CERN split over collider closure
Many researchers at the particle-physics laboratory are unhappy that the management has not given LEP an extension
Read article: CERN split over collider closure
Author archive
Read article: CERN split over collider closure
Max Planck: the reluctant revolutionary
100 years ago Max Planck published a paper that gave birth to quantum mechanics – but he didn't immediately realize the consequences of his work, says Helge Kragh
Read article: Max Planck: the reluctant revolutionary
No more lectures any more?
Try this introspective experiment. Think about your favourite quiz show and ask yourself how many questions you can remember after the programme ends (never mind the answers). You’ll find that you fall into one of two categories. Where the questions are in a subject you know about, you will probably remember quite a few. Where […]
Read article: No more lectures any more?
Buckyball scores high-temperature goal
Carbon-60 is in a class of organic materials known as fullerenes, which are insulators. Scientists first generated superconductivity – current flow without resistance below a certain ‘transition temperature’ – in carbon-60 ten years ago. They doped the material with alkali metal ions, which donate its electrons and makes the carbon-60 conducting. But electron doping led […]
Louis Néel and Lochlainn O’Raifeartaigh
Louis Néel was born in Lyons in 1904 and dedicated his career to the study of magnetism. In 1932 he discovered antiferromagnetism – a form of magnetism in which the ‘spins’ on neighbouring atoms point in opposite directions. Previously only three forms of magnetism – dia-, para- and ferromagnetism – were known. During the Second […]
Green light for nanomotors
Schmid and colleagues used new microscopy techniques to observe in real time interactions between the tin clusters – each containing hundreds of thousands of atoms – and the copper surface. They found that tin and copper atoms swap places at the interface between the two metals to form bronze. The tin atoms in the cluster […]
Good news for UK physics
“This budget is seriously good news for UK physics,” Ian Halliday, PPARC chief executive, told PhysicsWeb. “It has provided PPARC’s first real budget increase for 20 years.” This contrasts with the last round of spending two years ago when PPARC was the only research council not to receive a real-terms rise in funding. The Engineering […]
US science awards recognize physics
The US Government makes another presentation next week with the National Medal of Science awards on 1 December. Physicists Willis Lamb and Jeremiah Ostriker receive the medal. Lamb, of the University of Arizona, won the 1995 Nobel Prize for experimental work on hydrogen that revealed a new quantum relativistic effect. His work became one of […]
First light on silicon laser
The internal energy levels of bulk silicon – in particular its ‘indirect bandgap’ – makes it emit light very inefficiently. Existing lasers are therefore based on ‘direct’ bandgap materials like gallium arsenide, which readily emit light. But these materials are expensive and difficult to integrate into the silicon chips used throughout the electronics industry. Pavesi […]
Descartes prize applauds European cooperation
Dago de Leeuw, a physicist at Philips Research Laboratories in the Netherlands, leads a team of physicists recognized for their pioneering research in plastic electronics. De Leeuw and colleagues from The Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and the UK developed a new class of transistors based on polymers. The transistors are strong but flexible and are cheaper […]
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