However,it is the last paragraph that makes the paper unique: “The tragedy of beautiful theories, ” write Chakraverty et al., “is that they are often destroyed by ugly facts. One perhaps can add that the comedy of not so beautiful theories is that they cannot even be destroyed; like figures in a cartoon they continue […]
Outside it is a warm May evening, as two friends sit deep in discussion in a coffee house in Berne. “Besso, you must help me, I think I am going mad. How is it even thinkable that a light ray could overtake two reference systems with exactly the same speed if one is moving, the […]
The goal of all-polymer electronics has motivated an increasing number of research groups around the world for the past 20 years. These groups hope to provide plastics – which have the advantages of low-cost processing, flexibility and toughness – with the electronic properties needed for practical circuitry. In the past few months, exciting new results […]
The first news story in that first issue was a sneak preview of the Edwards’ report on the future of physics departments in UK universities, which concluded that 20 staff and 200 full-time-equivalent students was the minimum feasible size for a department. Some 20 or so of the 53 departments of the time did not […]
Read article: Optical data storage
Companies are continuing to build on the tremendous success of the compact disc by developing systems that could eventually replace the traditional video recorder
The kilogram is currently defined by a platinum-iridium alloy maintained at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures (BIPM) in Paris and six official copies. However, the official mass of the standard kilogram has been known to vary with time, hence the interest in defining the kilogram is terms of fundamental constants like h. The […]
Bill Richardson, head of the DOE, says that Livermore “will provide critical new technologies to counter the threat of weapons of mass destruction [and provide] the FBI with new capabilities that could save American lives”. The partnership extends a previous agreement under which the agencies collaborated on crime-fighting technology. The move into civilian science is […]
The Main Injector has a circumference of 3.2 km and contains 432 magnets, each of which weighs over 18 tonnes. The Tevatron itself has a circumference of 6.3km and collides protons and antiprotons at a centre-of-mass energy of nearly two trillion electron volts (2 TeV). “Fermilab’s new Main Injector will open up extraordinary new opportunities […]
The report has three main recommendations: all areas of research must be given the opportunity to thrive; technology-based industries should be given the chance to grow; and education must be strengthened at all levels. To encourage research, the report states that the government must “make federal research funding stable and substantial, maintain diversity in the […]
HALCA was launched by Japanese astronomers in 1997 to detect radio signals at wavelengths that that are difficult to detect from the ground. In addition to conducting their own observations, the HALCA team have co-ordinated a series of observations with ground-based telescopes to produce enhanced images of quasars. These immensely energetic and distant objects are […]
