Swans on Tea

The world’s most precise clock
We get this headline every six months or so. The experiment is cool, and drives down the precision to new levels, but I’ll give the standard disclaimer: it’s a frequency standard, not a clock.
The logic clock is based on a single aluminum ion (electrically charged atom) trapped [...]

Busted more than once.
Skulls in the Stars: Mythbusters were scooped — by 130 years! (Archimedes death ray)
About the same time, however, and in an earlier volume of the Proceedings, I found an article with the title, “On the burning mirrors of Archimedes, and on the Concentration of light produced by reflectors,” by John Scott. [...]

Physics Buzz: Chicken Head Tracking
The technique – which you could generally call “tracking” but is also pretty much the same thing as “dead reckoning” (or is it ded reckoning?) – is utilized by aircraft and some car navigation systems. (I love it when “high tech” turns up in Nature.) The chicken’s body communicates its [...]