Open Thread Science

The White Whale

WhiteWhale-TomStiglich

Artist – Tom Stiglich

And now for something completely different. Here are a couple non-political stories that caught my eye this week that you may have missed.

First, physicists at Harvard may have accidentally discovered how to create light sabers.

A team of physicists were fooling around with photons when they managed to get the particles to clump together to form a molecule, one that’s unlike any other matter. And it behaves, they say, just like a lightsaber.

Meanwhile, the Mars Curiosity rover has discovered that Martian soil contains 2 percent water.

“If you think about a cubic foot of this dirt and you just heat it a little bit – a few hundred degrees – you’ll actually get off about two pints of water – like two water bottles you’d take to the gym,” Dr Leshin explained.

Science is awesome. Too bad half of Congress doesn’t believe in Science.