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Quintessence Means Fifth Element

FOUR ELEMENTS Plato defined four basic elements as earth, water, air, and fire. In his analysis of geometry he defined five regular solids. He paired up the four elements with four of the five regular solids and this suggested to him that there might be another element. He assigned earth to the cube, water to […]


Elementary particles are not so much discrete “balls” of matter like marbles or planets as they are “clouds” of localized characteristics. Particles are often “fuzzy” around the edges, in terms of describing their physical limits and their location in space. But we know that these clouds or lumps that we call particles can interact with […]

Our Knowledge of Matter and Energy

We like to think that we know what “elementary particles” are made of, but in fact, while we may know some things about their behavior or interaction with other particles, we know little about their fundamental nature. Here are some of the things we know: Sometimes they act like waves and sometimes they act like […]

Superconducting Islands Amplify Photon Pressure

The ripple in space that we call a photon, or wave/particle of light, does have some mass, but it is so small that is almost zero. It normally takes millions of photons just to measure any impact at all. Joint research based in Finland shows that an island of superconductivity can amplify the ability to […]