A drop makes waves – just like quantum mechanics?

This simple experiment creates a surprisingly complex coupled system of the driven oscillator that is the oil and the bouncing droplets. The droplets create waves every time they hit the surface and the next bounce of the droplets depends on the waves they hit. The waves of the oil are both a result of the bounces as well as a cause of the bounces. The drops and the waves, they belong together.

Does it smell quantum mechanically yet?

This looks pretty cool (watch the video in the link) but I share Bee’s skepticism that this explains QM; it reproduces a few of the basic behaviors, but that’s a far cry from explaining all of it. I think it’s a tendency of human nature to become enamored of what works and conveniently ignore what doesn’t, but as scientists we have to make sure this isn’t happening.

Lunar Ranging Provides A Science Explanation Of Full Moons And Curses

It’s a beautiful idea because it generates a thing scientists probably love most: a testable prediction. If the poor [reflection] performance on full moon nights resulted from heating of the surface of the cubes, turning off the light should boost the signal as soon as the surface cools so that the temperature throughout the cubes is uniform.

All you’d have to do is turn off the Sun. Or wait for the Earth to pass between the Sun and moon, as it does during a lunar eclipse.

Spoiler alert: science works.

The oldest star discovery tells much about the early universe

The star – designated SMSS J031300.36-670839.3 – lies within our Milky Way galaxy and a mere (relatively) 6,000 light years away but is the oldest known star discovered so far

Researchers identify one of the earliest stars in the universe

[It] contains a level of iron whose upper limit is so low that it suggests that the star is a second-generation star, having arisen from the gas cloud enriched by one of the very first stars in the universe. But because there is so little iron in the star, the researchers say the star’s progenitor must not have been very energetic, as it may have failed to expel all the heavy elements made in its own core.

How *do* cats land on their feet when falling, anyway?

So what intrigued and, quite frankly, baffled physicists for so long? The surprising observation is that cats can still turn over in free-fall even when they are released at rest, i.e. with no initial rotation! Ironically, this probably freaks out physicists far more than non-physicists, because at first glance it appears to be a violation of the conservation of angular momentum.

Why M82’s New Supernova Excites Astronomers

Astronomers are used to things that change slowly, over millions or billions of years, so when something goes BANG in the sky, we tend to kind of lose it. It’s certainly partially just the novelty, but it’s also because events like this give us a chance – and a fleeting one at that – to watch some of the most energetic and revealing processes in the Universe as they happen.