Fusion – the release of nuclear binding energy from light nuclei and its practical exploitation – has been a major world research discipline for the past four decades. It promises to be an energy resource capable of indefinitely sustaining humanity under all conceivable scenarios of population growth and energy demand. In fact, fusion is the […]
“Evolution not revolution” was the motto as we set about redesigning Physics World earlier this year. After nine years with the same design we felt that a new look was long overdue – it is hard to think of another science magazine that has not been redesigned at least once during this period. Moreover, the […]
That was the conclusion drawn by John Enderby of Bristol University who gave a presentation on “Experimental physics in the UK: problems and promise” at the British Association‘s science festival in Leeds last month. Many of the practical discoveries made in physics come from small-scale physics labs. For example, semiconductors, lasers and holography, X-ray diffraction […]
The US High Flux Beam Reactor is under attack again
New jobs statistics make interesting reading for graduating physicists
An old debate on the universe was reborn this month
Chile has found the funds to remain part of the $184m Gemini partnership
Electric charge normally comes in an indivisible unit: the charge of an electron. Indeed, quarks were thought to be the only particles with fractional charge – and today they only exist in particles that have a integer charge. But last month, two groups of physicists revealed the first direct evidence that an electric current can […]
The US government breaks the boundaries between its civilian and military nuclear programmes
Colin Humphreys, head of materials science at Cambridge University, disclosed his ideas at a symposium on the centenary of the discovery of the electron at Cambridge. He has submitted a paper based on his ideas to Nature. Superconducting materials lose all electrical resistance below a critical temperature; but for many years, this temperature was below […]
