The germanium sample was bombarded with powerful laser pulses to excite the electrons and cause thermal melting. In this process, unlike normal melting, the metallic crystal goes from a cold solid to a hot liquid state and never passes through the classical equilibrium stage of a hot solid. “The short laser pulse neutralises the glue […]
During the 1990s the UN and ESA organized a series of workshops to promote the development of small telescopes in countries such as Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Colombia and Jordan. Over 800 astronomers have attended these workshops. And although the workshops have not led to any new telescopes in Africa, they have resulted in a […]
In mid-December 1900 Max Planck presented a series of papers to the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin that were, eventually, to revolutionize not only physics as a discipline, but our entire conceptions of the constitution of matter and energy. It would be fair to say that the century that followed was the century of […]
The majority of stars in the universe are believed to be in binary systems, but previously no one had produced any evidence to show that such systems could contain planets. The 20 planets that have been detected outside our solar system all orbit around single stars. “To find evidence of a planet orbiting a pair […]
A more detailed review by Phil Anderson of Princeton University, US is in the November issue of Physics World magazine. This delightfully written little book is full of typically Dysonian intellectual sparkle. It is based on three public lectures given at the New York Public Library in 1997, in which the physicist Freeman Dyson looked […]
Charles Townes has written a biography – but it is not clear if it is his own or that of the laser. The laser is now such a feature of our everyday life that the remarkable story of its birth needs to be told, and Townes does so in a clear and personal way – […]
Carbon nanotubes are rolled up sheets of graphite that can have lengths of about 30-100 nanometers and diameters of about a nanometer. Two years ago it was discovered that carbon nanofibres – which consist of bundles of nanotubes – could absorb hydrogen. The Chinese/US team has now synthesised extra-wide nanotubes that can store 4.2% of […]
Electron transfer in protein results from quantum tunnelling between reduction- oxidation (redox) centres. “There’s a widely accepted idea that electrons get from one redox centre to another in a protein by travelling down a series of molecular bonds that describe a best pathway,” said Christopher Moser, one of the team. “What we’ve found is that […]
One clear result from the reader survey distributed with the July issue of Physics World was the large number of you who want more articles on the history and philosophy of physics. This came as a big surprise to us. We thought that we had responded to a similar message in our 1996 survey by […]
