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Latest print edition of Physics World
Updated: 3 years 14 weeks ago
Two decades and counting...
Opening this special issue marking the 20th anniversary of the launch of Physics World,
Matin Durrani says that the magazine still has a vital role to play in the electronic age
Ending the great drought
For more than 20 years, particle theory has left experiment far behind in its wake. Michael Riordan
hopes that the Large Hadron Collider will help bring particle physics back to its experimental roots
The global-village pioneers
Paul Ginsparg, who founded the arXiv e-print archive, recounts the early days of the Web and looks
at how it has changed scientific communication
Pop science's big bang
Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time, first published 20 years ago, reshaped the science publishing
landscape. John D Barrow charts the rise of the popular-science book and looks at the huge
impact of Hawking’s bestseller on popular culture
Corporate interests
Bell Labs, once the epitome of synergy between fundamental and applied physics, is about to close
its basic-research department. Jennifer Ouellette investigates how this reflects industrial physics today
Life at the frontier
Physics has traditionally been viewed as a grand quest to understand the building blocks of matter and
the forces holding them together. But as Robert P Crease argues, the reality is no longer that simple
The new geography of science
China, Brazil, India and other emerging superpowers are reshaping the scientific landscape and
breaking the US–Europe hegemony. James Wilsdon reports on the new balance of power in physics
...And now for the next 20 years
Six leading physicists peek into the future
Have PhD, will travel
Life as a postdoctoral researcher
offers opportunities for making
independent contributions to
science, but there are pitfalls too,
as Margaret Harris explains
Once a physicist: Theo Jansen
The Dutch artist who makes “living” beach sculptures that can move
Blog life: Backreaction
Bloggers: Sabine Hossenfelder and Stefan Scherer
URL: backreaction.blogspot
First post: February 2006
A husband and wife team, currently separated by the Atlantic Ocean. Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder is based at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada, and Stefan Scherer works in the editorial office of the Landolt-Börnstein scientific database in Frankfurt, Germany.
Life, the universe and everything
The Universe: A Biography
John Gribbin
2007 Penguin
256pp £20.00hb The title of John Gribbin's latest book – The Universe: A Biography – suggests we might be in for claims that the universe has a life of its own, but in fact this is a book packed with physics.
Clouding the issue of climate
The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change
Henrik Svensmark and Nigel Calder
2007 Icon Books 256pp £9.99/$15.95pb For scientists, the archetypal romantic hero is the unappreciated pioneer working long hours while being scorned for his unorthodox, but ultimately correct, ideas.
Fermi gases go with the superfluid flow
The study of superfluidity in "imbalanced" ultracold fermionic gases is helping researchers unearth the mechanisms behind superfluids and superconductors, explain Wolfgang Ketterle and Yong-il Shin If asked to describe the characteristic properties of a gas, most physicists would refer immediately to its diluteness: gases such as air or the helium inside balloons are about 1000 times less dense than liquids or solids.
Cracking a material problem
Cracks occur on scales ranging from the atomic to the tectonic, and are the reason why materials fail. Traditionally the preserve of engineers, Robert Spatschek and Efim Brener explain how the rich dynamics of crack propagation is attracting the attention of physicists Fracture plays a ubiquitous role in our lives, from everyday annoyances like dropping a glass to catastrophes such as the break-up of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in 1986.
Crash! The physics of vehicle testing
Newtonian physics lies at the heart of attempts to make cars safer on the roads. Richard Frampton explains how virtual crash-test dummies and "intelligent" seat belts are helping to save lives If someone told you that up to 37 million people are expected to die over the next 20 years in some particularly horrific way, you might think they were talking about the rise of a ghastly worldwide epidemic.
Sounding out the Big Bang
Gravitational waves offer a unique way of studying inflation and other fundamental processes of the very early universe, explains Craig J Hogan, and may even connect string theory with the world of experiment Our view of the universe is about to change forever. Since science began, all our knowledge of what lies above, below and around us has come from long-familiar forms of energy: light, produced by distant astrophysical objects; and matter, in the form of particles such as cosmic rays.
Science bloopers II
Robert P Crease relates your responses to his call for "science bloopers" – mistakes in books, movies and other media In the 1980s ABC News – the news division of the American Broadcasting Company – unveiled a new logo consisting of a stylized image of the Earth, which was animated with the continents moving from east to west: from right to left on the TV screen. Soon after the logo's debut, someone pointed out the error.
Neutron lab comes back from the dead
The European Spallation Source is firmly back on the agenda with several countries unveiling bids to host the world-beating neutron facility. Edwin Cartlidge reports on the lab's dramatic change in fortune When the German government announced in February 2003 that it was withdrawing its support for the European Spallation Source (ESS), the news came as a serious blow to neutron scatterers across the continent.
In support of neutrons
The UK must put forward a formal bid to host the European Spallation Source If there is one field of research in which Europe can justifiably claim to lead the world, then it is neutron scattering. Europe boasts the world's two most powerful sources of neutrons: the Institut Laue-Langevin reactor in France and the ISIS spallation facility at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK.
About this image
Courtesy of SOHO/EIT consortium. SOHO is a project of international cooperation between ESA and NASA. Image has been modified.
The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) is designed to study the internal structure of the Sun, its extensive outer atmosphere and the origin of the solar wind, the stream of highly ionized gas that blows continuously outward through the Solar System. An uninterrupted view of the Sun is achieved by operating SOHO from a permanent vantage point 1.5 million kilometers sunward of the Earth. SOHO was designed to observe the Sun continuously for at least two years.
- New quasar is the oldest yet
- Closing in on the gamma-ray sky
- Milky Way Black Hole May Be A Colossal 'Particle Accelerator'
- Cosmic Lighthouses: Astrophysicists Explain Differences In Brightness Of Supernova Explosions
- Universe Offers 'Eternal Feast,' Cosmologist Says
- Origin Of Darkest Galaxies In The Universe Elucidated
- Scientists Find High Energy Systems Hidden In 'Gas Cocoon'
- Astronomer Finds Closest Gravitational Lensing Galaxy
- First negatively charged molecule found in space
- Binary star pulsates with high-energy gamma rays
- Active galactic nuclei
- Gamma ray 'clock' found creating antimatter
- Astronomers Find First Ever Gamma Ray Clock
