Yuri Orlov – The Cornell physicist who was arrested by the KGB and exiled to Siberia

The incredible story of a scientist who survived gulags, fighting to change his country and physics.

  • Physicist Yuri Orlov fought for human rights during the Cold War.
  • He was arrested by the KGB and exiled to Siberia.
  • Orlov's story can inspire scientists to fight for their beliefs.
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Scientists create the 5th form of matter for 6 minutes

It's exotic, incredibly cold stuff.

(MAIUS project team/Matthias)
  • It was the first Bose-Einstein condensate made in space
  • Creating the condensate in low gravity allows it to hold longer
  • Scientists hope Bose-Einstein condensate will allow finer detection of subtle quantum phenomena
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Confirmed: The Milky Way's monstrous black hole

A young star and a belt of gasses give the game away.

(Triff/ESO/Big Think)
  • Scientists have provided the first confirmation that what's at the center of the Milky Way is a supermassive black hole.
  • The discovery caught the interaction of gasses and a small star spinning around the mysterious object.
  • This is thought to be compelling proof of the black hole's central role in a galaxy.
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10 paradoxes that will stretch your mind

From time-traveling billiard balls to information-destroying black holes, the world's got plenty of puzzles that are hard to wrap your head around.

Big Think
  • While it's one of the best on Earth, the human brain has a lot of trouble accounting for certain problems.
  • We've evolved to think of reality in a very specific way, but there are plenty of paradoxes out there to suggest that reality doesn't work quite the way we think it does.
  • Considering these paradoxes is a great way to come to grips with how incomplete our understanding of the universe really is.
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Why the number 137 is one of the greatest mysteries in physics

Famous physicists like Richard Feynman think 137 holds the answers to the Universe.

Pixabay
  • The fine structure constant has mystified scientists since the 1800s.
  • The number 1/137 might hold the clues to the Grand Unified Theory.
  • Relativity, electromagnetism and quantum mechanics are unified by the number.
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