Physics, Pixelated

Two glowing electron trails meeting at bright vertices linked by a wavy pink photon in starry space

Feynman Diagrams Explained: What the Little Squ...

A Feynman diagram is not a photo of particles bouncing around. Each little drawing stands for one term in a calculation of how likely a process is. Here is how...

Feynman Diagrams Explained: What the Little Squ...

A Feynman diagram is not a photo of particles bouncing around. Each little drawing stands for one term in a calculation of how likely a process is. Here is how...

Gold-leaf electroscope in a glass bell jar in a glowing night laboratory

Marie Curie’s Discoveries: Radioactivity, Polon...

Marie Curie did not discover radioactivity. Henri Becquerel found the rays in 1896. What she did was turn a strange effect into a science: she showed the rays were an...

Marie Curie’s Discoveries: Radioactivity, Polon...

Marie Curie did not discover radioactivity. Henri Becquerel found the rays in 1896. What she did was turn a strange effect into a science: she showed the rays were an...

Neutrino streaks from the Sun passing straight through Earth toward a huge underground water detector

What Are Neutrinos? The Ghost Particles That Pa...

Neutrinos are the most elusive particles we know of. Thousands of billions stream through your body every second without touching you. Pauli invented them in 1930 to save energy conservation,...

What Are Neutrinos? The Ghost Particles That Pa...

Neutrinos are the most elusive particles we know of. Thousands of billions stream through your body every second without touching you. Pauli invented them in 1930 to save energy conservation,...

Two glowing nucleons in a nucleus exchanging a bright meson across the tiny gap between them

Hideki Yukawa and the Meson: How a Force’s Rang...

In 1934 Hideki Yukawa asked why the force that holds the nucleus together reaches only about the width of a proton. His answer: a force carried by a particle with...

Hideki Yukawa and the Meson: How a Force’s Rang...

In 1934 Hideki Yukawa asked why the force that holds the nucleus together reaches only about the width of a proton. His answer: a force carried by a particle with...

A vast field of glowing up and down spin arrows, aligned on one side and breaking into domains of every size

The Ising Model Explained: How Tiny Arrows Expl...

The Ising model is the simplest picture of a magnet: a grid of arrows that can only point up or down, each wanting to match its neighbours. Heat scrambles them;...

The Ising Model Explained: How Tiny Arrows Expl...

The Ising model is the simplest picture of a magnet: a grid of arrows that can only point up or down, each wanting to match its neighbours. Heat scrambles them;...

An observatory beside a glowing Airy disk with its rings, and an X-ray beam reflecting off a crystal lattice

The Airy Disk and the Diffraction Limit: Why Ev...

A perfect lens still cannot focus light to a point. Waves spread out after passing through any opening, so every star becomes a tiny bright disk with faint rings, the...

The Airy Disk and the Diffraction Limit: Why Ev...

A perfect lens still cannot focus light to a point. Waves spread out after passing through any opening, so every star becomes a tiny bright disk with faint rings, the...