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Tag archives: Star Wars
Star Wars fact or fiction, Wikipedia editor in space, stellarator tour
Fact and fiction: Carsten Welsch. (Courtesy: Cockcroft Institute)
By Hamish Johnston
What is it about Star Wars that captivates the imaginations of physicists? Earlier this week Carsten Welsch, who is head of physics at the University of Liverpool and head of communication for the nearby Cockcroft Institute, gave a presentation called “Physics of Star Wars” to an audience of hundreds of secondary school children, undergraduate and PhD students and university staff.
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The physics of sperm: the movie
By James Dacey
Luke Skywalker et al. re-entered the public imagination recently with the release of the trailer for Star Wars: the Last Jedi. But where that movie takes you on a galactic adventure, a new short web film by the Wyss Institute in the US takes you on a swashbuckling tour of the microscopic – tracking animated sperm on a mission to fertilize an egg.
The Beginning is based on collaborative work between a pair of researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University. Founding director Don Ingber teamed up with the biophysicist/professional animator Charles Reilly to seek an atomic-level understanding of sperm movement. Combining molecular dynamics simulations with film animation software, they have visualized how a sperm tail moves based on scientific data.
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