Tag: Physics

Exploring the Scorching, Solid Ice of Alien Worlds | July 17 2026, 14:56

There exists ice that does not melt even at hundreds of degrees, and it seems that entire planets stand on it. Under normal pressure, ice has to be cold. But if you compress water tens of thousands of times stronger than atmospheric pressure, the molecules have nowhere to go, and the pressure itself compresses them into a crystalline lattice, causing the water to “freeze,” even while being scalding hot. Not supercooled, not tricky—just simultaneously solid and hot. It’s called “Ice VII”. At a pressure of about 10 GPa, it remains a crystal at temperatures above +300°C.

This type of ice has been found in nature. In 2017, its tiny crystals were discovered locked inside diamonds that had been lifted from the depths of the Earth’s mantle—the water was sealed in there under monstrous residual pressure. And if you compress and heat water even more—to hundreds of GPa and thousands of degrees—it transitions into an even more bizarre phase: superionic ice. Oxygen atoms sit in a rigid lattice while protons flow freely through it like a fluid. This ice conducts electricity and, according to calculations, appears black and incandescent. It was momentarily produced in the laboratory with laser shock waves, and models suggest that significant portions of the interiors of Uranus, Neptune, and many “water” exoplanets are composed of it—this particularly explains their strange, skewed magnetic fields.

Our domestic experience of “ice = cold” is a narrow special case at one atmosphere of pressure. Science already knows about twenty crystalline forms of ice, and in the interiors of planets, water can easily be both solid and hot at the same time.

Exploring Engineering Zen: Uncovering the Secrets of Technology and Science | July 02 2026, 21:47

I’m reminding you that I have an Engineering Zen group on Facebook and Telegram. In recent days, there have been posts about:

– Why a fridge magnet sticks only on one side, and barely on the other. It turns out, this is the same trick used to focus beams in particle accelerators. It has a name and a very unobvious “inside out”.

– A skyscraper in New York that could have been toppled by wind — and which was secretly fixed “live,” at night, while during the day offices went about business as usual. It all started with a student doubting the calculations. The story was then classified for almost 20 years.

– The fact that trolleybuses, electric cars, faxes, drones, video calls, and even humanoid robots are much older than you think. One of these robots, by the way, walked, talked about 700 words, counted on fingers, and smoked. In 1939.

– “Kelvin’s Thunderstorm” — dripping water that pumps thousands of volts and strikes with a spark. Completely without a power source. It is assembled on a kitchen table, and the energy comes not from what you might think (and it’s not a perpetual motion machine).

– A fax machine that became commercially successful before the telephone. A two-meter-tall eight-kilogram pendulum with a needle, 1860s. Guess who was the main customer.

– A simple soap film, which instantly “solves” a problem still unsolved by mathematicians in general terms. Without performing a single computation.

– Hoover Dam, inside which nearly 1000 km of pipes are hidden — otherwise, the concrete would have taken 125 years to set and would have cracked. How exactly they cooled it is a separate attraction with an ice plant right on the site.

– Those very same rusty “rusty” iron pieces sticking out in every fashionable square. They rust deliberately, and that is precisely what makes them almost eternal. Of course, they were not designed for beauty.

– Why memory cannot be erased by force of will — and why it’s so easy to inadvertently rewrite it. Also explains why so many people want to go back to the USSR.

– Benford’s Law: the first digit of a random number does not appear haphazardly — a one is at the forefront in almost a third of cases. It is used to catch fraudsters, and is even accepted as evidence in court.

– And for dessert — the world’s best mechanical calculator the size of a can, designed by a Buchenwald concentration camp prisoner. It was this work that saved his life.

Join us to not miss out on many more interesting things. “Engineering Zen”, @engineersdzen

Exploring the Odd and Ingenious with Engineer’s Zen | June 25 2026, 03:38

Just a reminder that I have the Engineering Zen group on Facebook and Telegram. Recently, these topics have been covered:

– The 1956 TV remote control that had no batteries, no electronics, and not a single LED — and it worked perfectly. How? With a small hammer.

– SQLite — a database that exists in a trillion copies literally everywhere (even on Mars). It was developed by three people, originated on a military destroyer, and instead of a Code of Conduct, the developers adhere to a 1500-year-old charter.

– Eel eggs haven’t been seen for 2000 years. Aristotle brooded over this, followed by a 19-year-old Sigmund Freud, who dissected hundreds of eels, found nothing, and frustratedly left biology.

– Obelisks — a new “form of life” discovered in 2024. Not a virus, not a cell, nothing like anything else. And it lives right in your mouth. About one in ten people have it.

