Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex · Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, K. Pontoppidan (STScI), A. Pagan (STScI) · CC BY 4.0
Explorables · 11
Change a number. Watch the physics respond.
Small interactive tools computed from the real equations. Each one states its assumptions and links to the article that explains it.
01 · EXPLORABLE
How far to your twin?
Pick what must match, how finely, and whether space is infinite, and see the order-of-magnitude distance to an exact copy — with every assumption explicit.
From: If the universe is infinite, is there another you?
02 · EXPLORABLE
Build your own discovery
Collect simulated collision data, switch a hidden particle on or off, and watch how local significance, chance bumps and the look-elsewhere effect behave.
From: What “five sigma” really means — and what it doesn’t
03 · EXPLORABLE
Neutrinos through you
See how many solar neutrinos pass through a thumbnail, a hand, a phone or your body, and how few of them ever hit anything.
From: Ghost particles: the neutrinos passing through you right now
04 · EXPLORABLE
How much does your clock drift at this altitude?
Slide a clock from sea level to geostationary orbit and watch gravity speed it up, speed slow it down, and the two cancel for orbits about 3,170 km up.
From: Time runs faster above your head: relativity in GPS
05 · EXPLORABLE
Tilt the crystal, move the cones
Tilt a BBO crystal by a degree or two and watch the two polarized cones of down-converted light separate, touch and cross, computed from real phase matching.
From: How entanglement is actually made
06 · EXPLORABLE
Bend space: triangles and the size of the universe
Choose how curved space is and see how a 45-billion-light-year triangle’s angles change, how big a closed universe would be, and whether today’s data allow it.
From: Is the universe infinite?
07 · EXPLORABLE
Compute a transfer orbit live
Pick two planets or drag the orbit sizes and see the burns, the travel time, the launch-day angle and how often the chance comes round for an ideal Hohmann transfer.
From: One wrong unit: how we navigate to Mars, and how we once lost a spacecraft
08 · EXPLORABLE
Weigh the three neutrinos
Pick the mass ordering and the lightest neutrino’s mass, and see where the total lands against every published cosmological and lab limit.
From: The neutrino mass mystery: a floor, a ceiling and three suspects
09 · EXPLORABLE
Chasing the speed of light
Add nines to an object’s speed and watch the Lorentz factor, the slowing of its clock and the energy needed climb toward infinity at the speed of light.
From: Why nothing can go faster than light
10 · EXPLORABLE
Turn the dials: quantum pairs versus hidden instructions
Rotate two polarizing filters and compare how often entangled photons agree with the best that pre-set instructions can do.
From: Quantum entanglement: what it is (and isn’t)
11 · EXPLORABLE
Tag the slits, then try to erase the tag
Mark a double slit's paths with polarizers or quarter-wave plates, turn the eraser polarizer and watch which photons keep their stripes.
From: The quantum eraser: single photons, a double slit, and what “erasing” really means