Wind tunnel and high-speed camera data help researchers to explore the zigzag secrets of one of football's most unpredictable shots and provide clues to much older scientific mysteries
The zigzag trajectory of knuckleballs through the air has bamboozled goalkeepers and batsmen the world over. Scientists have been puzzled too by these strange shots and pitches, which are delivered at relatively slow speeds with little or no spin and yet travel in such an unpredictable way.
The Northeast Pacific's largest marine heatwave on record was at least in part caused by El Niño climate patterns. And unusually warm water events in that ocean could potentially become more frequent with rising levels of greenhouse gases.
WASHINGTON, D.C., July 12, 2016 -- Now automotive body paint jobs get a major boost from the rapidly emerging field of terahertz (THz) technology used to improve the precision and quality control of layered paint coatings.
Two new studies recently published in Limnology & Oceanography and Biogeosciences report that ocean warming may exacerbate the impacts of ocean acidification on calcareous phytoplankton, and its evolutionary success and physiological performance will be hampered.
The Suomi NPP and Aqua satellites captured visible and infrared data on Hurricane Celia as it continues to head west toward the Central Pacific Ocean.
Hurricane Celia is currently in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, but once it passes west of 140 degrees west longitude, warnings on the system will be issued by NOAA's Central Pacific Hurricane Center.
Using a small quantum system consisting of three superconducting qubits, researchers at UC Santa Barbara and Google have uncovered a link between aspects of classical and quantum physics thought to be unrelated: classical chaos and quantum entanglement. Their findings suggest that it would be possible to use controllable quantum systems to investigate certain fundamental aspects of nature.
Imagine rolling your eyes to help you see more clearly. Although it wouldn't work for humans, new research published today in Nature Communications has shown mantis shrimp use eye rotations to enhance their polarization vision.
PhD student Ilse Daly, from the Ecology of Vision research group in the from the University of Bristol's School of Biological Sciences, found the eye-rolling behaviour of mantis shrimp helps them see the world around them.
Researchers from the University of Birmingham have found that exposure to social-based messages promoting healthy eating can increase consumption of fruit and vegetables and reduce consumption of high-calorie snacks. It has been known for some time that people adapt their behavior to what they think is socially expected for that situation and food choices are no exception. If we are told that other people in our social group eat lots of fruit and vegetables then we may try to do the same.
New work by Italian geochemists seems to indicate that the current ground movement around one of the world's most dangerous volcano systems may be due to gas pressure, and not because of a surge of volcanic magma. This work was recently presented at the Goldschmidt conference in Yokohama, Japan (30 June 2016).
Physicists from New Zealand's University of Otago have used steerable 'optical tweezers' to split minute clouds of ultracold atoms and slowly smash them together to directly observe a key theoretical principle of quantum mechanics.
The principle, known as Pauli Exclusion, places fundamental constraints on the behavior of groups of identical particles and underpins the structure and stability of atoms as well as the mechanical, electrical, magnetic and chemical properties of almost all materials.
Europe will be spared the worst economic impacts of climate change by a slowing down of the Gulf Stream, new research predicts.
Scientists have long suggested that global warming could lead to a slowdown - or even shutdown - of the vast system of ocean currents, including the Gulf Stream, that keeps Europe warm.
Known as the Thermohaline Circulation, this system operates like a conveyor belt, transporting warm water from the tropics to Europe, where evaporation decreases salinity and density so that the water sinks.
For the first time, researchers at the University of Basel in Switzerland have coupled the nuclear spins of distant atoms using just a single electron. Three research groups took part in this complex experiment, the results of which have now been published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
An animation of visible and infrared imagery from NOAA's GOES-West satellite from July 9 to July 11 shows Tropical Storm Blas weakening to a remnant followed by a strengthening Tropical Cyclone Celia.
A huge earthquake may be building beneath Bangladesh, the most densely populated nation on earth. Scientists say they have new evidence of increasing strain there, where two tectonic plates underlie the world's largest river delta. They estimate that at least 140 million people in the region could be affected if the boundary ruptures; the destruction could come not only from the direct results of shaking, but changes in the courses of great rivers, and in the level of land already perilously close to sea level.
Tropical Storm Celia strengthened into a hurricane over the weekend of July 9 and 10 and NOAA's GOES-West satellite provided a visible look at the storm early on July 11.
A visible image of Hurricane Celia was taken from NOAA's GOES-West satellite on July 11 at 1200 UTC (8 a.m. EDT). Forecaster Stewart at the National Hurricane Center noted "after developing what had been a decent looking eye with a diameter of about 20 nautical miles, dry air has once again penetrated into the inner-core region and has eroded most of the eyewall convection."