– Midjourney — the very company that creates images in Discord — is suddenly building a body scanner that “is better than an MRI”. You have to be scanned underwater. No, it’s not a joke.

– Light from sound. Catch a bubble in ultrasound — and it flashes. Inside, it’s 10,000 degrees for a moment. It’s assembled on a kitchen table, and physicists are still debating exactly how it emits light.

– Why memories can’t be erased by sheer willpower — and why it’s so easy to rewrite them. It also explains why so many people want to go back to the USSR.

– Why you can’t bring water on a plane — an honest engineering breakdown.

– Cicadas that have learned prime numbers to avoid getting eaten. They emerge every 13 or 17 years — and it’s a mathematically verified survival strategy.

– A Japanese mathematician who proved a great hypothesis over 500 pages in his invented language with “Hodge theatres” and “frobenoids”. Half the world believes him, the other half found a flaw. A very beautiful and very sad story.

– And for dessert — the bigger brother of a flying manhole cover in Moscow: a cast iron plate that was launched upwards at a speed of 67 km/s by a nuclear explosion in 1957 — six times faster than escape velocity.

Join us to not miss out on a lot more interesting stuff.

Also on Telegram @engineersdzen

Engineering Zen: Insights on Oil Storage, Time Illusions, and the Self-Righting 3D Object | June 20 2026, 14:50

I’d like to remind you that I have a group called “Engineering Zen” on Facebook and Telegram, which in recent days has featured content about:

1) the structure of oil storage facilities and what that lid flying over Moscow was all about

2) the “stopped clock” illusion, experienced by everyone but understood by almost no one.

3) about the 3D monostable, which always rights itself no matter how it’s placed. It was first proven mathematically, then constructed.

Join us so you don’t miss out on much more intriguing content. I am particularly concerned about Telegram — somehow 37 guests showed up, but as I understand it, they won’t keep coming by themselves, and with such a small audience, I fear I won’t have enough motivation to write regularly. Let’s at least push it to 50, then the motivation will be somewhat better. “Engineering Zen”, @engineersdzen

Exploring Ambivalence: A Review of Andy Weir’s “Project Hail Mary” | June 19 2026, 14:11

I finished reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. My feelings are mixed.

On one hand, Weir is an absolute genius of hard science fiction. It’s evident that the universe is developed down to the smallest details. The author doesn’t just make up facts; the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, space navigation — everything is based on real modern scientific concepts. The problems the main character solves are logical, and following the plot development is insanely interesting. Pure delight for the inner geek.

But on the other hand… throughout the novel, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was reading young adult or even children’s literature.

For instance… Ryland Grace, the main character, behaves not like a leading scientist stranded alone in deep space on a mission to save humanity, but like a hyperactive school teacher (which he actually was). His inner monologue is filled with childlike wonder, and instead of normal adult swearing in stressful situations, he uses amusing euphemisms. And generally, the idea that a single scientist should be able to quickly retrofit a spacecraft on the fly with a “sticks and stones” approach just to make it work is – well.. that’s something.

Too tame and kind space. All conflicts on Earth before the launch are resolved suspiciously easily thanks to the “absolute power” of project leader Eva Stratt. Her actions often look caricatured, not realistic. And when the alien Rocky appears… Their friendship develops by the canons of a classic Disney fairy tale. They instantly find a common language, they have perfect mutual understanding, zero cultural barriers, or dangerous misunderstandings. Everything is very cute, conflict-free, and “on friendship.” Adding some conflict for sharpness would have been nice. Everything always goes smoothly for the main character.

Writing style. Short, chopped sentences, very simple language, chewing over every thought, constant exclamations. The text seems specifically adapted so that a twelve-year-old could easily read it. The plot moves in circles: a problem arises => Grace in panic => Grace calculates something on paper / Rocky helps with an alloy => problem solved. And so every 30 pages. Because of this, towards the end, the sense of real danger is lost: the reader knows in advance that the author has another scientific trump card up his sleeve.

As a result, it turned out to be a cool, very scientifically accurate… comic book. A kind, optimistic fairy tale, wrapped in relatively impeccable physics and mathematics. There’s definitely a lot to praise the book for, but if you’re expecting a deep psychological drama or existential horror from fiction — this is clearly not for you.

Who read it, what did you think? Did you also catch this feeling of a “kindergarten” on a spaceship, or am I being picky?

Unraveling the Mysteries and Controversies of Curling Technology | June 15 2026, 12:52

It’s amazing that the core of curling is based on a physical anomaly that scientists have been unable to explain for 100 years. According to physics, if you spin, say, a regular glass and push it forward, friction should make it roll in the opposite direction of the spin. But the 20 kg granite curling stone defies these rules throughout its entire existence — it curves in the same direction it rotates. Either the stone leaves microscopic scratches on the ice, upon which its rear part then “jumps,” or the ice clings to it like teeth on a comb – there are many hypotheses, but clarity is nil.

