Researchers from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology teamed up with colleagues from the U.S. and Switzerland and returned the state of a quantum computer a fraction of a second into the past. They also calculated ...
Quantum Physics
Mar 13, 2019
83
33213
A large metallic ball fell out of the sky on a remote grassland in Namibia, prompting baffled authorities to contact NASA and the European space agency.
Space Exploration
Dec 22, 2011
54
0
David Smith, a retired print technician from the north of England, was pursuing his hobby of looking for interesting shapes when he stumbled onto one unlike any other in November.
Mathematics
Jun 10, 2023
4
2279
While easily seen by people, the cotton-ball clouds (called shallow cumulus clouds) that drift overhead on partly cloudy days are hard for radars and many other instruments to observe and, therefore, hard to model and predict. ...
Earth Sciences
Jan 15, 2019
0
27
(Phys.org)—Sightings of ball lightning have been made for centuries around the world – usually the size of a grapefruit and lasting up to twenty seconds – but no explanation of how it occurs has been universally accepted ...
General Physics
Oct 12, 2012
11
3
An archaeologist is looking at a rock with great interest, a sphere unearthed in a forest, believed to be part of ancient civilization. Or is it just a very big rock?
(Phys.org) —Researchers in China have captured, for the first time, an instance of ball lightning, on digital video along with spectrographs. The accidental capture, detailed by the team in a paper they've had published ...
(Phys.org)—An airplane's vortex generators, which look like small fins on its surface, improve the plane's aerodynamics similar to the way in which the dimples on a golf ball improve the ball's aerodynamics: by delaying ...
Football fans won't be alone when they sit glued to their TV sets for the 2018 World Cup.
Other
Jun 7, 2018
0
885
Bumble bees play, according to new research led by Queen Mary University of London published in Animal Behaviour. It is the first time that object play behavior has been shown in an insect, adding to mounting evidence that ...
Plants & Animals
Oct 27, 2022
0
967
A ball is a round, usually spherical but sometimes ovoid, object with various uses. It is used in ball games, where the play of the game follows the state of the ball as it is hit, kicked or thrown by players. Balls can also be used for simpler activities, such as catch, marbles and juggling. Balls made from hard-wearing materials are used in engineering applications to provide very low friction bearings, known as ball bearings. Black powder weapons use stone and metal balls as projectiles.
Although many types of balls are today made from rubber, this form was unknown outside the Americas until after the voyages of Columbus. The Spanish were the first Europeans to see bouncing rubber balls (albeit solid and not inflated) which were employed most notably in the Mesoamerican ballgame. Balls used in various sports in other parts of the world prior to Columbus were made from other materials such as animal bladders or skins, stuffed with various materials.
As balls are one of the most familiar spherical objects to humans, the word "ball" is used to refer to, or to describe, anything spherical or near-spherical.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
