What's This? hopes to one day be nearly as enjoyable as Bob Park's What's New.

1. Failures Will Come to Light Much Sooner:
   An article from The Economist discusses the ways in which new technologies can spread faster in poorer countries than wealthy ones. They proceed to cite a World Bank report (possibly this one, though the full text download did not work for me) that shows technology propagates much faster now then it did even just 30 years ago. For example, it took about 70 years for the radio to go from invention to widespread use, but only 20 years for the CAT scan to do the same. This implies that newly developed technologies are capable of producing a financial return much sooner than any other time in human history. Furthermore, nations that do not support their science and technology infrastructure will likely suffer the economic consequences much sooner than ever before, hopefully while the elected officials responsible for the budget are still in office. [Originally found here.]
2. It Might not be the Other Driver's Fault, but it is:
   A paper in the New Journal of Physics shows that traffic jams can occur without a bottleneck. You might be stuck in traffic just because there are too many vehicles on the road, not because there is an accident or other specific problem location. This is scientific proof that there are only two ways to relieve traffic congestion: build more roads or reduce the number of vehicles using the existing roads. Reducing the number of vehicles seems to be the easier option because building new roads also requires funding their lifetime of maintenance. It might even be cheaper to provide free public transportation in major metropolitan areas than to satisfy our asphalt needs. The important question is, however, which solution is the more successful platform for a politician? [Originally found here.]
3. Relax, Your Experiment Will be Running for a While:
   Lynda Williams is the Physics Chanteuse and she rewrites pop music songs in terms of physics topics. She was interviewed by The Seattle Times and asked whether other scientists who see her show are a tough audience. Her response was, "Geologists and astronomers tend to be the most loose and easygoing." Is it a coincidence that people studying physics of the longest timescales are the most relaxed? The Chanteuse should hope that no inertial fusion or other laser physics researchers come to the show.
4. Even our Rovers Prefer to be SUVs:
   The Los Angeles Times published an article about the newest Mars rover. Calling it an "Interplanetary Beast," its 1,900 lbs. are nearly five times heavier than the previous rover. This is probably the equivalent weight of ten scientists (maybe only nine Americans?), but the rover is easier to get to Mars than humans and it works longer hours with less complaining (see item 2. of this). Promoting the use of machines over people for space exploration is not popular even though it is more cost efficient and productive to use machines. Besides, even if we ship plenty of humans over to Mars, we could never afford to build all the roads they would need to get to work.

The opinions expressed in this article are not those of a Ph.D. physicist, but they will be.