There’s an interesting story in curling called “Broomgate.” In 2015, brooms with such aggressive directional fabric were released that sweepers could literally “steer” the stone like a joystick. Chaos ensued, and players from top teams (!) agreed not to use this then-legal hack out of gentlemanly honor. The federation tested 50 brooms and officially banned these “technological doping” tools. In 2024–25, “Broomgate 2.0” erupted. The controversy was not over the bristles, but the stiffness of the foam under the pad. Right during the Grand Slam of Curling (2025), top teams rebelled and signed a collective agreement to abandon these innovations mid-season. From June 2025, stiffer foams were banned — models like the BalancePlus Firm 2.0 were specifically targeted.

The photo shows curling in 1959 at Loch Leven, Kinross, Scotland.

Understanding the Tingling Sensation from a Charging Laptop | May 31 2026, 15:27

Today I learned why there’s a tingling sensation from the metallic body of, say, a MacBook when it’s charging. The effect is called electrovibration, and it arises due to parasitic capacitive coupling and the absence of grounding in the standard power supply. This seemed kind of obvious, but exactly how it works was not.

Inside the charger, there is a capacitor, which allows a safe but noticeable potential of AC current to seep into the aluminum laptop case. When you touch the cover, your body and the laptop become a sort of living capacitor, with a thin layer of aluminum and skin acting as an insulator that separates the charges.

The pulsation of current in the socket – 50-60 Hz. The electric field between the finger and the body sometimes strengthens, sometimes weakens. According to Coulomb’s Law, this causes the skin to be attracted to the metal and then released. If you simply rest your hand on the laptop, the force of this attraction is too small to notice.

It results in sensory deception – nerve endings in the finger pads, which in nature are responsible for recognizing textures, go haywire from such microscopic friction chaos. The brain is completely unable to directly recognize electrostatic microcurrents, so it chooses the most logical interpretation for itself and convinces you that it’s the metal itself that is vibrating.

Cherenkov Radiation: The Ethereal Blue Glow of Nuclear Decay | April 26 2026, 23:52

In the picture – Cherenkov radiation. This is me in 2009 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, standing in the hall with the nuclear reactor. The water in the photo is for slowing down neutrons and cooling spent fuel rods. The glow occurs when electrons are ejected from the fuel at a speed exceeding the phase velocity of light in water. Kind of like a sound barrier, but for light. The intensity of this glow can roughly indicate how “fresh” the fuel is in the pool. The brighter and denser the blue, the more active the decay processes are. Interestingly, Cherenkov radiation is the reason why there is no absolute darkness at great depths of the ocean floor.

Near-Miss at Leningrad: The Unknown Predecessor to Chernobyl | April 26 2026, 17:32

On the anniversary of Chernobyl. Those interested in this topic may not know that a similar accident could have occurred ten years earlier on the main (very first RBMK-1000 unit) Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant.

There was a nearly identical situation: one turbine in operation, reactor shutdown by emergency protection, and subsequent power escalation.

Back then, the situation was saved by the Chief Reactor Operator Mikhail

Karrask, who, acting intuitively and relying on his experience with industrial reactors, introduced into the reactor in portions

12 manual control rods

BEFORE pressing the emergency shutdown button.

A couple of years ago, Karrask passed away. This story is almost unknown outside the industry. For proof, google his obituary on Rosatom.

The technical part. The main danger of the RBMK reactors at that time was in the design of the control rods. At the bottom, they were equipped with graphite “displacers”. When the emergency shutdown button was pressed, the rods began moving down, and in the first seconds, the graphite tips did not dampen the reactor, but on the contrary, displaced the water and increased the power in the lower part of the active zone. But precisely, the instructions in case of trouble suggested pressing the emergency shutdown button. If you followed the instructions, “Chernobyl” would have happened earlier.

After the incident at the Leningrad NPP, a commission was formed. Experts (including those from the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy) pointed out the dangerous design flaws of the RBMK – the positive void coefficient of reactivity and incorrect design of the rods. Unfortunately, extensive changes to the design of all RBMK reactors were not made at that time. Only operational regulations recommendations were given, which, as history showed, were insufficient to prevent the tragedy in Chernobyl.

Space Exploration: From Pioneering Days to the ISS as a Playground | April 06 2026, 19:59

essentially, a person in space is about these days and about the days 50 years ago. The International Space Station is already kindergarten: in terms of the Earth, it is only slightly higher than airplanes fly.