The scientific field of biochemistry — the study of chemical reactions and processes in biological organisms — backed up by physical chemistry — the application of standard physical concepts, such as motion, thermodynamics, and force, to chemical systems — is most of the time sufficient to gain a thorough understanding of the organizing mechanistic principles within living creatures. However, some researchers think that […]
Tag: Nuclear Physics
It goes without saying that it is hard to observe something that we cannot perceive with our own eyes. Luckily, science and technology have come a long way in helping us to detect the unseeable. Think of optical and atomic force microscopes showing how the Shewanella oneidensis bacterium extracts oxygen from toxic metals, mirrors and […]
Sometimes we are gazing at the stars, scintillating reassuringly across the sky, as if we are yearning for a long-forgotten speck of what once felt as home. An enigmatic melancholy, barely noticeable, yet ever so present, falls upon us. Would that nostalgic state of mind not make more sense if we knew that the body […]
Gravity is one of the four fundamental interactions in nature — the three others being electromagnetism, the strong nuclear interactions, and the weak nuclear interactions — and it pervades space like an invisible field until infinity. Albert Einstein taught us that the gravitational field is spacetime itself, and that gravity is experienced as a result of large masses bending […]
Physics explains how our material Universe works. However, its theories do not currently form a satisfying whole. For example, the theory that describes the fundamental forces and building blocks of our physical world excludes gravity, and we do not comprehend how the Universe was born. As we naturally strive for things to be complete and […]