium thermodynamics speaks to the mystery of life
In his 1944 book What is Life?, Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger argued that organisms stay alive precisely by staving off…
The return of supersolids!
We learn it from a young age: solids hold their shapes; liquids flow. Physical states of matter are mutually exclusive.…
Making a match
In the summer of 2012, Carole Baker’s oncologist told her she was eligible to join a clinical trial just getting…
The Riddle of Bacteria and Cancer
The human body teems with bacteria. These micro-organisms live on the skin, in mucus membranes, on the eyes and in…
The wild weirdness of topological insulators
For more than 200 years, physicists have wanted to understand why electricity flows through some materials and not others. In…
Metagenomics for foodies
Kefir is a viscous, sour-tasting, slightly alcoholic, milk-based beverage that's been consumed for centuries. It's made by adding a starter…
The value of a good science hack
Physicist Matt Bellis attended his first Science Hack Day in the fall of 2010, in Palo Alto, California. Like many…