Because what better way to spend a Saturday afternoon than having your mind completely blown?

In this video from a high school AP Physics class, student Stephen Magnet turned the cold, unflinching eye of science upon beloved cartoon series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

Yes, it has happened. “Physical Impossibilities in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.” For our project, we had to find three scenes from any movie or TV show and use physics to find out if something was or wasn’t possible. I got 100% on it.

Among other inaccuracies, he calculated that in one scene, Rainbow Dash must have been experiencing a force of 11.1 Gs. “11.1 Gs can be deadly if it’s applied for a minute or so. This is the limit for humans. I’m not sure what the limit is for ponies, and I don’t think this limit has been tested on ponies. However, I still think 11.1 Gs for about 15 seconds can cause black-outs or can cause some bodily organs to fail. In this clip, Rainbow Dash did not experience this.”

Your move, Khan Academy.

(via The Mary Sue)

Scientists think that they may have an answer for why their simulations show merging pairs of supermassive black holes sometimes result in one of the black holes being suddenly “kicked” away. Though such kicking hasn’t been observed, astronomers have some evidence for huge rogue black holes that may have been ejected from centers of galaxies during one of these kicks. The answer, it seems, might come from the interaction of “tendex” and “vortex” lines.

The trouble is that mapping the warping effects of gravity over space-time is incredibly difficult. Each point on such a map has 10 numbers associated with it, making it difficult to analyze. Instead of numbers, the Cornell team lead by Robert Owen used arrows which they then connected into larger lines, similar to the mapping of magnetic fields. These can be generally organized into two types of lines: “tendex,” which show the stretching/compressing force of gravity, and “vortex” which describes twisting forces.

The Large Hadron Collider has been the center of wild theories since well before the 17-mile long particle accelerator underneath Geneva was even switched on, and there seems to be no end to the speculation surrounding the facility. The latest comes from a group of scientists who theorize that not only is time travel possible, but that the means may be within our grasp thanks to the LHC.

The theory hinges on a subatomic particle called the Higgs singlet, a particle related to the Higgs boson. The catch is it is not yet clear if the Higgs singlet, or even the Higgs Boson, exist at all. Assuming they do, MSNBC reports that time travel for the Higgs singlet would work something like this:

[The Higgs singlet] may have a unique ability to jump out of the normal three dimensions of space and one dimension of time that we inhabit, and into a hidden dimension theorized to exist by some advanced physics models. By traveling through the hidden dimension, Higgs singlets could re-enter our dimensions at a point forward or backward in time from when they exited.

Of course, sending a single particle backwards or forward in time is far different than hopping in your flying time-DeLorean and zipping off to the 1950s. But scientists believe that Higgs singlets could be used to send messages backwards or forward in time, thanks to the particle’s theorized properties. Vanderbilt physicist Tom Weiler says that this limited time travel is the theory’s greatest strength, since it avoids paradoxes and does not violate the current understanding of physics.

I’m certainly no expert on deep physics, but even Weiler describes the theory as “a long shot.” Only time will tell with this theory, and others, as the LHC continues to enlighten and befuddle us as we try to understand the universe we live in.

(MSNBC via Engadget)

Conventional physics holds that in a perfect vacuum, a spinning object would never slow down since there is nothing else to act on it. But this may not be true, according to a new study by Alejandro Manjavacas and F. Javier García de Abajo and recently covered by The New Scientist. So, it starts out innocently enough with a statement like “it turns out that in a total vacuum objects will eventually slow down!” If all you want out of life is very simplistic understanding of modern science, then walk away now, because this discovery is about to board the crazy train called quantum mechanics.

The trick is pretty simple to perform, but takes a handful of tries to get right. Balance a quarter on the inside of a coat hanger, spin the hanger, then amaze people. Be sure to tell your audience that it’s magic instead of physics, or else the trick won’t work.

(via reddit)

Russian-born physicists Konstantin Novoselov and Andre Geim, both faculty members at the University of Manchester, have won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work with graphene, which is an arrangement of carbon consisting of a flat, atom-thick layer in a honeycomb-like lattice.

In 2004, Novoselov and Geim discovered a low-tech but highly effective way to produce graphene flakes: With Scotch tape. By putting tape on a piece of graphite and repeatedly peeling away, you can create a layer of graphene. Now known as the so-called “Scotch tape technique,” according to Dr. Geim, this discovery has had theoretical as well as practical implications: New Scientist reports that it wasn’t previously known that such two-dimensional sheets would be stable.

STOVL (Short Take Off and Vertical Landing) planes have been in development and use since 1951, though only two planes have ever reached operational status. On Thursday, Lockheed Martin‘s F-35 Lightning II test plane made its very first vertical landing.

To quote the late, great Douglass Adams: It “hung in the air in exactly the same way that bricks don’t.”

Video after the jump.

Read on...

Since its construction in 1983, the Super-Kamiokande neutrino observatory (“Super-K“) in Hida, Gifu Prefecture, Japan has been conscripted to help solve perplexing physics questions by detecting neutrinos. Neutrinos are absurdly non-interactive, so the Super-K, when in operation, is filled with 50,000 tons (read: 12.5 million gallons) of pure water. On the very off chance that a neutrino interacts with a water molecule, it emits light such that the Super-K’s detectors can pick up lots of salient information about the neutrino’s origin and properties.

Now, the Super-K is enrolled in the most sensitive neutrino experiment yet conducted: beaming neutrinos from almost 300 miles away to see why they change forms the way that they do.

A team of scientists in Colorado, lead by Chin-wen Chou, have invented a clock five orders of magnitude more accurate than the atomic clock. A more accurate global clock could have a number of applications, from the resolution of a number of really deep physics questions, to more increasingly precise GPS systems.

The clock works by calibrating three sets of lasers on to an aluminum ion, and a magnesium ion. It “ticks” when the magnesium ion is in motion, which causes it to emit a photon of light. At least, we think that’s how it works. The Wired article is chock full of sentences to which we can only nod our heads and hope fervently that there isn’t a quiz at the end.