Physics

171 articles with this tag

How the Radial Velocity Method Detects Alien Worlds Science

How the Radial Velocity Method Detects Alien Worlds

The radial velocity method—also called the wobble method—finds exoplanets by measuring tiny Doppler shifts in starlight caused by a planet's gravitati...

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How Black Hole Jets Work—and Why They Matter Science

How Black Hole Jets Work—and Why They Matter

Black holes shoot twin beams of plasma at nearly the speed of light across millions of light-years. Here's how accretion disks and magnetic fields pow...

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What Is the Goldilocks Zone—and How It Guides the Search for Life Science

What Is the Goldilocks Zone—and How It Guides the Search for Life

The habitable zone, or Goldilocks zone, is the region around a star where liquid water could exist on a planet's surface. Understanding how scientists...

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How Scientists Recreate Star Explosions on Earth Science

How Scientists Recreate Star Explosions on Earth

Inside the world's most powerful rare-isotope accelerator, physicists smash atomic nuclei at half the speed of light to understand how stars forge the...

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How RTGs Power Spacecraft Billions of Miles From the Sun Science

How RTGs Power Spacecraft Billions of Miles From the Sun

Radioisotope thermoelectric generators convert the heat of decaying plutonium-238 into electricity, enabling spacecraft like Voyager 1 to operate for...

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How Tornadoes Form—and Why the U.S. Gets the Most Science

How Tornadoes Form—and Why the U.S. Gets the Most

An explainer on the atmospheric mechanics behind tornado formation, why the United States experiences more tornadoes than any other country, and how m...

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How Synchrotrons Work—the World's Brightest Light Science

How Synchrotrons Work—the World's Brightest Light

Synchrotron light sources accelerate electrons to near light speed, producing X-rays billions of times brighter than the sun. These massive machines p...

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Did Mars Have an Ocean? What the Evidence Shows Science

Did Mars Have an Ocean? What the Evidence Shows

Scientists have debated whether Mars once held a vast northern ocean for nearly four decades. New geological evidence, including a continental shelf '...

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How the Antikythera Mechanism Works—the First Computer Science

How the Antikythera Mechanism Works—the First Computer

The Antikythera mechanism, a 2,100-year-old Greek device recovered from a shipwreck, used dozens of interlocking bronze gears to predict eclipses, tra...

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How Gravitational Lensing Works—the Universe's Telescope Science

How Gravitational Lensing Works—the Universe's Telescope

Gravitational lensing bends light from distant objects around massive cosmic structures, acting as nature's own telescope. This guide explains the thr...

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How Reusable Rockets Work—and Why They Slashed Costs Technology

How Reusable Rockets Work—and Why They Slashed Costs

Reusable rockets land themselves after launch and fly again, cutting the cost of reaching orbit by up to 70 percent. Here is the engineering behind pr...

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How Fast Breeder Reactors Work—and Why They Matter Science

How Fast Breeder Reactors Work—and Why They Matter

Fast breeder reactors produce more nuclear fuel than they consume, promising virtually unlimited energy—but their history is marked by technical failu...

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