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The author of Skulls in the Stars is a professor of physics, specializing in optical science, at UNC Charlotte. The blog covers topics in physics and optics, the history of science, classic pulp fantasy and horror fiction, and the surprising intersections between these areas. -
Category Archives: Physics
What’s the difference between “transparency” and “invisibility”?
In writing my previous post on The Murderer Invisible, I started thinking again about the relationship between something being “transparent” and something being truly “invisible”. Most of us can appreciate that, under the right circumstances, a transparent object like a … Continue reading
Posted in Invisibility, Optics
8 Comments
Philip Wylie’s The Murderer Invisible
If it were a mystery novel, The Murderer Invisible would be a failure right off the bat, as the plot twist is explained right there in the title! As science fiction and horror, however, this 1931 book by Philip Wylie … Continue reading
Posted in Invisibility, Science fiction
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My own little “Higgs”-related story
The physics community is in a near frenzy today with the expectation that, tomorrow at 9 am Geneva time, researchers at the Large Hadron Collider will announce the first significant evidence that they’ve discovered the “Higgs boson”, a fundamental particle … Continue reading
Posted in Personal, Physics
10 Comments
Physics demonstrations: rolling uphill
Some of the best and most enjoyable demonstrations of physics principles can be put together quite readily with very cheap materials. A good example of this was the simple version of the Magdeburg hemisphere demo I discussed previously; another example … Continue reading
Posted in Physics demos
2 Comments
Physics demonstrations: Magdeburg hemispheres
Sometimes one can demonstrate very profound and remarkable physics with very simple, even mundane, tools. Last week I received the tools to perform one such demonstration by mail: This pair of iron hemispheres, with handles attached and a valve on … Continue reading
Posted in Physics demos
22 Comments
Physics demonstrations: the Pythagoras cup
The past few weeks I’ve been preparing a lot of entertaining demonstrations of physics principles for a Science and Technology Expo to be held at UNC Charlotte on April 29th. I thought I’d start writing short posts highlighting the various … Continue reading
Posted in Physics demos
20 Comments
1901 — the year the nuclear atom was “invented”!
So what does an atom look like? If you were to pull someone at random off the street and ask them to draw a picture of an atom, they would more likely than not draw something like this: Almost everybody … Continue reading
Posted in History of science, Physics
7 Comments
Pauli, “armchair physicists”, and “not even wrong”
Ah, controversy! Physics is of course not immune from it, and sometimes the participants in an argument can let anger get the better of them. An example of this began last week, when the following video clip appeared, featuring Professor … Continue reading
Posted in ... the Hell?, Physics
59 Comments
So, what is a “temporal cloak”, anyway?
I’ve been saying for a few years that optical science has entered a truly remarkable new era: instead of asking the question, “What are the physical limitations on what light can do?”, we are now asking, “How can we make … Continue reading
Posted in Invisibility, Optics
6 Comments
A Brief History of Stephen Hawking!
In September of this year, the Perimeter Institute of Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada opened their new Stephen Hawking Centre to provide more space for more researchers to investigate the foundations of physics. As part of their opening celebration, they … Continue reading
Posted in General science, Physics
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