Wagner, who is 58, studied physics at the Technical University of Munich and the universities of Göttingen and Heidelberg. After spells as a research associate at Heidelberg and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California, Wagner became a full professor of experimental physics at Heidelberg in 1984. He accepted a chair at the University of Hamburg […]
Neutrinos come in three flavours – electron, muon and tau neutrinos. According to the Standard Model of particle physics they have zero mass and only interact weakly with matter, which makes them very difficult to detect. However, muon neutrinos can change or “oscillate” into electron or tau neutrinos, and so on. Last year the Super-Kamiokande […]
Kirkpatrick and co-workers found that the computer algorithms used to solve NP-complete problems can undergo sudden phase transitions as the various criteria used to search for a solution are varied. The solutions get harder to find at the onset of the phase transition – as the search ‘freezes’ – and then easier again once the […]
Read article: String theory: simple yet elegant
String theory dates back some 30 years, but it was the “first string revolution” of 1984 that intensified interest in this, the most promising candidate for a “theory of everything”. In this book Brian Greene declares that his central concern is “to explain the workings of the universe according to string theory, with a primary […]
Invar has a face-centred cubic structure and is composed of about 65% iron and 35% nickel. In addition to its anomalously low thermal expansion, the alloy also has unusual elastic, thermal and magnetic properties. Most metals expand when they are heated because the amplitudes of the atomic vibrations inside the metal increase with temperature. It […]
The researchers also showed that the rubidium gas, which they say is a “relatively easily created medium”, exhibits extremely efficient nonlinear interactions. Materials with such properties could be used for fundamental research, such as high-precision spectroscopy, or for applications such as the compression of optical information. In electromagnetically induced transparency a “pump” laser is used […]
Read article: New age of precision cosmology
An eight-year effort to measure the Hubble constant has yielded a result
Read article: New views of the Moon
In July 1969 Neil Armstrong took man's first steps on another world, yet 30 years on, the Moon still holds many mysteries that we are only just beginning to unravel
When astronomers train their telescopes on the heavens, they are not always looking for the most distant objects in the sky. Indeed there is much to be learnt from focusing a telescope closer to home. The amount of variety in the solar system alone is staggering, although recent observations of planets around other stars suggest […]
What does the public think of radioactive waste?
