Quantum optics Research update Quantum logic: to be, or NOT to be? Physicists demonstrate a quantum NOT gate for the first time
Microscopy Research update Lasers target hard drugs Laser spectroscopy could be used to detect heroin and morphine
Telescopes and space missions Research update INTEGRAL takes off The European Space Agency has launched the most sensitive ever gamma-ray observatory
Gravity Research update The Milky Way’s dark secret It’s official: there is a supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way
Quantum mechanics Research update Caesium joins the condensates Caesium has become the seventh element to form a Bose condensate
Superconductivity Research update Lithium joins the superconductors When subjected to high pressures lithium has the highest superconducting transition temperature of any element
Microscopy Research update Hollow core cuts Raman thresholds Photonic fibres could shift gas-based nonlinear optics into a new regime
Stars and solar physics Research update X-rays illuminate nova explosions Astronomers assemble the first “before and after” pictures of a nova
Detectors and sensors Research update Nobel Prize rewards neutrino astrophysics and X-ray astronomy Ray Davis, Masatoshi Koshiba and Riccardo Giacconi share the 2002 Nobel Prize for Physics
Soft matter and liquids Research update Beer paper wins Ig Nobel physics prize A German physicist has received the 2002 Ig Nobel prize in physics