Physics goes for gold
Physical fitness is no longer enough to guarantee a gold medal at the Olympics, but an understanding of the science behind the sport may give competitors that crucial edge
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Author archive
Read article: Physics goes for gold
Women matter
What do the evolution of the universe and the relative proportions of men and women in physics have in common? Well, imagine that men are matter and that women are antimatter. And note that equal amounts of matter and antimatter were created in the big bang, just as equal numbers of baby boys and girls […]
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Science centres face the future
The UK is about to experience an explosion in the number of new interactive science centres. By this time next year about a dozen major new science-centre projects will have opened (see table). These large-scale capital schemes have been funded by a mixture of National Lottery grants from the Millennium Commission and money from public […]
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Exciting times for heavy nuclei
The researchers at the French GANIL accelerator studied heavy, highly charged ions, in which the attraction between the nucleus and the remaining electrons is extremely strong. As a result, the difference in energy between atomic states can actually be higher than different states in the nucleus. To observe the effect, the group fired high-energy tellurium-125 […]
Physics, technology and the Olympics
What effect does technology have on the performance of athletes, asks Steve Haake
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No thing goes faster than light
Nothing can travel faster than light. Despite a recent raft of reports in the media, this statement is as true now as it ever was. Nonetheless, experiments over the past 20 years have been forcing us to re-examine what we mean by the word “nothing”. In the latest experiment, a group of researchers at the […]
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Supersymmetry makes its case
In 1951 Herman Weyl, a pioneer in the application of the mathematics of symmetry to physics, published a popular account of the field. His book was called, quite simply, Symmetry. To the uninitiated, Gordon Kane’s new book Supersymmetry might be construed as evidence that the world of physics has been gripped by the same inflationary […]
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Europa: water, water everywhere
The latest evidence comes from an analysis of the magnetic fields surrounding Europa. When a conducting body is placed inside a time-varying magnetic field, electrical currents are induced inside the conductor, which in turn produce measurable secondary magnetic fields. In this case the conductor is Europa and the magnetic field is the magnetosphere of Jupiter. […]
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Argon makes a cold compound
Argon is the lightest yet of the inert gases to have formed a compound. It is difficult to persuade light inert gases to react because their outer electrons are shielded less from the electrostatic pull of the nucleus by the inner electrons that are present in heavier noble gases. Khriachtchev and co-workers created the new […]
Sandage and Peebles win cosmology prize
Sandage is best known for his efforts to pin down the values of the Hubble constant, the age of the Universe and its deceleration parameter through observations. Peebles is a theoretical cosmologist who has worked on problems ranging from light-element synthesis to the nature of dark matter. The awards will be presented at the Pontifical […]
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