This post is about the laser - the same one that's in your pointer. The laser was invented on May 16, 1960, so its anniversary is this...

A black hole is an object whose gravitational pull is so strong that nothing can escape it. Black holes are in the news a lot these days....

This is a small and quaint group that has piqued my interest for some time. Of course, it is not a total surprise when a physicist is...

Levitation may be defined as the state of countering gravity without making physical contact with the surroundings. It is a phenomenon...

The end of physics has been predicted several times. For example, Max Planck was famously advised (by one Prof. Jolly, who was quite...

In my almost twenty five years in American academia, I have only heard of one case (all assertions in this post will refer to my field,...

This post refers to a substantial and often critical phase in the life an academic physicist - graduate school (I am referring to a PhD)....

Analogies form an important part of human thought. They seem to be an evolutionary mechanism which leverage previous experience in the...

Quantum physics is on a lot of peoples' minds these days. It is of course, one of the two theories that have resisted integration into a...

The answer to this question, of course depends on what one means by 'good'. I will choose a low bar for this qualification - let 'good'...

I'm an academic, and papers are the currency of my trade. A significant part of my professional effort goes into trying to put out...

This post is about the connection of physicists - and physics - to music. While writing, I felt it divided naturally into two sections....

Since ancient times toys have exploited, knowingly or not, the principles of physics. They are simultaneously pure fun as well as a great...

Whether philosophy has much to say to science is a well-debated topic. I have heard it mentioned that science is what we know and...

What follows is a probably a futile protest against pictures and how we are often reminded that they are worth a thousand words. Since I...

There is often no recipe - chatGPT included - for cracking open an unsolved problem other than creative thinking. Where does human...

Let's start this blog with a story: one of my favorite writers of fiction is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and one of my favorite short stories...