If you’re a fan of science or science fiction, you’re familiar with ‘techno-babble’—the word salad of terms swiped from textbooks and peer-reviewed articles that writers use to make things sound more exciting and futuristic. This kind of scientific glossolalia has become a bit of a pet peeve for me, and today the term irritating me…
Tachyons
27th June 2022The W Boson
08th June 2022Recently, you may have heard something about an elementary particle called the W boson. It probably caught your eye because it had a dire headline like “The Mass of the W Boson May Destroy Physics!” Upon reading it, you probably thought, “Well that’s just perfect; some nerd with a slide rule and a particle accelerator…
Dark Matter
18th April 2022Welcome to another installment in our ongoing series on physics concepts that we hear all the time and don’t actually understand. Today’s buzzword is “Dark Matter” – and no, not the TV adaptation of the sci-fi comic book. Or the completely unrelated movie. Or the also completely unrelated novel, or the TV show being adapted…