Physics
Sonic black holes
If a fluid flows faster than sound, sound waves can become trapped behind a boundary that behaves a little like the event horizon of a black hole. It is a clever way to explore ideas such as Hawking radiation in a laboratory, without needing an actual black hole.
Physics
The Unruh effect
What does empty space look like when you are accelerating? According to quantum field theory, an accelerating observer would detect a warm bath of particles where an observer moving at constant speed sees only vacuum.
Language and cognition
Arabic morphology and the mental lexicon
Many Arabic words are built by fitting consonantal roots into different patterns. This raises a question: when we learn a word, what exactly does the mind store? The whole word, its root, its pattern, or something smaller? The papers below approach the question through experiments and through unusual language errors found in aphasia and deep dyslexia.