Evolutionary History Through Macro and Micro Observations

Everything in the cosmos has a history. The old dichotomy between the "historical" sciences (like geology, paleontology and evolutionary biology) and the (for want of a better term) "functional" sciences (like physics and chemistry—some would call them the "real sciences") was always supposed to be that fields like physics study dynamic processes and discover immutable laws of interaction among particles composing the cosmos—while the historical sciences study, well, history—the suppose...

 Animal Plants: Life Adapted to a Vacuum

"These remarkable creatures combine the characteristics of animals and plants and so I call them animal-plants. ..." "All right. Don't get angry. Just explain how your creatures avoid getting dried up like mummies." "That is simple. Their skin is covered with a glassy layer, thin and flexible but absolutely impermeable to gases and liquids and all kinds of particles, so that the creatures are protected from any loss of material. . . . Their bodies have appendages which look like wings and a...

 Light and Bodies are Transmutable into One Another

Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another; and may not bodies receive much of their activity from the particles of light which enter into their composition? The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very comfortable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.

 You want a physicist to speak at your funeral

You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child rem...

 The BRAIN Initiative

As humans, we can identify galaxies light years away, we can study particles smaller than an atom. But we still haven’t unlocked the mystery of the three pounds of matter that sits between our ears. (Laughter.) But today, scientists possess the capability to study individual neurons and figure out the main functions of certain areas of the brain. But a human brain contains almost 100 billion neurons making trillions of connections. So Dr. Collins says it’s like listening to the strin...

 Genetics and Atomic Theory

Genetics is to biology what atomic theory is to physics. Its principle is clear: that inheritance is based on particles and not on fluids. Instead of the essence of each parent mixing, with each child the blend of those who made him, information is passed on as a series of units. The bodies of successive generations transport them through time, so that a long-lost character may emerge in a distant descendant. The genes themselves may be older than the species that bear them.

 The Total Energy of the Universe is Zero

There are something like ten million million million million million million million million million million million million million million (1 with eighty zeroes after it) particles in the region of the universe that we can observe. Where did they all come from? The answer is that, in quantum theory, particles can be created out of energy in the form of particle/antiparticle pairs. But that just raises the question of where the energy came from. The answer is that the total energy of the uni...

 The Matter / Antimater Imbalance in the Universe

Physicists have long pondered the problem and may have an answer. It seems that just before the universe was one millisecond old, matter and antimatter annihilated each other in a sweeping extinction. But a tiny asymmetry was built into the universe so that matter dominated over antimatter by one part out of 100 billion. Why the built-in asymmetry? In the first 100 billion-billion-billionth of a second of the universe's history, particles called X particles and their antiparticles were create...

 Why Nothing Can Go Faster Than the Speed of Light

Einstein's equation gives us the most concrete explanation for the central fact that nothing can travel faster than light speed. You may have wondered, for instance, why we can't take some object, a muon say, that an accelerator has boosted up to 667 million miles per hour—99.5 percent of light speed—and "push it a bit harder," getting it to 99.9 percent of light speed, and then "really push it harder" impelling it to cross the light-speed barrier. Einstein's formula explains why such eff...

 Indestructible Atoms

Chemical analysis and synthesis go no farther than to the separation of particles one from another, and to their reunion. No new creation or destruction of matter is within the reach of chemical agency. We might as well attempt to introduce a new planet into the solar system, or to annihilate one already in existence, as to create or destroy a particle of hydrogen.