Read article: Spotting craziness in cloud-cuckoo-land
Few things in life are utterly black or white. Even scientific ideas come in shades of “truth”, which is arrived at differently in different kinds of science. There are other gradations too, starting with theories that we are pretty damn sure are right and that we accept without question, such as Newton’s three laws of […]
Read article: Helping ‘big G’ get back on track
New measurements suggest that the gravitational constant is too small
Phonons may hold the key to the behaviour of the cuprate superconductors
A network of superconducting junctions could give insights into diverse fields of science
Physicists fail to repeat the ground-breaking experiment that created the heaviest element
Read article: Straight choices
Currently there are, at most, five centres operating in the front line of particle physics: CERN and DESY in Europe, Fermilab and Stanford in the US, and KEK in Japan. How many of these laboratories are still with us in a decade or two from now remains to be seen. The year 2020 might seem […]
Read article: Where did all the antimatter go?
Measurements of B mesons confirm that the Standard Model of particle physics cannot explain why the universe is made of matter rather than antimatter
Self-focusing occurs at high intensities in transparent media when the refractive index is proportional to the intensity. The change in refractive index causes the medium to act as a lens that focuses the laser – hence the name self-focusing. This lens is the ultimate adaptive-optics element as it responds instantly to the shape of the […]
Read article: Injection of spin for electronics
Nearly all electronic and optoelectronic devices are made of semiconductors and rely on the exact control of electric charges. Electrons, however, possess a well defined “spin” angular momentum, in addition to a well defined charge. Their spin is either +1/2 or -1/2: in other words an electron can rotate either clockwise or anticlockwise around its […]
The point at which a phase transition occurs is called the critical point and is dear to every physicist’s heart. The fascination with systems at the critical point stems from the fact that a small change in one parameter, such as temperature, can trigger spectacular changes in the other properties. Indeed, it is this discontinuity […]
