Culture, history and society Archives

Culture, history and society

Home » Culture, history and society

Latest articles

Check your physics knowledge with our bumper end-of-year quiz

Oscar-winning computer scientist on the physics of computer animation

CGI pioneer Pat Hanrahan is our podcast guest

**Pioneers of 2D metals win the Physics World 2025 Breakthrough of the Year**

Researchers describe their success with five metals as the “tip of the iceberg”

Opinion and reviews

Can we compare Donald Trump’s health chief to Soviet science boss Trofim Lysenko?

When is good enough ‘good enough’?

Illustration showing a scoring system for excellence

Academic assassinations are a threat to global science

Silhouettes of several human heads and speech bubbles, indicating open communication

Breakfast physics, delving into quantum 2.0, the science of sound, an update to everything: micro reviews of recent books

Condensed natter: Physics World editors give their compressed verdicts on top new books

Inge Lehmann: the ground-breaking seismologist who faced a rocky road to success

Kate Gardner reviews If I Am Right, and I Know I Am: Inge Lehmann, the Woman Who Discovered Earth’s Innermost Secret by Hanne Strager

**Jesper Grimstrup’s The Ant Mill: could his anti-string-theory rant do string theorists a favour?**

Robert P Crease examines a new example of “rant lit” from Danish theorist Jesper Grimstrup

Destroyers of the world: the physicists who built nuclear weapons

Andrew Robinson reviews Destroyer of Worlds: the Deep History of the Nuclear Age 1895–1965 by Frank Close

Relive the two decades when physicists basked in the afterglow of the Standard Model

Robert P Crease previews the 4th International Symposium on the History of Particle Physics

Leprechauns on tombstones: your favourite physics metaphors revealed

Robert P Crease looks at experimentally testable physics metaphors

Celebrating the best of Critical Point

Critical Point has appeared in Physics World magazine since May 2000, written by science historian and philosopher Robert P Crease. Enjoy our pick of the best columns, which bring the perspective of an outsider looking in on the “workshop of science”.

illustration of a person sat at a desk using a typewriter

Features

The forgotten pioneers of computational physics

View of the backs of two women's heads as they operate a large old computer

Nobel prizes you’ve never heard of: how a Swedish inventor was honoured for a technology that nearly killed him

Photo of a lighthouse on a small rock in a bay with the coastline clearly visible close behind

Nobel prizes you’ve never heard of: how an obscure version of colour photography beat quantum theory to the most prestigious prize in physics

A photo of the Matterhorn rising above an Alpine landscape. The colours are a little washed out, but do not appear artificially tinted

Explore more in culture, history and society

How to make 2D metals: Guangyu Zhang on his team’s award-winning research

This podcast features a winner of the Physics World 2025 Breakthrough of the Year

Photo of Guangyu Zhang speaking at an event

Top 10 Breakthroughs of the Year in physics for 2025 revealed

A molecular superfluid, high-resolution microscope and a protein qubit are on our list

Exploring this year’s best physics research in our Top 10 Breakthroughs of 2025

Lively chat about exoplanet weather, proton arc therapy, 2D metals and more

So you want to install a wind turbine? Here’s what you need to know

Janina Moereke discovers the practicalities of installing wind turbines in a forest

Large group of people and bikes at the edge of a forest

‘Caustic’ light patterns inspire new glass artwork

The piece is based on the research of theoretical physicist Michael Berry

The light installation Naturally Focused

Is your WiFi spying on you?

"Beamforming feedback information" in latest version of the technology can identify individuals passing through radio networks with almost 100% accuracy, say researchers

Photo of a wireless access point mounted on a building, seen from below so that it looks like an eye looking down at the viewer

Talking physics with an alien civilization: what could we learn?

Do Aliens Speak Physics? author Daniel Whiteson is our podcast guest

Better coffee, easier parking and more: the fascinating physics of daily life

The author of Physics Around the Clock is our podcast guest

Photo of Michael Banks holding his new book

Quantum steampunk: we explore the art and science

Our podcast guests are a physicist and a sculptor

Photos of Bruce Rosenbaum and Nicole Yunger Halpern

Physicists explain why some fast-moving droplets stick to hydrophobic surfaces

New experiments and calculations could improve aerosol and microfluidic technologies while shedding more light on airborne disease transmission

Four time-lapse series of images showing droplets bouncing. There are 13 images in each series and each series of images has a different colour background to distinguish them

The physics behind why cutting onions makes us cry

It’s mostly to do with knife sharpness and cutting technique

Quantum information or metamaterials: our predictions for this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics

It’s a mug’s game, but we always have a go

The curious history of Nobel prizes: from lighthouses to gravitational waves

In this podcast we also make predictions for this year’s physics award

Imagining alien worlds: we explore the science and fiction of exoplanets

Keith Cooper chats about his new book in this podcast

‘Father of the Internet’ Vint Cerf expresses concern about the longevity of digital information

How do we create a digital version of the vellum and clay tablets that successfully preserved information in earlier ages of human history?

Vint Cerf speaking at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum. He's wearing a grey three-piece suit with a red tie and pocket handkerchief that matches the red conference lanyard around his neck. Behind him are words on a screen

Why foamy heads on Belgium beers last so long

It’s all to do with the triple-fermentation process

Overlooked pioneers from quantum history

This episode of Physics World Stories explores a new book that restores women to the early history of quantum mechanics

Black and white photo of Chinese-American physicist Chien-Shiung Wu working in a laboratory

‘I left the school buzzing and on a high’

Colin White explains why doing schools outreach put him way outside his comfort zone

Jumble of balls used in different sports, plus a shuttlecock

Physics World podcast

Explore our two regular podcast series! Physics World Weekly looks at the latest events and headlines in physics, as well as featuring short interviews with scientists and our team of journalists. Physics World Stories takes a more in-depth look at a topic.

Related jobs

Related events

Instrumentation and measurement | Meeting Neutron Scattering Group Early Career Meeting 15—16 January 2026 | Bristol, UK
Environment and energy | Conference Food Physics 2026 4—5 February 2026 | Leeds, UK
Culture, history and society | Public event Physics on Film 18 April 2026 | London, UK

Reset your password

Registration complete