Starship's first liftoff toward space created the equivalent of a volcanic eruption in the launchpad, physicist finds

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The SpaceX Starship lifts off from the launchpad during a flight test from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas, on April 20, 2023.
The SpaceX Starship lifts off from the launchpad during a flight test from Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas in April.

PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images

How did the zebra get its nicely patterned stripes? The answer may come from mathematician Alan Turing.

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zoo captivity zebra
A zebra's stripes help it hide from predators, but how do they form so evenly spaced?

Reuters/Jose Luis Gonzalez

Black holes can speed through the universe at 17,500 miles per second, scientists say — and the discovery could reveal new laws of physics

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Black hole collision illustration
Black holes can get caught in each others gravitational grip and either collide or recoil.

NRAO/AUI/NSF, S. Dagnello

A weirdly wobbly 'muon' particle might revolutionize physics by revealing a 5th force of nature or another dimension

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Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab.
The muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab fires muons around the ring, shown here, at near the speed of light.

Fermilab

What is the LK-99 superconductor? Everyone is talking about how it could change the world, but experts say we're still a long way off

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Magnetic lavitation
A magnet hovering above a superconductor. Persistent electric current flows on the surface of the superconductor, forming an electromagnet that repels the magnet.

J. Adam Fenster/University of Rochester

Cillian Murphy didn't just want to act like Oppenheimer. He asked science advisors to help him think like him, too.

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A side by side photo of J Robert Oppenheimer and Cillian Murphy, in costume in a promotional photo for the movie
J Robert Oppenheimer [left] smoking his signature pipe and the actor Cillian Murphy [right] who is playing him in Christopher Nolan's 'Oppenheimer'.

Getty Images [left], Universal Pictures [right]

How Christopher Nolan recreated the Trinity Test atomic bomb explosion in 'Oppenheimer' without any CGI

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trinity nuclear bomb test distant yellow mushroom cloud erupting into orange sky
A colorized photo of the mushroom cloud produced by the Trinity nuclear test as it rises over the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945.

National Security Research Center

Inside the world's only high-energy collision antimatter factory where scientists create the most explosive substance in the universe to understand why we exist

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cern location
CERN is located on the France-Switzerland border.

YouTube/CERN

A physicist explains why there's no real end to a rainbow and the only way to spot a perfectly circular one in the sky

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A rainbow on the beach in Scotland.
Normally, Earth's horizon hides a rainbow's full circle.

Westend61 / Getty Images

A nuclear physicist describes 7 things you probably didn't know about radioactive fallout from a nuclear bomb

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Nuclear warhead
Nuclear warheads, like the one shown here, are short- and long-term killers.

gerasimov_foto_174/Shutterstock

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