Photonics and particles win 2001 King Faisal prize
Optical communications and cosmology are recognised by the prize
Read article: The Milky Way’s last meal
The Milky Way’s last meal
Wandering stars could be remains of a small galaxy absorbed long ago
On the road to two-proton radioactivity
Radioactivity is the transformation of an atomic nucleus by one of several mechanisms. Henry Becquerel observed alpha particles: helium-4 clusters consisting of two protons and two neutrons ejected fr...
Organic magnetism finally demystified
In the January issue of Physics World, Kazuyoshi Tanaka of the Department of Molecular Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan, describes how Bakhyt Narymbetov of the Institute for Molecular Science in O...
Sensors reveal the secrets of car tyres
The best place for these sensors is in the tyres themselves because this is where all the external forces on the car, with the exception of wind resistance and gravity, are felt. In the January issue ...
Read article: Sound waves deliver a faster pint
Sound waves deliver a faster pint
With millions of litres of beer and lager sold every day, brewing is big business. One of the main aims of the industry is to increase production by reducing the time needed to turn the barley, hops, ...
Read article: Star high-school students find pulsar
Star high-school students find pulsar
Using data from the Chandra satellite, the young scientists pinpointed an X-ray source in the supernova remnant known as IC443 and asked the National Radio Astronomy Laboratory for data from the VLA t...
Read article: Flying the flag for fluid dynamics
Flying the flag for fluid dynamics
Zhang and colleagues found that the filaments – which are several centimetres long – have two distinct stable states depending on their length. Below a certain threshold the filament stret...
Radiation from mobile phones amplified in human cells
Earlier studies used simplistic models that assume human cells are spherical. But many cells – for example, muscular and red blood cells – are not spherical. Sebastián’s team th...
UK physics scoops extra money
The JIF scheme was set up in 1998 by the UK government and the Wellcome Trust – the world’s largest biomedical research charity – to provide much-needed funding for university labora...
