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moment of inertia

The right spin: how to fly a broken space craft
On the 25th of May 1997 a dramatic collision tore a hole into the space station Mir and sent it hurtling through space. As NASA astronaut Michael Foale tells Plus, the fate of Mir and its crew hinged on a classical set of equations.
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Unspinning the boomerang
In this article, we look at the physics behind the curved flight path of a returning boomerang, and explain that boomerangs are really a kind of gyroscope. We even show you how to bang up a boomerang yourself!
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Science fiction, science fact: reports from the frontiers of physics
What is time? What is space? Are there parallel universes? Join Plus and FQXi on a journey exploring these...
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Folding the future: From origami to engineering
Back in the days before smart phones with GPS functions became ubiquitous we had maps. Remember how hard it...
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What Planck saw
Cosmologists gathered in the Netherlands last week to discuss a new view of the Universe. The Universe as...
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Why you shouldn't use a toss for overtime
In soccer a coin toss is used to decide who goes first in a penalty shootout and similarly in American...
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Researching the unknown
Science is much stranger than fiction. It suggests that our Universe may just be one of infinitely many which...
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