How does a laser really work? It’s Bose – Einstein statistics! (photons are bosons) [MinutePhysics]

Photo Credit: Andy After watching the first episode of The River, not to mention hearing real-life stories of flesh eating catfish, bugs that crawl up your urethra if you pee in the water, and, of course, the famous Piranha, I’m fairly sure I never, ever, want to step into the Amazon. At least until they [...]

Something that looks very pretty when set to gentle acoustic guitars, apparently. In this video, a fuel droplet is set ablaze then quickly extinguished. Flames are spherical in low gravity since warm, buoyant air can’t rise to propel them. Thirty seconds later, a bright afterglow formed by a backlit vapour cloud spreads throughout the combustion [...]

From Professor Gillian Griffiths: Cells of the immune system protect the body against pathogens. If cells in our bodies are infected by viruses, or become cancerous, then killer cells of the immune system identify and destroy the affected cells. Cytotoxic T cells are very precise and efficient killers. They are able to destroy infected or [...]

Expedition 30 astronaut Don Pettit uses knitting needles and water droplets to demonstrate physics in space through ‘Science off the Sphere.’ This is part of the first video in a series for a partnership between NASA and the American Physical Society to share unique videos from the International Space Station with students, educators and science [...]

The perfect thing to watch before going to bed! Be sure to go full screen on this one after hitting the play button! After chasing it for more than two years I was finally rewarded with two displays of Aurora Australis (Southern lights) within a week visible from Mornington peninsula, not far from Melbourne. The [...]

Photo by George Poinar, Jr., courtesy of Oregon State University While most of us have probably never even heard of a “bat fly”, a recent discovery of a unique fossilised one has revealed that they’ve been feeding off their winged vampire buddies for a really long time. It seems that this bat fly, found in [...]

Okay, everyone.  Don’t panic.  It’s just a foot-long prawn thing pulled from miles and miles under the New Zealand sea.  It’s not a big deal, it’s not a OH MY GOD IT’S LOOKING AT ME. …These tiny animals don’t often grow more than 1cm in length, except the Supergiant variety of course, which can exceed [...]

[Photo credit: Bill & Mark Bell] Biofuel: a hot topic for doctors seeking to implant pacemakers and other life-saving devices inside the body without the need for batteries that would need to be changed every couple of years, or months, or even week. Now researchers at Case Western Reserve University have possibly found the answer [...]