Astronomers are people too
Richard Preston is best known for his best-seller on the Ebola virus: The Hot Zone. Before that, he had written a book about a group of astronomers working at the Palomar Observatory in California. Th...
Do you know your stuff?
Here I am, sitting quietly and comfortably in front of my tiny wooden desk, typing these lines on the keyboard of my laptop computer, peeping from time to time through the light linen of the curtain a...
ITER must make its case
Last month, as expected, the four partners in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project announced a three-year extension of the ITER engineering design activity. Detailed des...
Can the Internet cope?
Particle physics is a truly global activity, with literally hundreds of university departments around the world specializing in the subject. The basic tools of particle physics are a small number of p...
Quantum information
There is more to information than a string of ones and zeroes - the ability of "quantum bits" to be in two states at the same time could revolutionize information technology
Climate change: the challenges
On 10 December 1997, after a session lasting two days and nights virtually without a break, politicians at the climate summit in Kyoto, Japan, agreed a protocol limiting the emissions of greenhouse ga...
Consultancy as a career
Reviewed by Allan Newton This is an interesting book that analyses the career options of scientists who become consultants, whether in a self-employed capacity or in a large consultancy firm. It is a ...
Einstein’s papers
This volume, sixth in an ongoing series of works by Princeton University Press, contains some of Albert Einstein’s more important papers on quantum theory and general relativity. Early versions ...
How to deal with mistakes
Luckily the literature is not like a barrel of apples and one bad paper will not ruin all of the others. There are also different types of mistakes with different consequences. Deliberate mistakes are...
A lucid account of the universe
A more detailed review by Bernard Pagel of the Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (NORDITA) appears in the January 1998 issue of Physics World Some 30 years ago, the hot big-bang paradigm was dr...
