Sometimes it's tough being a scientist, especially if you work in the abstract, like a theoretical physicist. You work insanely hard on insanely complicated stuff, which ends up getting published in a paper that only a handful of people can really understand or appreciate. So it's about time you were rewarded with a multi-million dollar prize, right? Right!

A study published in the May issue of Neuroscience Letters suggests that electrical brain stimulation really can make you temporarily smarter and more creative. In other words, you can put on this silly hat that gently electroshocks your nogginpudding and you'll suddenly be able to solve logic problems that you weren't able to before.

For a long time, aerogel was the lightest and least dense material ever made. Late last year, a metallic lattice structure took the crown. And today, the new champion is officially aerographite, with a density so low that it barely exists at all.

You're looking at the very first image ever taken of the shadow cast by one single atom. Researchers at the at Griffith University in Australia didn't even know if was possible for atoms to cast shadows like this until they tried it, but with some laser-cooled Ytterbium, a fancy lens, and five years of work, they were able to take this picture.