As promised in our last article, we’re going to continue clarifying the terms that are so present in mainstream press coverage of the latest developments in physics. To select today’s topic, I polled the other reporters here at the Planetary Broadcast Network to see if any of them had burning questions about physics buzzwords. I…

If you follow science and technology news like we do here at the Planetary Broadcast Network, you have probably noticed that the term “quantum” is being bandied about quite a bit these days. It seems like every researcher with a string of letters after his name is working on some new quantum state of matter,…

As we mentioned in our last installment, the BepiColombo mission reached Mercury with the aid of solar electric ion thrusters. If that sounds to you like something that should be mentioned on the bridge of your favorite fictional TV starship, you are not alone. Solar electric propulsion (SEP) has been used on a number of…