Swans on Tea

Basics of space flight: orbital mechanics
Orbital mechanics, also called flight mechanics, is the study of the motions of artificial satellites and space vehicles moving under the influence of forces such as gravity, atmospheric drag, thrust, etc. Orbital mechanics is a modern offshoot of celestial mechanics which is the study of the motions of natural celestial [...]

Thunderhead Accelerator
Besides being host to stunning lightning displays, thunderclouds also emit gamma rays, although researchers aren’t completely sure why. Last fall, detectors installed on a mountaintop in Japan captured the first simultaneous observations of this radiation along with the high-speed electrons thought to be their source. The results, detailed in the 26 June Physical Review [...]

… but we just can’t kill the beast. Until the fourth try. Fortunately the failed attempts are kinda neat, too.
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My instinct to grab a pointy object to burst the bubble was misplaced, of course. The soap film isn’t a rigid object, [...]

Why a Greyhound or a Racehorse Doesn’t “Pop a Wheelie”
The ability to gain speed quickly is crucial for survival, but there’s a limit as to how rapidly an animal can accelerate. Researchers wondered whether the “wheelie” problem experienced by cars during a drag race could be a factor in four-legged animals’ ability to speed up. [...]

Over at incoherently scattered ponderings, there’s a post on safety at academic labs, which links to an article at Slate about an explosion at a lab which killed a worker, and discusses the difference in safety standards for students vs workers, and academia vs industry.
Why the difference between industry and academe? For one thing, the [...]

Dot Physics: The physics of Michael Jackson’s moonwalk
Neither a spherical Michael Jackson nor a point Michael Jackson is assumed.

The Ultimate Spy Plane
One nit:
Created as the ultimate spy plane, the SR-71, which first took to the air in December 1964, flew reconnaissance missions until 1990, capable of hurtling along at more than Mach 3, about 2,280 miles per hour—faster than a rifle bullet—at 85,000 feet, or 16 miles above the earth. It is the [...]

Food, energy outpace production
By 2050, world population is expected to exceed 9 billion people, up from 6.5 billion today. Already, according to the report, a gap is emerging between agricultural production and demand, and the disconnect is expected to be amplified by climate change, increasing demand for biofuels, and a growing scarcity of water.

Another video, reminiscent of the viral popcorn-popped-with-a-cellphone video I discussed a while back
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And, in fact one of the response videos is with popcorn
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Also one involving toast
Objections: One is electrostatic. Matt has [...]

Via Fine Structure, The World’s Greatest Physicists (as Determined by the Wisdom of Crowds)
Mikhail Simkin and Vwani Roychowdhury at the University of California, Los Angeles, have come up with a way of ranking physicists by equating their achievements with their fame as measured by hits on Google.

Nuke ‘em
Ground Zero II
Have you ever wondered what would happen if a nuclear bomb goes off in your city? With Google’s Maps framework and a bit of Javascript, you can see the outcome. And it doesn’t look good.

I was decreasing the local entropy in a small part of my abode and found a shoebox full of photos which happened to contain a few shots of my grad school lab, in all its glory. We were building an interferometer which would use cold atoms, which means relatively large deBroglie wavelengths and a [...]