All posts tagged: waves

Strange Physics: Why Wi-Fi and radio waves can pass through walls but light can’t

Strange Physics: Why Wi-Fi and radio waves can pass through walls but light can’t

Published by Jenni Sidey

A closed door feels absolute. Light stays in one room, darkness settles in the next, and the boundary seems obvious enough to stop thinking about. Yet the same wall that blocks the glow from your kitchen barely slows the Wi-Fi signal drifting through it. That mismatch feels strange for a reason. Visible light and radio waves belong to the same family. They are both electromagnetic waves. They follow the same basic physics. James Clerk Maxwell tied that picture together in the 19th century, and nothing in modern physics has overturned it. So the real puzzle is not why Wi-Fi moves through walls. It is why a wall treats two versions of the same phenomenon so differently. The answer has less to do with the wall being a barrier and more to do with the wall acting like a very selective filter. A popular explanation makes this sound simpler than it is. Radio waves have long wavelengths, people say, so they somehow slip through. Visible light has shorter wavelengths, so it gets blocked. That picture feels …

Brain waves predict the intensity of magic mushroom trips

Brain waves predict the intensity of magic mushroom trips

Published by José Betancourt

A person’s natural brain wave patterns might offer a reliable preview of how intensely they will react to a dose of psilocybin. The resting electrical activity of the brain not only shifts dramatically during a psychedelic experience, but specific patterns present before taking the drug actively predict the psychological effects that follow. The research was published in Progress in Neuropsychopharmacology & Biological Psychiatry. The active ingredient in magic mushrooms, psilocybin, is currently under intense investigation as a presumed therapeutic agent. Clinical trials are testing its efficacy for depression, addictive disorders, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Australia recently approved the drug for treatment-resistant depression in specific clinical settings. Despite this clinical momentum, the exact ways the compound alters human brain function remain somewhat elusive. A major challenge in modern psychiatry is figuring out why people respond so differently to psychedelics. Finding a reliable way to anticipate these diverse patient reactions could help doctors identify which individuals are most likely to benefit from the therapy. To investigate this, a team of researchers led by scientist Cheng-Teng Ip at …

Live music causes brain waves to synchronize more strongly with rhythm than recorded music

Live music causes brain waves to synchronize more strongly with rhythm than recorded music

Published by José Betancourt

A recent study published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience provides evidence that listening to live music causes brain waves to synchronize more strongly with musical rhythms compared to listening to a recording. This enhanced brain-music synchronization tends to predict how much pleasure and engagement a person experiences during a performance. The findings offer a biological explanation for why attending a concert can feel so much more moving than playing a track on a phone or computer. Live music attendance remains widely popular worldwide, even as high-quality audio streaming makes pristine recordings available on demand. This persistence led researchers Arun Asthagiri and Psyche Loui to ask why a live experience feels noticeably different from a recorded one. “If a recording can faithfully reproduce the acoustic signal, why does the live experience feel so different? A growing body of work shows that audiences physiologically synchronize with each other during live concerts, and that rhythmic entrainment — the tendency of neural oscillations to align with external rhythmic stimuli — underlies the pleasurable urge to move …

Saturn’s largest moon could see 10-foot waves from a tiny breeze

Saturn’s largest moon could see 10-foot waves from a tiny breeze

Published by Jenni Sidey

Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Titan is the largest of Saturn’s 292 known moons, by far. It’s also the only other cosmic body apart from Earth confirmed to host standing liquid similar to our oceans in our solar system. But don’t necessarily expect calm conditions. According to a new modeling system detailed in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, the smallest gust of wind on Titan could generate huge, roiling waves across seas of hydrocarbons. While there are an endless amount of fascinating places across our solar system, Titan remains one of the most intriguing. It’s nearly 50 percent larger and 80 percent more massive than Earth’s moon, making it even bigger than the planet Mercury. Titan is also teeming with prebiotic compounds, meaning it’s one of the best contenders for hosting life in oceans beneath its icy shell.  While its average surface temperature of -296.59 degrees Fahrenheit ensures a total lack of flowing water, there are still rivers and seas full of light …

Alice Coltrane and No Wave’s overlooked women step out of the margins

Alice Coltrane and No Wave’s overlooked women step out of the margins

Published by Sam Flores

2026 is shaping up to be a year for incredible music books. Some of the best non-fiction books are projects where the writer is stepping up to fill a gap, to document the undocumented (or insufficiently chronicled), to tell a story that hasn’t been told adequately, to share a subject the writer is insanely passionate about. All of the above are true in two new fantastic books: Andy Beta’s “Cosmic Music: The Life, Art and Transcendence of Alice Coltrane” and Adele Bertei’s “No New York: A Memoir of No Wave and the Women Who Shaped the Scene.” In both cases, these are sprawling, immersive volumes, authored with obvious knowledge and deep understanding, but written in an engaging, open style that’s clearly meant to engage readers and bring them closer to each book’s respective subjects. “Cosmic Music” author Andy Beta was a teenage punk rock kid bragging about his diverse musical tastes — he was into John Coltrane  — when someone tipped him off to Alice Coltrane’s “Journey In Satchidananda,” telling him, “‘You’ve got to hear …

