You’ve likely heard that blue light from smartphone screens may be keeping you awake at night. While the sun is our main source of blue light, the rise of LEDs and screen use exposes us to artificial blue light in the evening. Blue light suppresses melatonin, a hormone we naturally …
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A little more than six years ago, Apple unveiled Face ID. It was a new method to biometrically unlock iPhones and authenticate purchases by scanning your face. Yet after all this time, there still hasn’t been a meaningful competitor on Android—at least, not with the same level of security and …
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Perhaps the most iconic instrument in modern rock is the guitar. It's really just a bunch of strings stretched across a board, which you can strum to make awesome tunes, thanks to the physics of waves and sound. A Wave Pulse on a String Let's start with a demo you …
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The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. In 1956, David Pines formulated a phantom. He predicted the existence of seas of electric ripples that could neutralize each other, rendering the overall ocean motionless even as individual waves ebbed and flowed. The oddity, which came to be known …
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This summer has been hot—one of the hottest on record—and it's probably just going to keep getting hotter. I feel like we are getting to the point where air-conditioning isn't just something nice to have, it's a necessity. There are several ways to cool things off, but the most common …
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