Currently there are, at most, five centres operating in the front line of particle physics: CERN and DESY in Europe, Fermilab and Stanford in the US, and KEK in Japan. How many of these laboratories a...
Read article: Straight choices
Why is it that you can warm your hands by blowing gently against them and cool them by blowing hard? The answer requires a clear understanding of physics and a rudimentary knowledge of the workings of...
Read article: Burst bangers and brain busters
The report was commissioned from the Institute for Employment Studies by the physics programme of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to examine the views of organizations t...
Read article: Physics and work
Does the world needs nuclear power? Peter Hodgson and Dennis Anderson take up the debate
Read article: Do we need nuclear power?
In 1984 – the year made famous by George Orwell – I attended a physics conference in the city of Leipzig, East Germany. It was my first visit since I had been a student there 16 years befo...
Read article: A universe in the life of an oxygen atom
The real show-stopper for science is a shortage of school teachers in general, and a chronic shortage of science teachers in particular, that threatens the economic prosperity of the country in a know...
David Goodstein reviews QED by Peter Parnell
Read article: Feynman returns to centre stage
It has been two years since I was last at congress: two years is a long time in physics and an even longer time in politics, where the unit of measurement is daily crises. Physicists have achieved som...
Read article: Reflecting on the performance and challenges of UK physics
Along the way six “area volumes” have been published on the major subfields of physics – atomic, molecular and optical physics; plasma science; elementary particle physics; nuclear p...
Read article: Grand challenges for the US
Physics has dined out on the invention of the transistor, the laser and various medical scanners for years. However, the success of these inventions has depended on researchers leaving their labs R...
Read article: Physics goes commercial
