A lack of formal education, high-powered family connections and an unstoppable will to succeed helped Guglielmo Marconi to transmit the first radio signal across the Atlantic and launch the wireless-communications industry
Read article: Guglielmo Marconi: radio star
This review first appeared in the news section of PhysicsWeb on 8 November. It is said that one of the world’s most eminent quantum-gravity theorists was once asked to explain in his institution’s annual report what he did. He declined, claiming that his work was far too complicated for the general public to understand. All […]
The Marconi story (see article) has featured a cast of interesting characters. Marconi himself was a larger-than-life scion of a wealthy Irish-Italian family, an energetic mix of entrepreneur, inventor and playboy. Until the mid-1990s the Marconi legacy was maintained by GEC, which was Britain’s largest manufacturing company, with interests ranging from defence to medical electronics. […]
Read article: Marconi’s painful centenary
Some 100 years after the father of the uncertainty principle was born, historians of science continue to debate the role that Werner Heisenberg played during the Second World War
Read article: Werner Heisenberg: controversial scientist
Protons and neutrons are composite objects that consist of quarks bound by the strong force. Free quarks, and the gluons that hold them together, are not observed in nature because the coupling strength between quarks becomes stronger as the distance between them increases. The theory describing this strong force is called quantum chromodynamics. In the […]
During the last century great strides were made in understanding the structure of the universe and the overall processes that drive its evolution. The utter vastness of the cosmos became apparent following the discovery that although our own galaxy is gigantic, it is just one of many billions of galaxies scattered throughout the universe. The […]
Read article: Nuclei prompt stellar rethink
Discovery allows astronomers to ‘weigh’ black holes from a snapshot of their host galaxies
Read article: Stellar link helps black holes weigh in
Fleeting bursts of X-rays allow scientists to track attosecond electron events for the first time
Astronomers get the first-ever glimpse of the atmosphere of a planet beyond our solar system
Read article: Sodium spotted in the atmosphere of distant planet
A compact source of neutrons could benefit fields from medicine to condensed matter physics
Read article: Small is beautiful for new neutron generator
