Free Republic

Yehuda Kfir, an expert in underground warfare, says the IDF can’t keep bombing buildings and infrastructure to locate Hamas’s tunnels: ‘We need to dig from our side to theirs’ This week, the Israel Defense Forces publicized what it said was the biggest Hamas terror tunnel uncovered to date, built under the stewardship of Hamas Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar’s brother Muhammad in the northern Gaza Strip, near the Erez Crossing into Israel. The IDF didn’t specify if and how the tunnel was utilized during Hamas’s October 7 massacre, when its terrorists slaughtered 1,200 people in southern Israel. But since it extends...

A Canadian teenager just took first place in a global science competition for her brilliant explanation of quantum tunneling.Maryam Tsegaye lives in Fort McMurray—a city that hit headlines for devastating reasons in 2016, when 88,000 people were forced from their homes due to wildfire.Now, thanks to her ability to explain tricky quantum physics theory with ease, this 17-year-old has taken top prize at the sixth annual international Breakthrough Junior Challenge.The challenge is a science video competition where young people showcase their knowledge of scientific principles in various fields.In a three-minute explainer, Maryam likened the behavior of electrons to how her...

You already know that water can have three states of matter: solid, liquid and gas. But scientists at the Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL) have discovered that when it's put under extreme pressure in small spaces, the life-giving liquid can exhibit a strange fourth state known as tunneling. The water under question was found in super-small six-sided channels in the mineral beryl, which forms the basis for the gems aquamarine and emerald. The channels measure only about five atoms across and function basically as cages that can each trap one water molecule. What the researchers found was that in this...

How our youthful universe explored the string-theory multiverse in search of home—with help from its anti-universe counterpart. Its journey could explain why our cosmos is so well suited for life.Saswat Sarangi owes his career in physics to a twist of fate. When he was a 13 year-old schoolboy in Orissa in eastern India, his uncle bought him a copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time as a birthday present. Unfortunately, the young Sarangi would have preferred a cricket bat, and the book remained unread for two years, until he found himself struggling to prepare for a physics test...

U.S. Cites Signs of Korean Steps to Nuclear Test By DAVID E. SANGER and WILLIAM J. BROAD WASHINGTON, May 5 - White House and Pentagon officials are closely monitoring a recent stream of satellite photographs of North Korea that appear to show rapid, extensive preparations for a nuclear weapons test, including the construction of a reviewing stand, presumably for dignitaries, according to American and foreign officials who have been briefed on the imagery. North Korea has never tested a nuclear weapon. Bush administration officials, when asked Thursday about the burst of activity at a suspected test site in the northeastern...