Animated ‘In Waves’ to Open Sidebar

Animated ‘In Waves’ to Open Sidebar

Published by Daniella Wilson

In Waves, Phuong Mai Nguyen’s animated adaptation of AJ Dungo’s cult graphic novel, will open the 65th edition of Cannes Critics’ Week, the sidebar that runs alongside the main Cannes festival from May 13 to 21. It was one of the 11 features making up this year’s selection, announced on Monday. (Full Critics’ Week lineup below). Will Sharpe and Stephanie Hsu head up the voice cast for the English-language version of In Waves. Critics’ Week plans to show both that and the French version, which features voice work from Lyna Khoudri, Rio Vega, Paul Kirscher and Biran Ba. Inspired by Dungo’s own, real-life love story, In Waves is set in California and follows a skateboarder and a surfer, friends from school who later become lovers and find their relationship tested by illness. The feature, produced by French group Silex Films together with Charades and Anonymous Content, is the first animated film to open Critics’ Week. Nguyen was Oscar-shortlisted for her short My Home. In Waves is one of seven features picked for Cannes Critics’ Week competition, which also includes Dua, the …

Heat Waves Are Getting So Brutal That They Just Kill You, Full Stop

Heat Waves Are Getting So Brutal That They Just Kill You, Full Stop

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech You may have heard of “wet bulb temperature,” a combined measure of heat and humidity that tells us how effectively our bodies can cool themselves. Normally, evaporating sweat from our skin is enough to keep us at safe temperatures. But when humidity climbs high enough, sweat stops evaporating — and without external cooling, the human body shuts down. In other words, the wet bulb temperature is more revealing than the ambient temperature. The old benchmark for human survivability was a wet-bulb temperature of 35 degrees Celsius, equivalent to 95 degrees Fahrenheit at 100 percent humidity. These conditions had been observed for brief periods, but never long enough to cause mass casualties on their own — or so we thought. Horrifyingly, though, a new study of six extreme heatwaves published in the journal Nature Communications argues that wet bulb temperatures aren’t actually the relevant threshold for mass heat death. Instead, the real kill-zone is both cooler and less humid …

Police Officer Helplessly Waves Arms at Waymo That Careened Wrong Way Through Whataburger Drive-Thru

Police Officer Helplessly Waves Arms at Waymo That Careened Wrong Way Through Whataburger Drive-Thru

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Thousands of Waymo self-driving taxis have flooded the street of major urban centers across the country, where critics say they’ve quickly turned into a drain on city resources, with municipal agencies overrun with calls about stalled cars that block traffic or make sudden stops on busy roads. In the latest incident, the San Antonio Police Department (SAPD) was forced to intervene after a Waymo vehicle drove into the drive-thru lane of a Whataburger — from the wrong direction. A TikTok video recorded on Saturday shows an officer helplessly waving his arms at the driverless vehicle in an apparent attempt to get it unstuck. “Oh nothing, just our SAPD queens trying to direct a Waymo driving the wrong way in a Whataburger drive-thru,” the TikTok user wrote mockingly. Worst of all, as the SAPD told local news outlet MySA, the car was occupied when it drove into the drive-thru lane. The awkward interaction once again highlights that despite Waymo …

Pokémon Winds and Waves: Release date speculation, trailer, latest news

Pokémon Winds and Waves: Release date speculation, trailer, latest news

Published by Daniella Wilson

Pokémon Day 2026 finally gave us our first proper look at Pokémon Winds and Pokémon Waves, with The Pokémon Company confirming that the new pair of RPGs will launch on Nintendo Switch 2 in 2027; although there isn’t a specific release date yet, both games are planned for a simultaneous worldwide release, so fans should all be setting out at roughly the same time. There is still plenty being kept under wraps, however. Nintendo has shown off the broad setting, the main characters, the three partner starter Pokémon, and a pair of unusual Pikachu variants, but there is no full story synopsis just yet, nor do we have a specific date or price to work with. Still, there is more than enough to start piecing things together. From the release window and likely pre-order situation to platforms, gameplay details, and the trailer itself, here is everything we know so far about Pokémon Winds and Waves. When is the Pokémon Winds and Waves release date? Our speculation Pokémon Winds and Waves. YouTube/ The Official Pokémon YouTube channel …

Iran war’s shock waves threaten England’s farms 6,000 miles away

Iran war’s shock waves threaten England’s farms 6,000 miles away

Published by Sam Flores

The chaos is already creeping into the balance sheet of large businesses like P.G. Rix Farms, which employs around 40 people some 90 minutes’ drive east of London. It grows mainly onions and potatoes, supplying industry giants such as McDonald’s and Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain. It also plants sugar beets, cereals and willow trees, whose fibrous wood is used to make cricket bats. NBC News visited the farm on an overcast morning this Thursday. It sits just outside Colchester, which claims to be the country’s oldest town and was the Romans’ first capital in Britain. Today, the farm’s maze of tracks, rolling fields and water meadows are near a government-protected “Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.” It is the kind of scene that stirs something deep in a certain English imagination: a landscape out of John Constable, the 19th-century Romantic painter whose work came to embody the nation’s ideal vision of itself. This is no mom-and-pop operation, rather an empire of alliums and tubers. Rix Farms made 1.2 million pounds ($1.6 million) after taxes last …