1. 6 Scientific Discoveries That Laugh in the Face of Physics

    chailatteplease:

    Cracked has a great write up about some weird inconsistencies in the physical world that everyone is still trying to explain:

    * The empty vacuum of space around our sun is actually hotter than the sun itself: “This is the only instance in the known universe where the thing doing the heating is actually cooler than the thing it’s heating.”

    * The Higgs mass hierarchy problem: “the vast discrepancy between aspects of the weak nuclear force and gravity” (i.e. wishing for a unified field theory).

    *The flyby anomaly: “an unexpected energy increase during Earth-flybys of spacecraft”, when they pass by Earth far enough away to not be affected by our gravity and inexplicably speed up.

    * The way that mass/energy is altered by black holes: If a black hole pulls in an asteroid, the mass of the black hole increases by the mass of the asteroid, but when the black hole disappears, where does its mass/energy and the mass/energy of everything it pulled in go?

    * The Quantum Zeno effect: Certain unstable elements decay, but they will never decay if they are being observed, which means that you can essentially stop time by paying attention to certain particles.

    * The recent OPERA experiment by CERN: Were they really able to make  neutrinos travel faster than light?

    (via purpleishboots)

    2. 1 month ago | Notes (0)

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