Almost 400 people took part in the PhysicsWeb poll, each one naming their top-five physicists. The votes for each physicist were added up and weighted according to how they were ranked by individual voters. This meant that Newton received a higher score than Einstein even though more people voted for the twentieth century physicist. In […]
Astronomers have argued about high-velocity clouds for over thirty-five years. Wakker and colleagues detected ionized sulphur in one such cloud using the Hubble Space Telescope. According to their calculations, the abundance of heavy elements in the cloud is only 9% of that found in the Sun. This, says Wakker, strongly suggests that the clouds replenish […]
When charged particles move in a circle they lose energy through synchrotron radiation. However, muons lose much less energy that electrons or positrons because they are 200 times heavier. This reduces the power needed to maintain the beam against energy loss. The muons would be created from the decay of the pions produced when a […]
The number of papers published by Chinese scientists in journals monitored by the US-based Institute for Scientific Information has grown from 3475 in 1983 to 10 033 in 1997. However, the proportion published in Chinese journals has dropped from 43.2% to 17% over the same period. The reason, say Ren and colleagues, is that Chinese […]
The team studied the radioactive decay of germanium 76, which cannot occur by normal beta decay in which one electron and one antineutrino would be emitted. The nucleus can, however, undergo double beta decay, which is extremely rare. This “neutrinoless” mode is only possible if the neutrino has mass and is its own antiparticle. The […]
Eckermann and Preusse analysed data from the cryogenic infrared spectrometer and telescope for the atmosphere (CRISTA), which was flown on the Space Shuttle Atlantis in 1994. They discovered that the gravity waves caused by the flow of air over mountains can exist as high as 45 km, which is well into stratosphere (Science 286 1534). […]
The HFBR had become trapped in a economic and political battle between the Department of Energy and the US congress, with the latter refusing to release funds to restart the reactor. Moreover, it was costing $23 m per year to keep the reactor in standby mode. The high cost of restarting the reactor, and the […]
According to calculations by Marcy and colleagues, the planet has 63 percent of the mass of Jupiter and orbits the star every 3.5 days. On Thursday, the next time the star is eclipsed, more telescopes will be turned towards the star to confirm the findings. By combining data from both sets of observations, planet was […]
This is only the third time Hubble has been shut down since its launch in 1990. Three weeks of scientific data will be lost. During the repair mission, astronauts will replace all six gyroscopes, a fine guidance sensor, a transmitter, a spare solid-state recorder and a device that prevents batteries overheating. The crew will also […]
For over a century milk has been pasteurised by heating it to 65 degrees Celsius for 30 minutes and then rapidly cooling it to below 10 degrees Celsius for storage. The new technique relies on energetic electrons from a linear accelerator. When the electron beam hits the E. coli, it deactivates the microbe’s DNA. “The […]
