Hari Seldon, the fictional creator of “psychohistory” in Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” series of novels, predicts the imminent demise of the First Galactic Empire after a 1...
Read article: History found in a grain of sand
Almost 40 years later, as the International Space Station takes shape, history is repeating itself. Of course, the space station has never been a scientific mission – its main purpose has always...
Read article: Not the right stuff
From the pure beauty of general relativity to modern high technology, physics is a fascinating and worthwhile subject, leading to both vast new industries and far-reaching speculations about the world...
Read article: Bridging the North-South divide
Over the past 15 years there have been significant increases in the coverage of science in the mass media and the number of hands-on science centres in the UK, two developments that would be expected ...
Read article: Beyond understanding 2
Julian Barbour reviews the play God and Stephen Hawking by Robin Hawdon
Read article: Hawking: the cardboard creation
1 The Elegant Universe (Amazon, Amazon UK) Brian Greene (Vintage) pb 1999 2 A Brief History of Time (Amazon, Amazon UK) Stephen Hawking (Bantam) pb 1988 3 Just Six Numbers (Amazon, Amazon UK) Martin R...
Scientific competition is more than just a battle for glory and prizes, says Robert P Crease
Read article: The competitive edge in science
What do the evolution of the universe and the relative proportions of men and women in physics have in common? Well, imagine that men are matter and that women are antimatter. And note that equal amou...
Read article: Women matter
In 1951 Herman Weyl, a pioneer in the application of the mathematics of symmetry to physics, published a popular account of the field. His book was called, quite simply, Symmetry. To the uninitiated, ...
Read article: Supersymmetry makes its case
The UK is about to experience an explosion in the number of new interactive science centres. By this time next year about a dozen major new science-centre projects will have opened (see table). These ...
Read article: Science centres face the future
