Lifeboat Foundation

The trilogy’s success has been credited with establishing sci-fi, once marginalized in China, as a mainstream taste. Liu believes that this trend signals a deeper shift in the Chinese mind-set—that technological advances have spurred a new excitement about the possibilities of cosmic exploration. The trilogy commands a huge following among aerospace engineers and cosmologists; one scientist wrote an explanatory guide, “The Physics of Three Body.” Some years ago, China’s aerospace agency asked Liu, whose first career was as a computer engineer in the hydropower industry, to address technicians and engineers about ways that “sci-fi thinking” could be harnessed to produce more imaginative approaches to scientific problems.

A leading sci-fi writer takes stock of China’s global rise.

Next month, a total solar eclipse will pass over a slice of the South Pacific, Chile, and Argentina—and directly over an observatory in the Andes run by the National Science Foundation.

Astronomers and physicists are now preparing the experiments they plan to run during the eclipse. As with past eclipses, these experiments will focus on observing the Sun, as well as the effects of eclipses on Earth.

Andrew Jaffe probes Carlo Rovelli’s study arguing that physics deconstructs our sense of time.

The problem is loads of wrong predictions from theoretical physicists. Photograph by Inga Nielsen / ShutterstockNothing is moving in…

As even casual Star Wars fans will know, lightsabers are probably the coolest weapon ever to make an appearance on the big screen. Lightsaber fights are so elegant that they are almost hypnotic and, even though not all of us might have a strong enough flow of Force running through our veins, a lightsaber in the right hand is by far the deadliest weapon to be found in the universe.

The idea behind a lightsaber is simple genius: a light-weight and immensely powerful tool that uses a blade of energy to not only slice up disciples of the Dark Side in a single blow but also act as an effective shield against laser blasts. So why don’t we have working lightsabers in real life? Surely physicists must be smart enough (and big enough Star Wars fans) to be able to produce one of these incredible objects.

Continue reading “How To Build A Real Lightsaber” »

A gravitational wave generating device comprising an energizing means such as magnetrons, which act upon energizable elements such as film bulk acoustic resonators or FBARs. A computer that controls the magnetrons’ phase. A gravitational wave generation device that exhibits directivity and forms a gravitational-wave beam. The utilization of a medium in which the gravitational wave speed is reduced in order to effect refraction of the gravitational wave and be a gravitational wave lens. A gravitational wave generator device that can be directed in order to propel an object by its momentum or by changing the gravitational field nearby the object to urge it in a preferred direction and be a propulsion means.

Physicists have long sought to find one final theory that would unify all of physics. Instead they may have to settle for several.

• By Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow on October 1, 2010

A recent challenge to Stephen Hawking’s biggest idea — about how the universe might have come from nothing — has cosmologists choosing sides.

In keeping with the spirit of the age, researchers can think of the laws of physics as computer programs and the universe as a computer.

• By Seth Lloyd, Y. Jack Ng on April 1, 2007