From the past, a fiery warning
A book about the 1783 eruption of the Icelandic volcano Laki and the lessons it holds for us today, reviewed by Hazel Rymer
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Read article: From the past, a fiery warning
Between the lines
A dual biography of Faraday and Maxwell, an insider’s tale of the Higgs hunt and a flawed study of the physics of warfare, reviewed by Margaret Harris
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Keeping a telescopic eye on the Soviets
How Jodrell Bank Observatory became entangled in the Space Race
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The problem of missile defence
Rebecca Slayton's book Arguments That Count has implications that stretch far beyond Cold War history, according to reviewer Philip Webber
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All alone in the universe?
Jack Lissauer reviews Lee Billings' Five Billion Years of Solitude, a collection of stories about exoplanet science
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Did slippery sand help Egyptians build the pyramids?
A little bit of water cuts friction in half
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The drop heard round the world
Shane D Bergin, Stefan Hutzler and Denis Weaire describe how a funnel full of pitch became a media sensation
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How Charles Wheatstone got to see polarization
Restored machine built by Sir Charles Wheatstone reveals the principles of polarized light
Edible lasers and death rays
Jeff Hecht reviews an "old-fashioned cabinet of wonders" from the field of optics and photonics
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Hunting for neutrinos
Neutrino science gets a turn in the popular-physics limelight as Brian Clegg reviews an accessible new account of the field's history
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